Jabal

Jabal is the elder son of Lamech and Adah in the Cainite line of Genesis 4. The text identifies him not by deeds but by the way of life he founds: he is the ancestor of every herding family that lives under tents.

Father of the Tent-Dwellers

The notice is brief and traditional in shape. Adah, one of Lamech's two wives, "bore Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents and [have] cattle" (Ge 4:20). The bracketed insertion makes explicit what the Hebrew implies — that the inheritance Jabal passes down is a coupled life of mobile shelter and pastoral livestock. He is paired in the narrative with his brother Jubal, "the father of all such as handle the harp and pipe" (Ge 4:21); together the two brothers anchor the craft-genealogy that the chapter is tracing alongside the Cainite line.