The City - From Eden to a New Place

I'm starting to wonder if this might be another story of departure from Eden. Maybe the land Cain was cut off from was the land of Eden. He went to live in a place wandering east of Eden. He was cut off from the land of the garden, where nature and humanity had lived in sync for a time, where God and people had walked together and where people were to be their brother's keeper. Cain had not been his brother's keeper. He was his brother's competitor and killer. As a result Able's blood cries out to God from the ground, Cain is under a curse and driven from the ground. It seems an interesting parallel to Adam and Eve being driven from the garden.

But Cain's anticipation of hopeless vulnerable wandering doesn't appear to happen. Most obviously God gives him a mark of protection. But note also, Cain doesn't seem to keep wandering. He establishes a family and builds a city. From that comes all kinds of things that we might regard as a mixture of good and bad, potential realized, failure and grace.