And he said,.... Not Cain, the last speaker, but the Lord God,what hast thou done? what an heinous crime hast thou committed! how aggravated is it! I know what thou hast done; thou hast slain thy brother, thine own, thine only brother, a holy, righteous, and good man, who never gave thee any offence, or any just occasion of shedding his innocent blood: this he said as knowing what he had done, and to impress his mind with a sense of the evil, and to bring him to a confession of it, before the sentence was passed, that it might appear to all to be just, and of which there was full proof and evidence, as follows:the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground; where it was split, and in which it was covered and hid, and where perhaps Cain had buried his body, that it might not be seen, and the murder not discovered; but God saw what was done, and the voice of innocent blood came into his ears, and cried for vengeance at his hands: it is in the original, "the voice of thy brother's bloods" , in the plural; which the Jews generally understood of the posterity that would have descended from Abel, had he not been murdered: the Targum of Onkelos is,"the voice of the blood of the seeds or generations that should come from thy brother;''see 2Ki 9:26 or it may respect the blood of the seed of the woman, of all the righteous ones that should be slain in like manner.
The Jerusalem Targum is,"the voice of the bloods of the multitude of the righteous that shall spring from Abel thy brother,''or succeed him; see Mt 23:35. Jarchi thinks it has reference to the many wounds which Cain gave him, from whence blood sprung; and every wound and every drop of blood, as it were, cried for vengeance on the murderer.