He then dropped the corpse, buried it, and covered it up. When he saw the raven doing that he exclaimed,

“Alas for me! Am I unable to be like this raven and hide my brother’s disgrace?” (al-Māʾidah 5:31).

So he followed the raven’s example: he concealed the body and laid it in the earth.

The historians and authors of the sīrah relate that Adam mourned his son Abel with profound grief and that he composed lines of verse on the occasion. Ibn Jarīr, citing Ibn Ḥumayd, preserves them as follows:

“The land and all upon it have been transformed;
The face of earth lies dusty, dark, and foul.
All hue and flavor everywhere have changed—
The brightness of the smiling face is dull.”

Adam was answered with these lines:

“O father of Abel, both are now destroyed,
And the living is as one who has been slain.
A messenger came with tidings once desired,
Yet out of fear he cried them out in pain.”

This poetry is open to critique. It may be that Adam, peace be upon him, uttered words of lament in his own language and that someone later rendered them into this Arabic verse; there are other opinions, and Allah knows best.

Mujāhid further reports that Cain was hastened with punishment on the very day he killed his brother: his leg was made to cling to his thigh, and his face was turned toward the sun wherever it moved—an exemplary chastisement and an immediate requital for his sin, oppression, and envy of his brother before their parents.

The Prophet ﷺ said, “No sin is more deserving that Allah should hasten its punishment in this world—along with what He stores up for its perpetrator in the Hereafter—than tyranny and the severing of kinship ties.”

In the book now in the hands of the People of the Book—what they claim to be the Torah—I found that Allah granted Cain respite and delayed his punishment. He resided in the land of Nod, east of Eden; they call him “Qanin.” To him was born Enoch; to Enoch, Irad; to Irad, Mehujael; to Mehujael, Methushael; and to Methushael, Lamech. Lamech married two women, Adah and Zillah. Adah bore a son named Jabal, the first to live in tents and possess livestock, and another son, Jubal, the first to fashion the lute and the flute. Zillah bore a son named Tubal-cain, the first to work brass and iron, and a daughter named Naamah.