s brother, he would
doubtless have sought safety by flight. But after he had heard that
Cain bore the judgment of God with composure, and did not envy the
brother his honor, he pursued his work in the field with a feeling of
security.

138. What orator could do justice to the scene which Moses depicts in
one word: "Cain rose up against his brother?" Many descriptions of
cruelty are to be found on every hand, but could any be painted as
more atrocious and execrable than is the case here? "He rose up
against his brother," Moses writes. It is as if he had said, Cain rose
up against Abel, the only brother he had, with whom he had been
brought up and with whom he had lived to that day. But not only the
relationship Cain utterly forgot; he forgot their common parents also.
The greatness of the grief he would cause his parents by such a grave
crime, never entered his mind. He did not think that Abel was a
brother, from whom he had never received any offense whatever. For
Cain knew that the honor of having offered the more acceptable
sacrifice, proceeded not from any desire or ambition in Abel, but from
God himself. Nor did Cain consider that he, who had hitherto stood in
the highest favor with his parents, would lose that favor altogether
and would fall under their deepest displeasure as a result of his
crime.

139. It is recorded in history of an artist who painted the scene of
Iphigenia's sacrifice, that when he had given to the countenance of
each of the spectators present its appropriate expression of grief and
pain, he found himself unable to portray the vastness of the father's
grief, who was present also, and hence painted his head draped.

140. Such is the method, I think, Moses employs in this passage, when
he uses the verb _yakam_, "Rose up against." What tragical pictures
would the eloquence of a Cicero or a Livy have drawn in an attempt to
portray, through the medium of their oratory, the wrath of the one
brother, and the dread, the cries, the prayers, the tears, the
uplifted hands, and all the horrors of the other! But not even in that
way can justice be done to the subject. Moses, therefore, pursues the
right course, when he portrays, by a mere outline, things too great
for utterance. Such brevity tends to enlist the reader's undivided
attention to a subject which the vain adornment of many words
disfigures and mars, like paint applied to natural beauty.

141. This is true also of the additional statement, "