The book of the penitence of Adam gives us some curious details. When Cain had killed his brother, he was filled with terror, for he saw the earth quivering. He cast the body into a hole and covered it with dust, but the earth threw the body out. Then he dug another hole and heaped earth on his brother’s corpse, but again the earth rejected it. When God appeared before him, Cain trembled in all his limbs, and God said to him, “Thou tremblest and art in fear; this shall be thy sign.” And from that moment he quaked with a perpetual ague. The Rabbis give another mark as having been placed on Cain. They say that a horn grew out of the midst of his forehead. He was killed by a son of Lamech, who, being shortsighted, mistook him for a wild beast; but in the Little Genesis it is said that he was killed by the fall of his house, in the year 930, the same day that Adam died. According to the same authority, Adam and Eve bewailed Abel twenty-eight years. The Talmud relates the following beautiful incident. God had cursed Cain, and he was doomed to a bitter punishment; but moved, at last, by Cain’s contrition, He placed on his brow the symbol of pardon. Adam met Cain, and looked with wonder on the seal or token, and asked,— “How hast thou turned away the wrath of the Almighty?” “By confession of sin and repentance,” answered the fratricide. “Woe is me!” cried Adam, smiting his brow; “is the virtue of repentance so great, and I knew it not! And by repentance I might have altered my lot!”[127] Tabari says that Cain was the first worshipper of fire. Eblis (Satan) appeared to him and told him that the reason of the acceptance of Abel’s sacrifice was, that he had invoked the fire that fell on it and consumed it; Cain had not done this, and therefore fire had not come down on his oblation. Cain believed this, and adored fire, and taught his children to do the same.[128] Cain, says Josephus, having wandered over the earth with his wife, settled in the land of Nod. But his punishment, so far from proving of advantage to him, proved only a stimulus to his violence and passion; and he increased his wealth by rapine, and he encouraged his children and friends to live by robbery and in luxury. He also corrupted the primitive simplicity in which men lived, by the introduction amongst them of weights and measures, by placing boundaries, and walling cities.[129] John Malala says the same: “Cain was a tiller of the ground till he committed the crime of slaying his brother; after that, he lived by violence, his hand being against every man, and he invented and taught men the use of weights, measures, and boundaries.”[130] The passage in Genesis “_Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him seven-fold_,”[131] has been variously interpreted. Cosmas Indopleustes renders it thus, “Whosoever slayeth Cain will discharge seven vengeances;” that is, he will deliver him from those calamities to which he is subject when living.[132]