From Nomads to Slaves

While Adam was the first farmer, his son Cain became nomadic only after he was cursed.  However, the story in Genesis now focuses on Abraham, who was a nomadic shepherd.  His story becomes one of God taking the wanderer and giving him land to settle in.  Abraham never owned any land in Canaan, except for his own gravesite (Genesis 23:4), but God promises to make his descendents landowners again.  Even after this promise, however, Abraham's descendents wander even farther, and must take refuge in Egypt because of a famine.  Since the famine was so severe, even the Egyptians could not afford to buy grain from Pharoah and sold themselves into slavery in order to eat.  Adam's descendents have now gone from farmers to nomads to slaves.

The Egyptians, incidentally, had a "high" view of farming, which was snobbish and idolatrous.  As they worshiped the fertility of the Nile River, they looked down on barbaric societies that had to herd animals or rely on hunting and gathering for food (Genesis 46:34).  This tradition of the pure nobility of farming is a philosophy that was likely handed down to the Greek civilization and later became an integral part of classical philosophy--from Greece and Rome to Thomas Jefferson and Wendell Berry.