In Genesis 4:17 Cain is said to have built a city that he named after his son Enoch. Cain was banished from the presence of God to spend his life wandering in the land of Nod. The Hebrew word for Nod is very close to the one for “Toss, tossed, or tossing.” Probably the earliest allegorical interpreters of the Scriptures, Philo of Alexandria, makes this relevant to his readers and those in every generation since. He suggests that Cain and those who follow from him are “…of wavering and unsettled impulses.” They are “…subject to tossing and tumult, like the sea lashed by contrary winds when a storm is raging, and has never even in fancy had experience of quietness and calm. And as at a time when a ship is tossing at the mercy of the sea, it is capable neither of sailing nor of riding at anchor, but pitched about this way and that it rolls in turn to either side and moves uncertainly swaying to and fro; even so the worthless man, with a mind reeling and storm-driven, powerless to direct his course with any steadiness, is always tossing, ready to make shipwreck of his life.”[1]
The city that Enoch built has all the elements of a city. It has walls, buildings, inhabitants and an organized system of laws. It was constructed of walls of deceit, false notions, myths that were all designed to fortify his own alienation from God. Philo says, “Cain’s buildings are demonstrative arguments. With these, as though fighting from a city-wall, he repels the assaults of his adversaries, by forging plausible inventions contrary to the truth. His inhabitants are the wise in their own conceit, devotees of impiety, self-love, arrogance, false opinion: men ignorant of real wisdom, who have reduced to an organized system ignorance, lack of learning and of culture, and other pestilential things. His laws are various forms of lawlessness and injustice, unfairness, licentiousness, audacity, senselessness, self-will, immoderate indulgence in pleasures … Of such a city every impious man is found to be an architect in his own miserable soul, until such time as God takes counsel (Gen. 11:6), and brings upon their sophistic devices a great and complete confusion.”
Although Philo doesn’t say so, it seems the chief characteristic of the city built by Enoch is one described well by James 1:6-8. James says that “…the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” There are many citizens of that same city today. It’s named after themselves and consists of all the walls and buildings that build up arguments against God and his benevolent reign in our world. The fool has said in his heart, “there is no God.”
[1] https://catholicgnosis.wordpress.com/2018/04/27/cain-city-descendants/