Philo allegorizes Genesis 4:16-25 (Cain's exile, his descendants, and the genealogy through Seth) as a map of the soul's choice between vice and virtue.
On the Posterity of Cain is a running allegorical commentary on a short stretch of Genesis: Cain's departure 'from the face of God' to the land of Nod (Gen 4:16), the birth of his descendants (Enoch, Gaidad, Mehujael, Methusael, Lamech and his children Jubal, Tubal-cain, and Naamah), and the counter-genealogy through Seth and Enosh. Philo opens by rejecting a literal reading -- God cannot have a 'face' to turn from, since a face belongs to a composite living body and God is without parts or need. From there each name and event becomes a psychological or ethical cipher: Cain's exile is the soul's self-banishment from God through impiety; the names of Cain's line (Enoch 'thy grace,' Gaidad 'flock,' Lamech 'humiliation') trace the self-perpetuating decline of a mind that trusts only itself; the rival line through Seth and Enosh represents hope and repentance recovering what vice destroys.
Along the way Philo pursues extended digressions that go well beyond the Cain narrative: a case against giving God bodily attributes or a literal location he could vacate; a discussion of Moses' 'royal road' (Num 20:17) as true philosophy, contrasted with the sophistry of contemporary rhetoricians; an account of human speech as the model and origin of music, comparing the ear's spiral shape to a theater; and a long meditation on the proper measure of teaching and giving, tied to Deuteronomy 15:8 and the principle that God adapts his gifts to what each recipient can bear rather than to his own unlimited capacity. The text closes with an extended treatment of Phinehas (Numbers 25), read as the archetype of the mind that puts down civil war within the soul before any external war between cities can be ended.
The work matters as a sustained example of Philo's method: treating a difficult or morally troubling narrative detail (a murderer's genealogy) not as history to be defended but as symbolic material for ethical and theological argument, using etymology, numerology (the seventh day/number as an image of stability), and Stoic-Platonic commonplaces about self-sufficiency, passion, and due measure. It is one of the clearest places where he states outright that Scripture must sometimes be read 'in a more figurative sense' because the literal sense, taken alone, would be false or impious.
“For if the Existent has a face, and one who wishes to abandon it can very easily move away to another place, why do we reject the impiety of Epicurus, or the atheism of the Egyptians, or the mythical fictions with which life is filled?”
— On the Posterity of Cain · read this chapter →
“But the Existent needs nothing, so that if he has no need of the benefit that comes from parts, he could not have parts at all.”
— On the Posterity of Cain · read this chapter →
“Consider this road to be philosophy -- not the philosophy pursued by the sophistic crowd of men today”
— On the Posterity of Cain · read this chapter →
“do not give as much as you are able, but as much as the one in need is able to receive”
— On the Posterity of Cain · read this chapter →
“For this, if the truth must be told, is the archetype of all wars, and once it is removed, not even those wars fashioned in its imitation will any longer come into being”
— On the Posterity of Cain · read this chapter →
It is Philo of Alexandria's allegorical commentary on Genesis 4:16-25 -- Cain's exile from God's presence and the genealogies of Cain and of Seth -- read as a psychological account of how a soul either alienates itself from God through vice or recovers virtue through hope and repentance. It includes long digressions on God's nature, on true philosophy, on the origin of music in human speech, and on measured teaching.
Philo argues that a face is a body part, and body parts exist only to serve a creature's needs; since God is self-sufficient and needs nothing, he cannot have parts, including a face. Taking the phrase literally would also imply God occupies a specific place one could leave, which Philo rejects since the cosmos itself, God's only 'house,' cannot be abandoned.
Phinehas is the priest from Numbers 25 who kills an Israelite man and a Midianite woman to stop a plague caused by idolatry and sexual immorality. Philo reads him allegorically as the disciplined mind that 'quells the sedition within himself,' making the killing a figure for reason destroying pleasure and self-indulgence before such inner conflict can spread into wars between cities.
Citing Deuteronomy 15:8 ('lend to the one in need as much as he needs'), Philo argues that good teachers, like good physicians, give only what the pupil's or patient's capacity can bear, not the full extent of their own knowledge. He extends this to God, who measures out gifts to human capacity rather than to his own unlimited power.
He treats each name (Enoch, Gaidad meaning 'flock,' Lamech, and others) as an etymological clue to a moral state, tracing a line of increasing self-trust and irrationality descending from Cain, contrasted with the virtuous line through Seth and Enosh.
Drawing on Numbers 20:17, Philo identifies the 'royal road' -- the middle path avoiding both extremes -- with true philosophy and with 'the word of God,' contrasting it against the empty verbal cleverness of contemporary sophists.
Allegorical Interpretation I · Allegorical Interpretation II · Allegorical Interpretation III · Every Good Man is Free · Flaccus · On Abraham · On Dreams · On Drunkenness · On Flight and Finding · On Husbandry · On Joseph · On Mating / Preliminary Studies