GakuseiDon

It's a mistranslation of the Bible. Cain killed Abel, and then God came down and confronted Cain.

The Bible left out the word "skid".

Sheshbazzar

Actually courts do hand down convictions whose effects are passed down to the next generation or more.
If a man is a murdering thief, and the court convicts him, and hands down a 50 year sentence, it will affect any children that he might have at home, as they may suffer a lower standard of living, a lower level of self-esteem, and of respect for their families, miss out on participating in the common activities of a normal family, be mocked or avoided by members of their community, and attain adulthood with any number of long term emotional problems.
Problems that will then affect their relationships with their spouses and children.
So, religious or not, we all make waves, our conduct will either help lift others around and after us, beneficial to society, or, our actions will be responsible for causing pain and suffering decades into the future.
The good goal of the cultural leaders in any society is to motivate men towards positive conduct that will be beneficial to that society both in the present and in the unknown future.
The Hebrew cultural leaders employed superstition and fear as the means to guide men into conduct beneficial to the integrity of that society.
There are many "other ways to skin a cat" but the ultimate goal is the same.

premjan

Cain perhaps killed Abel because his herds were eating Cain's crops.

Analyst

The OP asked what the Mark of Cain was. Barring a Polaroid (already an obsolete notion) we'll never know.
I'm discussing why the phrase is still in use which IMO is more interesting.

Analyst

Would a metal smith have crops?

premjan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cain_and_Abel
Can was a farmer.

Running Man

Vampirism: http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Caine

Transient

I am not suggesting that at all - I have been around 58 years so I am well aware that a person's actions can affect their progeny to some extent - it varies a great deal, usually having very little effect and sometimes having a large effect for maybe one generation - it is very variable.
Look, that is a totally different matter to a judge handing down a sentence that applies to later generations - that would be abominable and that is what we have here - god as the judge doing just that, not with Cain but in that other case in the bible that I mentioned.
But then like most things in the bible it depends on how you read it and what the hell you think the person who wrote it meant when they wrote it - all total garbage because it's not usually possible to know and so many people interpret these things in different ways.
Maybe I am getting sick of all this analysis of the bible which goes around and around in circles and gets nowhere because we are trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with 100 pieces out of 5000 and everyone just keeps moving the pieces to different spots saying "wow this looks better".

LoungeHead

Why let a detail like that get in the way of interpretation?

Sheshbazzar

Transient, I am no defender of the ethics of the OT Biblegawd YHWH.
Certainly there are instances of "YHWH" condemning and punishing entire peoples and their innocent posterity. And even as you, I must regard such a blanket condemnation as only befitting of an unjust, or even utterly insane judge, or god.

Yet I regard the Biblical texts as all being entirely the creations of men, and not of any god.
In this case, the stories are the productions of a barely civilised nomadic people transitioning to settled urban environments, one whose religious literature quite often reflects their writers desire to vilify, and to marginalise competing cultures, and to also serve as the national rationalisation and justification for their subduing and permanently enslaving these so accursed "other" peoples.

The Torah being their cleverly devised religiously sanctioned "Takeover License" for the theft, and for the occupation of these "others" lands, the appropriation (theft) of their goods, and the for the permanent continuation of the practice of their enslavement, and for the maintaining of class distinctions.

These other peoples must be kept and held under a permanent "curse" by the god of the Hebrew's, or there would no longer be any excuse to keep their children and grandchildren in generations of slavery.

They had to rationalise and justify their conduct in their public records (The Torah) or be seen as merely being the marauding thieves that they were, both by themselves, by their posterity, and by the larger civilizations around them.

And also out of their superstitious FEAR of their god YHWH punishing them for the horrible things that they were doing in his name.
That is why so much of the Torah text needs to be devoted to appeasing sacrifices, and to the sucking up to YHWH, so that they can appease him, and keep "him" on "their" side, excusing and overlooking the atrocities that they KNOW that THEY are doing, (not "YHWH") rather than him coming down on them with the punishment that they KNOW that they really deserve for the acts they are engaged in.

Sadly, religionists have managed to peddle this old crock of crap to much of the rest of the world as being "The Law" of the one true God", so by bringing untold generations of suffering and abuse upon millions of innocent peoples.

Not that it is not good for men to have faith in something.
Faith in what really is true will always trump any nations old ethnocentric religious propaganda documents and claims.

I have full Faith that in time these old writings will be seen and known by all for what they really are, and what they reveal about the value systems of those who have so long promoted them.
And then this also shall pass, as all will be forgotten, and shall dissipate, less than a tiny puff of smoke upon the face of the cosmos and the extent of all eternity.
When the truth sets men free, they are free indeed, evermore.