The Land of Nod: Where Cain Went East of Eden

Nod is the land where Cain went after he killed Abel, and the question of who already lived there runs through several of my pages on Genesis and the people before Adam. These are the pages where I wrote about it.

East of Eden

On Who Are the Pre-Adamites? I quote the verse that sends Cain away:

On The Book of the Wars of the Lord I note that Nod appears only once, in Genesis 4:16. On Irad the city of Enoch is placed in the land of Nod and nowhere more precisely, and the name Nod itself means “wandering”, which could make it a symbol of Cain’s life as a fugitive rather than a specific place.

Who lived in Nod?

On Men before Adam (1656): La Peyrère in English Isaac La Peyrère reads Genesis as saying that the land of Nod already had people, laws and courts. On Who Are the Pre-Adamites? Cain, Nod, his wife and his city form La Peyrère’s main argument from Genesis.

Ignatius Donnelly cites Josephus here. On Traditions of Atlantis he notes that, according to Josephus, Cain travelled over many countries before he came to the land of Nod, and on The Pyramid, the cross and the Garden of Eden he adds that the land of Nod lay to the east of Adam’s home.

Nod as darkness

On Book of Wars Against Jehovih the Oahspe Bible gives Nod a moral meaning: all persons who cannot recognize conscience are in Nod, which is to say they cannot hear the voice of the Lord. On Cain the same idea appears in the story itself, where Cain lost the voice of the Lord because he went off into Nod, darkness.

The sons of Dan

On The Book of the Wars of the Lord Scott Wolter says a researcher told him the passage is the missing part of a story about the sons of Dan traveling to Nod.

Related pages

• Who Are the Pre-Adamites?
• The Book of the Wars of the Lord
• Irad
• Men before Adam (1656): La Peyrère in English
• Traditions of Atlantis
• The Pyramid, the cross and the Garden of Eden
• Book of Wars Against Jehovih
• Cain

For every page I tagged with Nod, see the Nod tag archive.