Curse and Mark

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat from it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

The curse of Cain and the mark of Cain are phrases that originated from Genesis 4, where God declared that Cain (the firstborn son of Adam and Eve) be cursed for murdering his brother Abel. A mark was put upon him to warn others that killing Cain would provoke the vengeance of God, that if someone did something to harm Cain, the damage would come back sevenfold. Some interpretations view this as a physical mark, whereas other see the "mark" as a sign, and not as a physical marking on Cain himself. The King James Version reads, "...set a mark upon Cain...", the New American Standard reads, "... appointed a sign for Cain ..."