Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Genesis 4:1

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bore Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.

1. Cain gotten ] Heb. anah, to get. The word “Cain” does not mean “gotten”; but Eve’s joyful utterance gives a popular etymology, which derived the proper name from the verb whose pronunciation it resembled. The word “Cain” ( ayin) means in Hebrew “a lance”; and by some the name is interpreted to mean “a smith.” Its relation to Tubal-Cain “the artificer” is doubtful (see Gen 4:24). That the name is to be identified with that of the nomad tribe of the “Kenites” (cf. Num 24:22, Jdg 4:11) is a view which has been strongly maintained by some scholars. But the evidence seems to be very slight. The Kenites were not traditionally hostile to Israel, and did not play any important part in the history of the people so far as is known. The fact that the name appears in another form, “Kenan,” in the genealogy (chap. Gen 5:9-14) should warn us against hasty identifications. Pronunciation notoriously suffers through transmission, and spelling of proper names is wont to be adapted to the sound of more familiar words.

Eve gives her child its name as in Gen 4:24. It has been pointed out that elsewhere, where the mother is mentioned in J and E, she gives the name, cf. Gen 29:32-35, Gen 30:1-24 (but see Gen 4:26, Gen 5:29, Gen 25:25); whereas, in P, the father gives the name, cf. Gen 21:3. That the mother should name the child, has been considered to be a survival of a primitive “matriarchal” phase of society: see note on Gen 2:24. But the inference is very doubtful.

I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord ] Literally, “I acquired (or, have acquired) man, even Jahveh.” Eve’s four words in the Hebrew ( nthi sh eth-Yahveh) are as obscure as any oracle.

(i) The difficulty was felt at a very early time, and is reflected in the versions LXX , Lat. per Deum, in which, as R.V., the particle th is rendered as a preposition in the sense of “in conjunction with,” and so “with the help of,” “by the means of.”

Knig, who holds an eminent position both as a commentator and as a Hebrew grammarian and lexicographer, has recently strongly defended the rendering of th as a preposition meaning “with,” in the sense here given by the English version “with the help of” (see Z.A.T.W. 1912, Pt i, pp. 22 ff.). The words will then express the thanksgiving of Eve on her safe deliverance of a child. It is a pledge of Divine favour. Child-birth has been “with the help of the Lord.”

(ii) The Targum of Onkelos reads m-th = “from” (instead of th = “with”), and so gets rid of the difficulty: “I have gotten a man from Jehovah,” i.e. as a gift from the Lord. But this is so easy an alteration that it looks like a correction, and can scarcely be regarded as the original text. Praestat lectio difficilior.

(iii) According to the traditional Patristic and mediaeval interpretation, the sentence admitted of a literal rendering in a Messianic sense: “I have gotten a man, even Jehovah,” i.e. “In the birth of a child I have gotten one in whom I foresee the Incarnation of the Lord.” But, apart from the inadmissibility of this N.T. thought, it is surely impossible that the Messianic hope should thus be associated with the name of Cain. The Targum of Palestine, however, has “I have acquired a man, the Angel of the Lord.”

(iv) Another direction of thought is given by the proposed alternative rendering: “I obtained as a husband (i.e. in my husband) Jehovah,” in other words, I discern that in marriage is a Divine Gift. Perhaps the Targum of Palestine meant this, “I obtained as a husband the Angel of the Lord”: my husband is the expression to me of the Divine good-will which I have received. The objection, however, to this interpretation is that it is the reverse of simple and natural. It makes Eve’s words go back to marriage relations, instead of to the birth of her child.

(v) Conjectural emendations have been numerous, and ingenious. Thus, at one time, Gunkel conjectured ethavveh for eth-Yahveh, i.e. “I have gotten a son that I longed for”; the unusual word ethavveh accounted, in his opinion, for the easier reading eth-Yahveh. But in his last edition (1908) the conjecture does not appear.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

– Section IV – The Family of Adam

– Cain and Abel

1. qayn, Qain (Cain), spear-shaft, and qanah, set up, establish, gain, buy, contain the biliteral root qan, set up, erect, gain. The relations of root words are not confined to the narrow rules of our common etymology, but really extend to such instinctive usages as the unlettered speaker will invent or employ. A full examination of the Hebrew tongue leads to the conclusion that a biliteral root lies at the base of many of those triliterals that consist of two firm consonants and a third weaker one varying in itself and its position. Thus, yatab and tob. So qayn and qanah grow from one root.

2. hebel, Habel (Abel), breath, vapor.

3. mnchah, gift, offering, tribute. In contrast with zebach, it means a bloodless offering.

7. chata’t, sin, sin-penalty, sin-offering. rabats, lie, couch as an animal.

16. nod, Nod, flight, exile; related: flee.

This chapter is a continuation of the second document. Yet it is distinguished from the previous part of it by the use of the name Yahweh alone, and, in one instance, ‘elohym alone, to designate the Supreme Being. This is sufficient to show that distinct pieces of composition are included within these documents. In the creation week and in the judgment, God has proved himself an originator of being and a keeper of his word, and, therefore, the significant personal name Yahweh is ready on the lips of Eve and from the pen of the writer. The history of fallen man now proceeds. The first family comes under our notice.

Gen 4:1

In this verse the first husband and wife become father and mother. This new relation must be deeply interesting to both, but at first especially so to the mother. Now was begun the fulfillment of all the intimations she had received concerning her seed. She was to have conception and sorrow multiplied. But she was to be the mother of all living. And her seed was to bruise the serpents head. All these recollections added much to the intrinsic interest of becoming a mother. Her feelings are manifested in the name given to her son and the reason assigned for it. She bare Cain and said, I have gained a man from Yahweh. Cain occurs only once as a common noun, and is rendered by the Septuagint doru, spear-shaft. The primitive meaning of the root is to set up, or to erect, as a cane, a word which comes from the root; then it means to create, make ones own, and is applied to the Creator Gen 14:19 or the parent Deu 32:6. Hence, the word here seems to denote a thing gained or achieved, a figurative expression for a child born. The gaining or bearing of the child is therefore evidently the prominent thought in Eves mind, as she takes the childs name from this. This serves to explain the sentence assigning the reason for the name. If the meaning had been, I have gained a man, namely, Yahweh, then the child would have been called Yahweh. If Jehovah had even been the emphatic word, the name would have been a compound of Yahweh, and either ‘ysh, man, or qnah, qain, such as Ishiah or Coniah. But the name Cain proves qanyty, I have gained to be the emphatic word, and therefore the sentence is to be rendered I have gained (borne) a man (with the assistance) of Yahweh.

The word man probably intimates that Eve fully expected her son to grow to the stature and maturity of her husband. If she had daughters before, and saw them growing up to maturity, this would explain her expectation, and at the same time give a new significance and emphasis to her exclamation, I have gained a man (heretofore only women) from Yahweh. It would heighten her ecstasy still more if she expected this to be the very seed that should bruise the serpents head.

Eve is under the influence of pious feelings. She has faith in God, and acknowledges him to be the author of the precious gift she has received. Prompted by her grateful emotion, she confesses her faith, She also employs a new and near name to designate her maker. In the dialogue with the tempter she had used the word God ‘elohym. But now she adopts Yahweh. In this one word she hides a treasure of comfort. He is true to his promise. He has not forgotten me. He is with me now again. He will never leave me nor forsake me. He will give me the victory. And who can blame her if she verily expected that this would be the promised deliverer who should bruise the serpents head?

Gen 4:2

His brother Habel. – Habel means breath, vanity. Does a sense of the vanity of earthly things grow in the minds of our first parents? Has the mother found her sorrow multiplied? Has she had many daughters between these sons? Is there something delicate and fragile in the appearance of Habel? Has Cain disappointed a mothers hopes? Some of all these thoughts may have prompted the name. There is something remarkable in the phrase his brother Habel. It evidently points with touching simplicity to the coming outrage that was to destroy the peace and purity of the first home.

The two primitive employments of men were the agricultural and the pastoral. Here is the second allusion to some use which was made of animals soon after the fall. Coats of skin were provided for the first pair; and now we have Habel keeping sheep. In the garden of Eden, where the tree of life was accessible, an exclusively vegetable diet was designed for man. Whether this continued after the fall, we are not informed. It is certain that man had dominion over the whole animal kingdom. It can scarcely be doubted that the outer coverings of animals were used for clothing. Animals are presently to be employed for sacrifice. It is not beyond the bounds of probability that animal food may have been used before the flood, as a partial compensation for the desire of the tree of life, which may have been suited to supply all the defects of vegetable and even animal fare in sustaining the human frame in its primeval vigor.

Man in his primitive state, then, was not a mere gatherer of acorns, a hunter, or a nomad. He began with horticulture, the highest form of rural life. After the fall he descended to the culture of the field and the tending of cattle; but still he had a home, and a settled mode of living. It is only by a third step that he degenerates to the wandering and barbarous state of existence. And only by the predominance of might over right, the selfish lust of power, and the clever combinations of rampant ambition, comes that form of society in which the highest state of barbaric civilization and the lowest depth of bondage and misery meet.

Gen 4:3

At the end of days. – This may denote the end of the week, of the year, or of some longer period. The season of the year was probably the ingathering, when the fruits of the earth and the firstlings of the flock would come in, and when it was not unnatural for the first family to celebrate with a subdued thankfulness the anniversary of their creation. And the present occasion seems to have been the time when Cain and Habel, have arrived at the years of discretion and self-dependence, solemnly come forward with their first voluntary offerings to the Lord. Hitherto they may have come under their parents, who were then the actual offerers. Now they come on their own account.

Here, accordingly, we ascend from the secular to the eternal. We find a church in the primeval family. If Cain and Habel offer to God, we may imagine it was the habit of their parents, and has descended to them with all the sanction of parental example. But we may not venture to affirm this in all its extent. Parental example they no doubt had, in some respects; but whether Adam and Eve had yet ascended so far from the valley of repentance and humiliation as to make bold to offer anything to the Lord, admits of question. Right feeling in the first offenders would make the confidence of faith very slow of growth. It is even more natural for their children, being one remove from the actual transgressors, to make the first essay to approach God with an offering.

Cain brings of the fruits of the soil. We cannot say this was the mere utterance of nature giving thanks to the Creator for his benefits, and acknowledging that all comes from him, and all is due to him. History, parental instruction, and possibly example, were also here to give significance to the act. The offering is also made to Yahweh, the author of nature, of revelation, and now, in mans fallen state, of grace. There is no intimation in this verse of the state of Cains feelings toward God. And there is only a possible hint, in the coats of skin, in regard to the outward form of offering that would be acceptable. We must not anticipate the result.

Gen 4:4-5

And Habel brought. – Habels offering differs from that of his brother in outward form. It consists of the firstlings of his flock. These were slain; for their fat is offered. Blood was therefore shed, and life taken away. To us who are accustomed to partake of animal food, there may appear nothing strange here. We may suppose that each brother offered what came to hand out of the produce of his own industry. But let us ascend to that primeval time when the fruit tree and the herb bearing seed were alone assigned to man for food, and we must feel that there is something new here. Still let us wait for the result.

And the Lord had respect unto Habel and his offering, – but not unto Cain. We have now the simple facts before us. Let us hear the inspired comment: pistei, by faith Abel offered unto God pleiona thusian, a more excellent sacrifice than Cain Heb 11:4. There was, then, clearly an internal moral distinction in the intention or disposition of the offerers. Habel had faith – that confiding in God which is not bare and cold, but is accompanied with confession of sin, and a sense of gratitude for his mercy, and followed by obedience to his will. Cain had not this faith. He may have had a faith in the existence, power, and bounty of God; but it wanted that penitent returning to God, that humble acceptance of his mercy, and submission to his will, which constitute true faith. It must be admitted the faith of the offerer is essential to the acceptableness of the offering, even though other things were equal.

However, in this case, there is a difference in the things offered. The one is a vegetable offering, the other an animal; the one a presentation of things without life, the other a sacrifice of life. Hence, the latter is called pleion thusia; there is more in it than in the former. The two offerings are therefore expressive of the different kinds of faith in the offerers. They are the excogitation and exhibition in outward symbol of the faith of each. The fruit of the soil offered to God is an acknowledgment that the means of this earthly life are due to him. This expresses the barren faith of Cain, but not the living faith of Habel. The latter has entered deeply into the thought that life itself is forfeited to God by transgression, and that only by an act of mercy can the Author of life restore it to the penitent, trusting, submissive, loving heart. He has pondered on the intimations of relenting mercy and love that have come from the Lord to the fallen race, and cast himself upon them without reserve. He slays the animal of which he is the lawful owner, as a victim, thereby acknowledging that his life is due for sin; he offers the life of the animal, not as though it were of equal value with his own, but in token that another life, equivalent to his own, is due to justice if he is to go free by the as yet inscrutable mercy of God.

Such a thought as this is fairly deducible from the facts on the surface of our record. It seems necessary in order to account for the first slaying of an animal under an economy where vegetable diet was alone permitted. We may go further. It is hard to suppose the slaying of an animal acceptable, if not previously allowed. The coats of skin seem to involve a practical allowance of the killing of animals for certain purposes. Thus, we arrive at the conclusion that there was more in the animal than in the vegetable offering, and that more essential to the full expression of a right faith in the mercy of God, without borrowing the light of future revelation. Hence, the nature of Habels sacrifice was the index of the genuineness of his faith. And the Lord had respect unto him and his offering; thereby intimating that his heart was right, and his offering suitable to the expression of his feelings. This finding is also in keeping with the manner of Scripture, which takes the outward act as the simple and spontaneous exponent of the inward feeling. The mode of testifying his respect to Habel was by consuming his offering with fire, or some other way equally open to observation.

And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. – A feeling of resentment, and a sense of disgrace and condemnation take possession of Cains breast. There is no spirit of inquiry, self-examination, prayer to God for light, or pardon. This shows that Cain was far from being in a right frame of mind.

Gen 4:6-7

Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? – The Lord does not yet give up Cain. In great mercy he expostulates with him. He puts a question which implies that there is no just cause for his present feelings. Neither anger at his brother, because his offering has been accepted, nor vexation in himself, because his own has not, is a right feeling in the presence of the just and merciful God, who searches the heart. Submission, self-examination, and amendment of what has been wrong in his approach to God, alone benefit the occaslon. To this, accordingly, the Lord directs his attention in the next sentence.

If thou do well, shalt thou not be accepted? – To do well is to retrace his steps, to consider his ways, and find out wherein he has been wrong, and to amend his offering and his intention accordingly. He has not duly considered the relation in which he stands to God as a guilty sinner, whose life is forfeited, and to whom the hand of mercy is held out; and accordingly he has not felt this in offering, or given expression to it in the nature of his offering. Yet, the Lord does not immediately reject him, but with longsuffering patience directs his attention to this, that it may be amended. And on making such amendment, he holds out to him the clear and certain hope of acceptance still. But he does more than this. As Cain seems to have been of a particularly hard and unheedful disposition, he completes his expostulation, and deepens its awful solemnity, by stating the other alternative, both in its condition and consequence.

And if thou do not well, at the door is sin lying. – Sin past, in its unrequited and unacknowledged guilt; sin present, in its dark and stubborn passion and despair; but, above all, sin future, as the growing habit of a soul that persists in an evil temper, and therefore must add iniquity unto iniquity, is awaiting thee at the door, as a crouching slave the bidding of his master. As one lie borrows an endless train of others to keep up a vain appearance of consistency, so one sin if not repented of and forsaken involves the dire necessity of plunging deeper and deeper into the gulf of depravity and retribution. This dread warning to Cain, expressed in the mildest and plainest terms, is a standing lesson written for the learning of all mankind. Let him who is in the wrong retract at once, and return to God with humble acknowledgment of his own guilt, and unreserved submission to the mercy of his Maker; for to him who perseveres in sin there can be no hope or help. Another sentence is added to give intensity to the warning.

And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. – This sentence has all the pithiness and familiarity of a proverb. It has been employed before, to describe part of the tribulation the woman brought upon herself by disobedience, namely, the forced subjection of her will to that of her husband in the fallen state of humanity Gen 3:16. It is accordingly expressive of the condition of a slave under the hard bondage and arbitrary caprice of a master and a tyrant. Cain is evidently the master. The question is, Who is the slave? To whom do the pronouns his and him refer? Manifestly, either to sin or to Habel. If to sin, then the meaning of the sentence is, the desire, the entire submission and service of sin will be yielded to thee, and thou wilt in fact make thyself master of it. Thy case will be no longer a heedless ignorance, and consequent dereliction of duty, but a willful overmastering of all that comes by sin, and an unavoidable going on from sin to sin, from inward to outward sin, or, in specific terms, from wrath to murder, and from disappointment to defiance, and so from unrighteousness to ungodliness. This is an awful picture of his fatal end, if he do not instantly retreat. But it is necessary to deal plainly with this dogged, vindictive spirit, if by any means he may be brought to a right mind.

If the pronouns are referred to Habel, the meaning will come to much the same thing. The desire, the forced compliance, of thy brother will be yielded unto thee, and thou wilt rule over him with a rigor and a violence that will terminate in his murder. In violating the image of God by shedding the blood of thy brother, thou wilt be defying thy Maker, and fiercely rushing on to thy own perdition. Thus, in either case, the dark doom of sin unforsaken and unremitted looms fearfully in the distance.

The general reference to sin, however, seems to be the milder and more soothing form of expostulation. The special reference to Habel might only exasperate. It appears, moreover, to be far-fetched, as there is no allusion to his brother in the previous part of the address. The boldness of the figure by which Cain is represented as making himself master of sin, when he with reckless hand grasps at all that comes by sin, is not unfamiliar to Scripture. Thus, the doer of wickedness is described as the master of it Ecc 8:8. On these grounds we prefer the reference to sin, and the interpretation founded on it.

There are two other expositions of this difficult sentence which deserve to be noticed. First. And as to thy brother, unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him with all the right of the first born. But (1) the reference to his brother is remote; (2) the rights of primogeniture are perhaps not yet established; (3) the words do not express a right, but an exercise of might against right arising in a fallen state Gen 3:16; (4) the Judge of all the earth is not accustomed to guarantee the prerogatives of birth to one who is in positive rebellion against him, but, on the other hand, he withdraws them from the unworthy to confer them on whom he will. For these reasons we conceive this exposition is to be rejected. Second. And unto thee shall be sins desire; but thou shalt overcome it. But (1) the parallelism between the two members of the sentence is here neglected; (2) a different meaning is assigned to the words here and in Gen 3:16,, (3) the connection between the sentence thus explained and what goes before is not clear; (4) the lesson taught is not obvious; and (5) the assurance given is not fulfilled. On these grounds we cannot adopt this explanation.

The above address of the Lord to Cain, expressed here perhaps only in its substance, is fraught with the most powerful motives that can bear on the mind of man. It holds out acceptance to the wrong-doer, if he will come with a broken heart and a corresponding expression of repentance before God, in the full faith that he can and will secure the ends of justice so that he can have mercy on the penitent. At the same time it points out, with all clearness and faithfulness to a soul yet unpractised in the depths of iniquity, the insidious nature of sin, the proneness of a selfish heart to sin with a high hand, the tendency of one sinful temper, if persisted in, to engender a growing habit of aggravated crime which ends in the everlasting destruction of the soul. Nothing more than this can be done by argument or reason for the warning of a wrong-doer. From the mouth of the Almighty these words must have come with all the evidence and force they were capable of receiving.

Gen 4:8

And Cain talked with Abel his brother. – Cain did not act on the divine counsel. He did not amend his offering to God, either in point of internal feeling or external form. Though one speak to him from heaven he will not hear. He conversed with Habel his brother. The topic is not stated. The Septuagint supplies the words, Let us go into the field. If in walking side by side with his brother he touched upon the divine communication, the conference did not lead to any better results. If the divine expostulation failed, much more the human. Perhaps it only increased his irritation. When they were in the field, and therefore out of view, he rose up against his brother and killed him. The deed is done that cannot be recalled. The motives to it were various. Selfishness, wounded pride, jealousy, and a guilty conscience were all at work 1Jo 3:12. Here, then, is sin following upon sin, proving the truth of the warning given in the merciful forbearance of God.

Gen 4:9

Where is Habel thy brother? – The interrogatory here reminds us of the question put to the hiding Adam, Where art thou? It is calculated to strike the conscience. The reply is different from that of Adam. The sin has now advanced from hasty, incautious yielding to the tempter, to reiterated and deliberate disobedience. Such a sinner must take different ground. Cain, therefore, attempts to parry the question, apparently on the vain supposition that no eye, not even that of the All-seeing, was present to witness the deed. I know not. In the madness of his confusion he goes further. He disputes the right of the Almighty to make the demand. Am I my brothers keeper? There is, as usual, an atom of truth mingled with the amazing falsehood of this surly response. No man is the absolute keeper of his brother, so as to be responsible for his safety when he is not present. This is what Cain means to insinuate. But every man is his brothers keeper so far that he is not himself to lay the hand of violence on him, nor suffer another to do so if he can hinder it. This sort of keeping the Almighty has a right to demand of every one – the first part of it on the ground of mere justice, the second on that of love. But Cains reply betrays a desperate resort to falsehood, a total estrangement of feeling, a quenching of brotherly love, a predominence of that selfishness which freezes affection and kindles hatred. This is the way of Cain Jud 1:11.

Gen 4:10

What hast thou done? – The Lord now charges him with his guilt: The voice of thy brothers blood crieth unto me from the soil. In the providence of God blood has a voice crying to him to which he cannot but give heed. It is vain, then, to attempt concealment.

Gen 4:11-12

The curse (Gen 9:25, note) which now fell on Cain was in some sense retributive, as it sprang from the soil which had received his brothers blood. The particulars of it are the withdrawal of the full strength or fruitfulness of the soil from him, and the degradation from the state of a settled dweller in the presence of God to that of a vagabond in the earth. He was to be banished to a less productive part of the earth, removed from the presence of God and the society of his father and mother, and abandoned to a life of wandering and uncertainty. The sentence of death had been already pronounced upon man.

Gen 4:13-14

My iniquity is more than I can bear. – To bear iniquity is in Hebrew phrase to undergo the punishment of it. And the prospect of this, as it presents itself to the eyes of Cain, is so appalling that he shrinks from it as intolerable. To be driven from the face of the soil, inhabited by the other surviving members of the human family, to an unknown and therefore terrible region; to be hidden from the face of God, who manifested himself still to the race of Adam in their present abode; to be a vagabond and a fugitive in the earth, far away from the land of his birth; and to be liable to be slain in just revenge by anyone who should find him – such is the hard fate he sees before him. It is dark enough in itself, and no doubt darker still in the exaggeration which an accusing conscience conjures up to his imagination. The phrase, every one finding me, implies that the family of Adam had now become numerous. Not only sons and daughters, but their children and grandchildren may have been growing up when Cain was sent into exile. But in his present terror even an excited fancy suggested an enemy at every turn.

Gen 4:15

The reply of the Lord is suited to quell the troubled breast of Cain. Therefore. Because thy fears of what thou deservest go beyond what it is my purpose to permit, I give thee assurance of freedom from personal violence. To be avenged seven-fold is to be avenged fully. Cain will no doubt receive even-handed justice from the Almighty. The assurance given to Cain is a sign, the nature of which is not further specified.

This passage unfolds to us a mode of dealing with the first murderer which is at first sight somewhat difficult to be understood. But we are to bear in mind that the sentence of death had been already pronounced upon man, and therefore stood over Adam and all his posterity, Cain among the rest. To pronounce the same sentence therefore upon him for a new crime, would have been weak and unmeaning. Besides, the great crime of crimes was disobedience to the divine will; and any particular form of crime added to that was comparatively unimportant. Wrong done to a creature, even of the deepest dye, was not to be compared in point of guilt with wrong done to the Creator. The grave element in the criminality of every social wrong is its practical disregard of the authority of the Most High. Moreover, every other sin to the end of time is but the development of that first act of disobedience to the mandate of heaven by which man fell; and accordingly every penalty is summed up in that death which is the judicial consequence of the first act of rebellion against heaven.

We are also to bear in mind that God still held the sword of justice in his own immediate hands, and had not delegated his authority to any human tribunal. No man was therefore clothed with any right from heaven to call Cain to account for the crime he had committed. To fall upon him with the high hand in a willful act of private revenge, would be taking the law into ones own hands, and therefore a misdemeanor against the majesty of heaven, which the Judge of all could not allow to pass unpunished. It is plain that no man has an inherent right to inflict the sanction of a broken law on the transgressor. This right originally belongs to the Creator, and derivatively only to those whom he has intrusted with the dispensation of civil government according to established laws.

Cains offences were great and aggravated. But let us not exaggerate them. He was first of all defective in the character of his faith and the form of his sacrifice. His carnal mind came out still more in the wrath and vexation he felt when his defective offering was not accepted. Though the Almighty condescends now to plead with him and warn him against persisting in impenitent silence and discontent, lest he should thereby only become more deeply involved in sin, does not retreat, but, on the contrary, proceeds to slay his brother, in a fit of jealousy; and, lastly, he rudely and falsely denies all knowledge of him, and all obligation to be his protector. Notwithstanding all this, it is still to be remembered that the sentence of death from heaven already hung over him. This was in the merciful order of things comparatively slow of execution in its full extent, but at the same time absolutely certain in the end. The aggravation of the first crime of man by the sins of self-will, sullenness, envy, fratricide, and defiant falsehood, was but the natural fruit of that beginning of disobedience. It is accordingly visited by additional tokens of the divine displeasure, which manifest themselves in this life, and are mercifully calculated to warn Cain still further to repent.

Cains guilt seems now to have been brought home in some measure to his conscience; and he not only stands aghast at the sentence of banishment from the divine presence, but instinctively trembles, lest, upon the principle of retributive justice, whoever meets him may smite him to the death, as he had done his brother. The longsuffering of God, however, interferes to prevent such a catastrophe, and even takes steps to relieve the trembling culprit from the apprehension of a violent death. This leads us to understand that God, having formed a purpose of mercy toward the human family, was sedulously bent upon exercising it even toward the murderer of a brother. Hence, he does not punish his repeated crimes by immediate death, which would have defeated his design of giving him a long day of grace and opportunity to reflect, repent, return to God, and even yet offer in faith a typical atonement by blood for his sin. Thus, the prohibition to slay him is sanctioned by a seven-fold, that is, an ample and complete vengeance, and a sign of protection mercifully vouchsafed to him. The whole dealing of the Almighty was calculated to have a softening, conscience-awakening, and hope-inspiring effect on the murderers heart.

Gen 4:16

The presence of the Lord – seems to have been at the entrance of the garden where the cherubim were stationed. There, probably, the children of men still lingered in faith and hope before the Lord, whom they still regarded as their Maker and merciful Saviour. They acknowledged his undeserved goodness in the form of sacrifice. The retreat of Cain from the scene of parental affection, of home associations, and of divine manifestation, must have been accompanied with many a deep, unuttered pang of regret and remorse. But he has deeply and repeatedly transgressed, and he must bear the consequence. Such is sin. Many a similar deed of cruelty and bloodshed might the sacred writer have recorded in the later history of man. But it is the manner of Scripture to note the first example, and then to pass over in silence its subsequent repetitions, unless when a particular transaction has an important bearing on the ways of God with man.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Gen 4:1-16

Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground

The story of Cain and Abel

I.

RELIGION ACTUATED MEN IN THE VERY EARLIEST TIMES.

II. THE MERE NATURAL RELIGION IS ESSENTIALLY DEFECTIVE.

1. In its offerings.

2. In the power which it exercises over the passions.

3. In its sympathy (Gen 4:9).

III. SPIRITUAL RELIGION ALONE COMMENDS A MAN TO GOD. This is illustrated in the life of Abel.

1. He possessed faith.

2. He offered an acceptable sacrifice to God.

3. Spiritual religion has a favourable influence on character.

The quality of Abels piety, its depth and spirituality, cost him his life, and made him at the same time the first martyr for true religion. (D. Rhys Jenkins.)

The two sacrifices

I. The first question to be asked is this: WHAT DID CAIN AND ABEL KNOW ABOUT SACRIFICE? Although we should certainly have expected Moses to inform us plainly if there had been a direct ordinance to Adam or his sons concerning the offering of fruits or animals, we have no right to expect that he should say more than he has said to make us understand that they received a much more deep and awful kind of communication. If he has laid it down that man is made in the image of God, if he has illustrated that principle after the Fall by showing how God met Adam in the garden in the cool of the day and awakened him to a sense of his disobedience, we do not want any further assurance that the children he begat would be born and grow up under the same law.

II. It has been asked again, WAS NOT ABEL RIGHT IN PRESENTING THE ANIMAL AND CAIN WRONG IN PRESENTING THE FRUITS OF THE EARTH? I must apply the same rule as before. We are not told this; we may not put a notion of ours into the text. Our Lord revealed Divine analogies in the sower and the seed, as well as in the shepherd and the sheep. It cannot be that he who in dependence and submission offers Him of the fruits of the ground, which it is his calling to rear, is therefore rejected, or will not be taught a deeper love by other means if at present he lacks it.

III. THE SIN OF CAIN–a sin of which we have all been guilty–WAS THAT HE SUPPOSED GOD TO BE AN ARBITRARY BEING, WHOM HE BY HIS SACRIFICE WAS TO CONCILIATE. The worth of Abels offering arose from this: that he was weak, and that he cast himself upon One whom he knew to be strong; that he had the sense of death, and that he turned to One whence life must come; that he had the sense of wrong, and that he fled to One who must be right. His sacrifice was the mute expression of this helplessness, dependence, confidence. From this we see–

1. That sacrifice has its ground in something deeper than legal enactments.

2. That sacrifice infers more than the giving up of a thing.

3. That sacrifice has something to do with sin, something to do with thanksgiving.

4. That sacrifice becomes evil and immoral when the offerer attaches any value to his own act and does not attribute the whole worth of it to God. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)

Lessons from the history of Cain

From the story of Cain we gather the following thoughts–

I. EVES DISAPPOINTMENT AT THE BIRTH OF CAIN SHOULD BE A WARNING TO ALL MOTHERS. Overestimate of children may be traced sometimes to extreme love for them; it may also arise on the part of parents from an overweening estimate of themselves.

II. We see next in the history of Cain WHAT A FEARFUL SIN THAT OF MURDER IS. The real evil of murder (apart from its theftuous character) lies in the principles and feelings from which it springs, and in its recklessness as to the consequences, especially the future and everlasting consequences, of the act. The red flower of murder is comparatively rare, but its seeds are around us on all sides.

III. NO ARGUMENT CAN BE DEDUCED FROM THE HISTORY OF CAIN IN FAVOUR OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS. We object to such punishments–

1. Because they, like murder, are opposed to the spirit of forgiveness manifested in the gospel of Christ.

2. Because, like murder, they ruthlessly disregard consequences. (G. Gilfillan.)

Cain and Abel

I. CAIN AND ABEL AT THE ALTAR.

II. CAIN AND THE LORD AT THE ALTAR.

III. CAIN AND ABEL IN THE FIELD.

IV. CAIN WITH GOD IN THE FIELD. Conclusion:

1. The secret of right living is faith in God. The acceptable sacrifice is the life of faith.

2. That which makes sacrifice acceptable is faith. A formal sacrifice is a vain thing. It is Cains offering.

3. Faith prepares men to die well. Be ready to die in faith, for the faith. How much may hinge upon it. Have you religious convictions for which you are ready to lay down your life? When Martin Luther went to his historic trial in the Hall of the Diet at Worms, the people crowded the windows and housetops of the city to see him pass. They knew his danger. But they knew of a higher danger, theirs and his, of the cause of pure religion on the earth. Their concern for him was: Will he stand firm for us? Will he stand for the faith to the death? In solemn words, says Carlyle, they cried out to him not to recant. Whosoever denieth Me before men, thus they cried to him as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Luther stood for the human race. Would his faith fail? Then the faith of the people would fail. Would his stand? Then theirs would stand, the Reformation would triumph. It was not so important that he should live, as that he should stand in unconquerable faith. How much depended upon one man! How much depended on the faith of Abel! Where should Eve find hope again, with Cain a murderer and Abel dead? Where Seth an example, and Enoch and Noah, and the antediluvian saints? Where Abraham and the patriarchs an inspiration? Abels faith shone out as a beacon light through all those early centuries. The heroes of faith all lived in loyalty. But how did they die? These all died in the faith. Thank God for that sentence! Covet a faith to live by. But be sure of the faith of Abel to die by. (G. R. Leavitt.)

Naming of children

She called her eldest Cain, which signifieth a possession, and her second son when she had also borne him, Abel, which signifieth vain or unprofitable. By which diversity of names evidently appeareth a diversity of affection in the namers, and so teacheth us two things. First, the preposterous love that is in many parents, esteeming most oftentimes of those children that are worst, and least of them that deserve better. Their Cains be accounted jewels and wealth, but their Abels unprofitable, needless, and naught. Secondly, it teacheth the lot of the godly in this world many times, even from their very cradle, to be had in less regard than the wicked are. So was here Abel, so was Jacob of his father, so was David and many more. Such and so crooked are mens judgments often, but the Lords is ever straight, and let that be our comfort: He preferreth Abel before Cain, whatsoever his parents think, He loveth Jacob better than Esau, and He chooseth little David before his tall brethren: He seeth my heart, and goeth thereafter when men regard shows and are deceived. Care away then, if the heart be sound, God esteemeth me, and let man choose. (Bishop Babington.)

Antiquity of husbandry

Their trade of life and bringing up we see, the one a keeper of sheep, the other a tiller of the ground, both holy callings allowed of God. Idleness hated then from the beginning, both of the godly and such as had but civil honesty, or the use of human reason. The antiquity of husbandry herein also appeareth, to the great praise of it, and due encouragement unto it. But alas our days! many things hath time invented since, or rather the devil in time hatched, of far less credit, and yet more use with wicked men, a nimble hand with a pair of cards, or false dice, is a way now to live by, and Jack must be a gentleman, say nay who shall. Tilling of the ground is too base for farmers sons, and we must be finer. But take heed we be not so fine in this world, that God knows us not in the world to come, but say unto us, I made thee a husbandman, who made thee a gentleman? I made thee a tiller of the ground, a trade of life most ancient and honest, who hath caused thee to forsake thy calling wherein I placed thee? Surely thou art not he that I made thee, and therefore I know thee not, depart from Me, thou wicked one, into everlasting fire. (Bishop Babington.)

Two kinds of offerings

They both offer, but the one thinketh anything good enough, and the other in the zeal of his soul and fulness of his Lord thinketh nothing good enough. He bringeth his gilt, and of the fattest, that is, of the best he hath, and wisheth it were ten thousand times better. This heat of affection towards God let us all mark and ever think of: it uncaseth such as in these days think any service enough for God, half, a quarter of an hour in a week, etc. (Bishop Babington.)

The first age of the conflict

In the Eden prophecy (Gen 3:15) there was shadowed forth a great conflict between good and evil that should last through coming ages. Of that long conflict this is the first age. It covers the whole time of antediluvian history. It is important for us to keep in our minds the length of the time, sixteen hundred years and more–over sixteen centuries at the very lowest computation. So, of course, we cannot expect anything in the shape of a continuous history. A few chapters cover the whole ground; and while each chapter is undoubtedly historical, the whole is not, properly speaking, history. It is not continuous, but fragmentary. First we have the story of Cain and Abel. We find here a picture, I may say, exhibiting the nature of the conflict that there is to be between good and evil. We see there the early development of evil in its antagonism with good. First, what is the great lesson of Cains history? Is it not the fearful nature of sin? On the other hand, what is the great lesson of Abels history? He comes before us, apparently, as an innocent man. There is nothing said against him at all events. Yet he is required to bring an offering. He is accepted, apparently, not on the simple ground of his goodness, but in connection with the offering that he brings. It is the offering of the firstlings of his flock. Here we have the first record of sacrifice. Next, what is the difference between Cain and Abel? Some are inclined to think it lay entirely in the offering: not in the men at all; but if you look at the narrative you will find there was a difference in the men. Unto Cain and his offering the Lord had not respect; but the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering. Abel and his offering, Cain and his offering. But what was the difference in the men? The great difference in the men, as we are taught in the Epistle of the Hebrews, was faith. By faith Abel offered unto God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. So whatever difference there may have been in the men in other respects (and there no doubt was very much), the fundamental contrast between them was, that Abel had faith, while Cain had not. (J. M. Gibson.)

Domestic life

I. THAT IT IS DESIGNED FOR THE NUMERICAL INCREASE OF HUMANITY.

1. The position of Adam and Eve prior to the birth of their two sons was unique. Alone in the great world.

2. Their position was interesting. A great crisis in their lives. Fallen, yet encircled by Divine mercy.

II. THAT IT SHOULD BE CAREFUL AS TO THE NOMENCLATURE OF ITS CHILDREN.

1. Child nomenclature should be appropriate. Cain signifies possession. A moral possession. The gift of God.

2. Child nomenclature should be instructive. Abel signifies vanity. Our first parents verdict on life, gathering up the history of their past and the sorrows of their present condition.

3. Child nomenclature should be considerate. In harmony with good taste and refined judgment. Pictures of goodness and patterns of truth.

III. THAT IT SHOULD JUDICIOUSLY BRING UP CHILDREN TO SOME HONEST AND HELPFUL EMPLOYMENTS.

1. These two brothers had a daily calling.

2. A distinctive calling.

3. A healthful calling.

4. A calling favourable to the development of intellectual thought.

IV. THAT IT SHOULD NOT BE UNMINDFUL OF ITS RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS (Gen 4:3-4).

1. These offerings are rendered obligatory by the mercies of the past.

2. These offerings should be the natural and unselfish outcome of our commercial prosperity.

3. These offerings ought to embody the true worship of the soul.

LESSONS:

1. That domestic life is sacred as the ordination of God.

2. That children are the gift of God, and are often prophets of the future.

3. That working and giving are the devotion of family life. (J. S.Exell, M. A.)

The true and false worshipper of God

I. THAT BOTH THE TRUE AND THE FALSE AMONGST MEN ARE APPARENTLY WORSHIPPERS OF GOD. The false come to worship God–

1. Because it is the custom of the land so to do.

2. Because men feel that they must pay some regard to social propriety and conscience.

3. Because men feel that their souls are drawn out to God in ardent longings and grateful praises. These are the true worshippers of God. Followers of Abel.

II. THAT BOTH THE TRUE AND THE FALSE AMONGST MEN PRESENT THEIR MATERIAL OFFERINGS TO GOD.

1. The trade of each brother suggested his offering.

(1) Some take their offerings for parade.

(2) They take their offerings to enhance their trade.

(3) They take their offerings to increase their social influence.

(4) They take their offerings with a humble desire to glorify God.

III. THAT BOTH THE TRUE AND THE FALSE AMONGST MEN ABE OBSERVED AND ESTIMATED BY GOD IN THEIR WORSHIP AND OFFERINGS.

1. The worship and offerings of the one are accepted. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering. And why?

(1) Because it was well and carefully selected. Men should select carefully the offerings they give to God.

(2) Because it was the best he could command. He brought the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.

(3) Because it was appropriate. His sacrifice preached the gospel, foreshadowed the Cross.

(4) Because it was offered in a right spirit. This makes the great point of difference between the two offerings. The grandest offering given in a wrong spirit will not be accepted by God, whereas the meanest offering given in lowly spirit will be welcome to Him. Thus the younger brother was the best. He was better than his name.

2. The worship and offering of the other was rejected. But unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect. The men who make their religious offerings a parade, who regard this worship as a form, are not welcomed by God.

IV. THAT THE TRUE, IN THE DIVINE RECEPTION OF THEIR WORSHIP AND OFFERINGS, ARE OFTEN ENVIED BY THE FALSE.

1. This envy is wrathful. Why art thou wroth?

2. This envy is apparent. Why is thy countenance fallen?

3. This envy is unreasonable. If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?

4. This envy is murderous. Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)

Cain and Abel

I. THE PARITY OR EQUALITY OF CAIN AND ABEL IS FOUR FOLD.

1. In their original, as both born of the same parents.

2. In their relation, they were brothers.

3. In their secular condition: both had honest employs, and not only lawful, but laudable particular callings.

4. In their religious concerns: both were worshippers of God, both brought sacrifices to God.

(1) Their particular callings (Gen 4:2).

(a) That parents ought not to bring up their children in idleness, but in some honest calling wherein they may both serve themselves and their generation, according to the will of God (Act 13:36).

(b) That every man must have his trade and calling in the world, as those two sons of Adam had. Though their father was lord of the world, yet he brought up both his sons in laborious callings.

(c) It is a sin for any man to live without a calling. One that lives in idleness (without an honest calling) is but an unprofitable burden of the earth, and seems to be born for no other end save to spend the fruits of the world as a useless spendthrift. Why Moses recordeth this service done to God (by way of sacrifice) in all its circumstances by those two sons of Adam, Cain and Abel?

1. To demonstrate the antiquity of religion. That it is no new devised fable, but is as ancient as the world. Hence may be inferred–

(1) The grossness of atheism.

(2) The absurdity of irreligion.

2. The account why Moses records this history, is to show the mixture of religion, that among men who profess and practise religion there ever hath been a mixture thereof.

3. Moses records this history to declare the disagreements and contentions that do arise about religion in the world.

(1) That quarrels about religion are the greatest quarrels in the world. The dissentions about religion are the most irreconcilable dissentions.

(2) This affordeth us the clear and true character of the true religion from the false. Outrage and cruelty is the black brand wherewith Gods Word stigmatizeth the false and formal religion, and here it begins, showing how Cain did most maliciously oppose Abel, but Abel offered no affront at all to Cain, for the badge and cognizance of true religion is meekness and love. The second inquiry is, concerning the service of those two sons of Adam, what Moses doth record of it. This their service and success thereof, are the two principal parts of this sacred record touching Cain and Abel. Now, concerning the SERVICE two particulars are very remarkable.

1. Of the circumstances of it, which are four.

(1) The persons who they were.

(2) The second circumstance is, the time when they did so. The Scripture telleth us it came to pass in process of time (Gen 4:2).

2. What motive they had at this time to sacrifice to God; tis probable they did so either–

(1) By an express command of God spoken, but not written; otherwise their service had been will worship; so Abels sacrifice had been rejected of God as well as Cains; but more of this after. Or–

(2) They did it by their fathers example, whom God taught so to do, and who might teach his sons to do the like; otherwise, how could they all have coats of skins to clothe them, if they had not the skins of sacrificed beasts for that end? Or–

(3) They might do so by the dictates of their own natural reason. Hence the very instinct of nature might suggest to them, that it was but a rational service to offer up to their Creator something of those creatures that God had graciously given them, as a due acknowledgment of their homage to Him who is Lord of all (Act 10:36).

Hence may be inferred–

1. The mischief on mankind by the Fall, to wit, mans dulness to learn anything that is good.

2. The misery of those persons who want instruction in families and assemblies! How blind and brutish must all such be, and how unskilful at this celestial trade!

3. Oh, what a blessing is the ministry to men, which teacheth them this trading and trafficking with heaven, that cannot be learnt all at once, but by degrees!

The (3) circumstance is the place where, which the Scripture of truth mentions not.

The (4) circumstance is the manner how, which leads me to the second particular, to wit, the substance of their service, wherein this circumstance is spoke to, the SUCCESS OF THEIR SERVICE.

The (5) circumstance is the matter what, to be spoke unto, in the substance. Now, as to the substance of it, look upon it in common, and both brothers concerned together therein. So there is still a parity and congruity as to the substance of it.

For–

1. Their service was equally personal, they both made their personal address to God, and to His altar of oblation; they did not serve God by a proxy. They did not transmit this their duty to their father Adam. Hence, observe, no man stands exempted from his personal attendance on Gods service, but everyone owes a homage which he must pay in his own person. This is proved both by Scripture and reason.

(1) By Scripture, every man under the law (whether Israelite or proselyte) was to appear personally and offer to the Lord for himself at the door of the tabernacle, and whoever did not so, was to be cut off from his people Lev 17:3-4). And in their more public feasts, God expressly enjoined them, that three times in a year all their males shall appear before the Lord in a place which He shall choose, and none shall appear before the Lord empty, every man shall give according to the gift of his hand Deu 16:16-17).

The (1) reason is, everyone is personally Gods creature, so the bond of creation obligeth all to pay their personal respects to their Creator. No man is his own, but Gods; therefore every man must glorify God with their own bodies and spirits (1Co 6:19-20).

The (2) reason is, everyone is a sinner, and sins against God in their own persons; therefore everyone must serve God in their own persons, and sue to Him for pardon and reconciliation. No man can redeem his brother Psa 49:7).

The (3) reason, everyone hath personal dependency on God for a supply both of their temporal and spiritual wants. Now, tis but reasonable service Rom 12:1), that all persons should carry their own pitchers to this fountain of life, and should turn the cock both of grace and mercy for their own supply.

The (4) reason is, every man is already a great debtor to God (his Benefactor); God is behindhand with none, but much beforehand with all, and therefore as we all have received mercy from God in our own proper persons, so we should return duty to God in our own proper persons also.

2. As the service of those two brothers was equally personal, so it was equally warrantable and lawful service. The second inference is, to look for Divine warrant for every part of Divine worship. That primitive simplicity which is in Christ and in His gospel worship, ought not to be corrupted 2Co 11:3). All modes and rites of worship which have not Christs stamp upon them, are no better than will worship. How exact was God in tabernacle worship (Exo 39:43), and will He not be so in gospel worship? The third propriety, in the substance of this service is, it was also costly worship; there was cost in both their sacrifices, they put not God off with empty compliments, and verbal acknowledgments of superficial and perfunctory shows. All men can willingly give God the cap and the knee, yea and the lip too, but when it comes to cost, then they shuffle off His service: men naturally love a cheap religion. The fourth property of their service is, there was unity in their worship. Cain did not build one altar, and Abel another, but one served both; they both offered in one place, and at one time. Hence, observe, it makes much for the honour of religious worship, when it is performed in the spirit of unity. The first inference is–oh, let it not be told in Gath, nor published in Askelon–that there is altar against altar, and prayer against prayer, amongst professors in our day. The apostle presseth to unity with many arguments Eph 4:3-4, etc.). The second inference is, Yet unity without verity is not unity, but conspiracy. There is no true concord but in truth. The third inference is, that narrow principles undo unity. Tile fifth property, twas equally a solemn service by way of sacrifice; both these sons paid their homage to their Maker, the one in a sheaf, and the other in a sheep.

Hence observe, holy sacrifices and services have been tendered and rendered up to the great God in all ages of the world by the Church of God.

1. As the sacrifice was a real acknowledgment of Gods sovereignty over the sacrificer (Isa 16:1).

2. As it was a sad remembrancer of the sacrificers sin, to wit, that he deserved to be burnt (as his burnt offering was) even in everlasting burnings.

3. As it was a solemn protestation of their faith in Christ, whom all their sacrifices did prefigure, as He was the Lamb slain from the beginning of the Rev 13:18).

4. As it was also an offering of thankfulness; those sacrifices were eucharistical as well as propitiatory, thank offerings as well as sin offerings. What shall I render? saith David (Psa 116:12).

(1) The gospel sacrifice of repentance, wherein the penitent soul offers itself up on Gods altar.

The (2) gospel sacrifice is praying for what we want, and praising for what we have.

The (3) gospel sacrifice (in a word) is all the good works both of piety and charity. Now, the success of it shows a foul disparity; the one is accepted, the other is rejected. God had respect to Abel, and to his offering, but, etc. Gen 4:4-5). This disparity is demonstrated by three remarkable passages or particulars.

1. Of the order inverted; until now, it was Cain and Abel, the eldest is named first, the order of nature is observed. Hence observe–

(1) Though amongst many worshippers of God in public worship man can discern no difference, but one is as good as another in both attendance and attention, yet God can, both in intention and retention. All fit as Gods people (Eze 33:31). And no mortal eye can distinguish which is a Cain and which is an Abel, yea, a Cain may be the fore-horse in the team, and be most forward as to personal attendance and attention of body. The fifth inference is, this shows us whom we ought to please in all our works or worship. It must not be man, but God, who knoweth the heart (JohnActs 1:24). The second particular is the ground of that inversion, or the reasons of this disparity; the causes why the one was accepted, and the other rejected. There is a two-fold difference here very remarkable.

1. In regard to their persons; and that is also two fold.

(1) God put or set the difference. And–

(2) He saw the difference betwixt those two persons; unto Abel God had respect, but unto Cain He had not (Gen 4:4-5). It is the free grace of God that is the main fundamental cause of difference, preferring Abel before Cain.

2. As God putteth the difference, so He beholdeth the difference betwixt good and bad, and here between Cain and Abel.

3. It is the piety or impiety of mens persons that do commend or discommend their actions and services to God. It is not the work that so much commends or discommends the man, but the man the work. As is the cause so is the effect, and the better that the cause is, the better must the effect be. These are maxims in philosophy, which hold true in divinity also. A good man worketh good actions, and the better the man is, the better are his actions. As the temple is said to sanctify the gold, and not the gold the temple (Mat 23:17), so the person gives acceptance to, and sanctifies the action, not the action the person. The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is His delight Pro 15:8).

Both do offer, the one a sheaf, and the other a sheep; yet the one is accepted, the other rejected from a threefold difference in the action.

I. In regard of the matter of their sacrifice, Abel made choice of the best he had to present unto God. Hence observe, it cannot consist with a gracious heart to shuffle off the great God with slight services. Alas! men do but trifle with God, when they think anything will be sufficient to satisfy Him.

1. Such as spend many hours in vanity, yet cannot spare one hour for God and the good of their souls.

2. Such as are profuse in villainy upon their lusts, yet can find nothing to bestow in pious and charitable uses upon the Lord.

3. Such as swatter away all their youth time (while the bones are full of marrow and veins full of blood, both as ponderous sheaves) in ways of both vanity and villainy, and think to put off God with the poor pined sheaf of their old age, as if the great God would be put off with the devils leavings. The second difference in their action was in respect of their devotion and affections; Abel offered in sincerity, but Cain in hypocrisy. The third and principal difference that distinguished Cain and Abels action was faith, which is indeed the prime cause of all the other differences. Abel offered in faith, but Cain did not so (Heb 11:4). It was faith that dominated Abel a righteous man, and Cain was a wicked man, because he wanted faith.

How comes faith to put this difference? There is a two-fold faith.

1. The faith upon Gods precept. Abel offered sacrifice, not so much because Adam, but because God commanded. This is called the obedience of faith (Rom 16:26).

2. There is the faith upon Gods promise. Thus Abel did not only lay a slain sacrifice upon the altar, but he put faith under it. He considered Christ to be the Lamb slain front the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8). The inference hence flowing is, it is Christ, and Christ alone, that gives to all our services acceptance with God. It is faith in Christ that pleaseth God Heb 11:16).

Now, the third and last particular is the success (which is the second general, as service was the first), or acceptance, which, as to Abel, is evident in three things.

1. The Divine allowance or approbation of Abel. He being a righteous man Mat 23:35). Both his person and oblation (through Divine grace) was–

(1) Approvable; hence the first observation is, it is a special vouchsafement and condescension in God to look on, and allow of the poor services of man.

(2) As God gave allowance and approbation of Abels sacrifice, so He had delight and complacency in it. This also is signified by the word respect. But

2. Unto Cain and his offering God had not respect. To demonstrate the equity of God in His dealing with wicked men. His ways are always equal with us (Eze 18:25; Eze 33:17). As Cain respected not God in his sacrifice, so God respected not him nor his sacrifice.

Inferences hence are–

1. If the sweet success of our services be Gods acceptance, then, oh, what an holy carefulness should we all have about our services and duties.

2. Oh, what holy cheerfulness should we have to work all our works in Joh 3:21), that they may be accepted of Him, and respected by Him.

3. Oh, what an holy inquisitiveness should we all have, whether God accept or reject our duties? Our acceptance may be known by these characters. Hath God inflamed our sacrifice as He did Abels, some warm impressions of Gods Spirit upon our hearts, some Divine touch of a live coal from Gods altar? (Isa 6:6). The second sign or character of acceptance isthe joy of duty; injections of joy, as well as inspirations of heat, are sweet demonstrations of acceptance; blessed are they that hear the joyful sound of God, they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance Psa 89:15). A third sign is, when God gives in any supply of that grace which is sued for, either strengthening it, or weakening sin that wars against it.

II. As there is no life in a wicked mans duty, so there is no warmth in it; he puts off God with cold dishes, such as God loves not. As there is no heart, so there is no heat in any of his services; it is not a sacrifice made by fire unto the Lord, so no sweet savour to Him (Lev 1:13; Lev 1:17; Lev 2:2; Lev 2:9-10, etc.).

III. A wicked man (as Cain here) regardeth iniquity in his heart, therefore God regardeth not his prayer (Psa 66:18). This is the dead fly that spoils never so sweet ointment (Ecc 9:1). (C. Ness.)

Formal worship an immense curse

I. IT INVOLVES OFFENCE TO GOD. He abhors the sacrifice where not the heart is found.

II. IT INVOLVES CRUELTY TO MAN. From real, spiritual worship it would be impossible for a man to pass to persecution and murder, for genuine piety is the root of philanthropy. But the distance between formal worship and murderous passions is not great. Formal worship–

1. Implies bad passions.

2. Strengthens bad passions. Selfishness. Superstition. Pride.

Bigotry. (Homilist.)

Cain and Abel

I. THEIR DIFFERENT WORSHIP.

1. Cains was no more than a mere thank offering, and such, probably, as Adam himself might have offered in a state of innocence: it implied not any confession of guilt, or any application to the Redeemer.

2. Abels offering was a sacrifice presented in faith, not only with respect to the appointment of God, who had ordained sacrifices in representation of that method of redemption by which He would deliver man, but also with dependence on the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, who in the fulness of time by the sacrifice of Himself should take away the sins of the world. Abels offering, therefore, is to be considered as a type of Christ.

II. THEIR DIFFERENT MORAL CHARACTER.

III. THEIR DIFFERENT END. Lessons:

1. Let us examine what is the worship we are offering to God. It is not enough that we are attentive to religious ordinances; but are we, like Abel, worshipping by faith?

2. Let us inquire, Are none among us discovering the temper of Cain? Are there none who, like him, are persecutors of Gods people?

3. Let us bless God that the blood of Jesus Christ speaketh better things than that of Abel (see Heb 12:24). (Essex Remembrancer.)

The first patriarchal form of the new dispensation–the seat, the time, the manner of worship–the contest begun between grace and nature, between faith and unbelief

I. There can be no doubt that THE STATED PLACE OF WORSHIP under the new order of things was the immediate neighbourhood of the garden, eastward, within sight of the cherubim and the flaming sword (Gen 3:24). And it would seem that this primitive holy place was substantially identical with the sanctuary and shrine of the Levitical ritual, and with the heavenly scene which Ezekiel and John saw. It was within the garden, or at its very entrance, and it was distinguished by a visible display of the glory of God, in a bright shining light, or sword of flame–on the one hand, driving away in just displeasure a guilty and rebellious race; but on the other hand, shining with a benignant smile upon the typical emblems or representations of a people redeemed.

II. The brothers, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE TWO GREAT CLASSES into which, in a religious view, the family of man is divided, manifest their difference in this respect, not in the object, nor in the time, but in the spirit of their worship (verses 3, 4). They worship the same God, and under the same revelation of His power and glory. Their seasons of worship also are the same; for it is agreed on all bands that the expression in process of time, or at the end of days, denotes some stated season–either the weekly Sabbath or some other festival. Again, their manner of service was to a large extent the same. They presented offerings to God; and these offerings, being of two kinds, corresponded very remarkably to the two kinds of offerings ordained under the Levitical dispensation, the burnt offerings, which were expiatory, and the meat offerings, which were mainly expressive of duty, gratitude, and devotion (Lev 1:1-17; Lev 2:1-16).

III. The two brothers, then, worshipped God ACCORDING TO THE SAME RITUAL, BUT NOT WITH THE SAME ACCEPTANCE. How the Lord signified His complacency in the one and His rejection of the other does not appear. It may have been by sending fire from heaven to consume Abels offering; as in this way He acknowledged acceptable offerings on different occasions in after times (Lev 9:24; Jdg 6:21; 1Ki 18:38). Why the Lord put such a distinction between them is a more important point, and more easily ascertained. It is unequivocally explained by the Apostle Heb 11:4). Abels sacrifice was more excellent than Cains, because he offered it by faith. Therefore his person was accepted as righteous, and his gifts as well pleasing to the Lord. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)

The religion of nature, and the religion of the gospel

Introduction: Cains religion, in common with many false religions, was one–

1. Which had in it some good.

2. Of expediency.

3. Which lacked faith.

4. Abounding in self-righteousness.

5. That persecuted others.

Abels religion–

1. Embodied all the good that was in the other.

2. Surpassed it, even in its own excellencies–more plenteous sacrifice.

3. Recognized the existence of guilt, and its merited doom.

4. Was actuated by faith.

5. Was approved of by God. Consider, then–

I. NATURAL RELIGION. Look at–

1. The principle upon which it is founded–practical goodness. This principle is intrinsically excellent, is one upon which all men should act; is one to which no one can object.

2. The standard by which it is to be tested–the moral law of creation, love to God and man. In order to do well, the act itself must be perfect; the motive must be good; and the rule must be good.

3. Its reward to its faithful adherents–shalt thou not be accepted? Such a religion will command the approval of God; and will secure immortality for all its votaries. Now measure your conduct by this religion; and are you perfect? Think of sin in its nature, its effects, and its ultimate consequences, and see if you have not sinned. And can natural religion justify you? No; something else must be found, and something else is to be found. Look then at–

II. REVEALED RELIGION. Notice–

1. That revealed religion assumes that men are guilty. It also recognizes their liability to punishment.

2. That it has provided a sin offering–a substitution of person, of sufferings.

1. The acceptance of this is accompanied with Divine evidence.

2. It is efficient for all purposes for which it is presented.

3. Having accepted it, the sinner is treated as though he himself had suffered.

4. That the sin offering reposeth at the door.

This implies that Christs atonement is accessible to the sinner; that it rests with man to avail himself of it; that men often neglect it; that God exercises great patience towards the sinner; that the sinner cannot go to hell without first trampling on the Cross; and that he wilt be forever deprived of every excuse for his destruction. (D. Evans.)

Cain and Abel

I. THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE OFFERING DEPENDS ON THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE OFFERER. God had respect to Abel and his offering–the man first and then the offering. God looks through the offering to the state of soul from which it proceeds; or even, as the words would indicate, sees the soul first and judges and treats the offering according to the inward disposition. God does not judge of what you are by what you say to Him or do for Him, but He judges what you say to Him and do for Him by what you are.

II. Again, we here find a very sharp and clear statement of the welcome truth, THAT CONTINUANCE IN SIN IS NEVER A NECESSITY, that God points the way out of sin, and that from the first He has been on mans side and has done all that could be done to keep men from sinning. Observe how He expostulates with Cain. Take note of the plain, explicit fairness of the words in which He expostulates with him–instance, as it is, of bow absolutely in the right God always is, and how abundantly He can justify all His dealings with us. God says as it were to Cain, Come now, and let us reason together. All God wants of any man is to be reasonable; to look at the facts of the case. If thou doest well, shalt thou not (as well as Abel) be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door, that is, if thou doest not well, the sin is not Abels nor anyones but thine own, and therefore anger at another is not the proper remedy, but anger at yourself, and repentance. Some of us may be this day or this week in as critical a position as Cain, having as truly as he the making or marring of our future in our hands, seeing clearly the right course, and all that is good, humble, penitent, and wise in us urging us to follow that course, but our pride and self-will holding us back. How often do men thus barter a future of blessing for some mean gratification of temper or lust or pride; how often by a reckless, almost listless and indifferent continuance in sin do they let themselves be carried on to a future as woeful as Cains; how often when God expostulates with them do they make no answer and take no action, as if there were nothing to be gained by listening to God–as if it were a matter of no importance what future I go to–as if in the whole eternity that lies in reserve there were nothing worth making a choice about–nothing about which it is worth my while to rouse the whole energy of which I am capable, and to make, by Gods grace, the determination which shall alter my whole future–to choose for myself and assert myself.

III. The writer to the Hebrews makes A VERY STRIKING USE OF THIS EVENT. He borrows from it language in which to magnify the efficacy of Christs sacrifice, and affirms that the blood of Christ speaketh better things, or, as it must rather be rendered, crieth louder than the blood of Abel. Abels blood, we see, cried for vengeance, for evil things for Cain, called God to make inquisition for blood, and so pled as to secure the banishment of the murderer. The Arabs have a belief that over the grave of a murdered man his spirit hovers in the form of a bird that cries Give me drink, give me drink, and only ceases when the blood of the murderer is shed. Cains conscience told him the same thing; there was no criminal law threatening death to the murderer, but he felt that men would kill him if they could. He heard the blood of Abel crying from the earth. The blood of Christ also cries to God, but cries not for vengeance but for pardon. And as surely as the one cry was heard and answered in very substantial results; so surely does the other cry call down from heaven its proper and beneficent effects. (M. Dods, D. D.)

Cain and Abel

I. THE FIRSTBORN OF EARTH, AND THE FIRSTBORN OF HEAVEN. All is expectation of the promised Deliverer that shall destroy the serpent; and Eve says, I have gotten a man. Nor is God slow to give a prototype of that great redemption, and to set forth His gospel in earnest and sign, but in far different manner to the anticipations of man, by Abels death. This is the deliverance! this is the victory! Here is the promise.

II. THEIR OCCUPATIONS. These were both conditions of life equally acceptable with God. But the question will occur to us, why it is that through the Scripture there is something of a sacred character on the shepherd. Perhaps owing in some degree to the fostering care and gentleness required in such occupation, or the character of the animal itself; so as to be meet figures of the Good Shepherd who layeth down His life for the sheep. Such were Abel, Abraham, Jacob, and David. Or it may be from their connection with sacrifice itself. But when sacrifices were about to cease, and the Lamb of God appeared, then from the fishermen were chosen those who should feed the sheep and lambs of Christs flock.

III. THE INSTITUTION OF SACRIFICE. It must have been, in some manner, originally of God. That to obey is better than sacrifice, is a Divine law; so that sacrifice itself would have scarcely been acceptable but as the result of obedience. Add to which, that death itself being then new, presented its awful character more strongly that we can now imagine; it was stamped with all its vivid significancy, and could not have been thus occasioned without a Divine warrant. Nor does the case of Abel stand alone in this respect; for others afterwards in succession accepted of God approached Him with sacrifices, as did Noah, and Abraham, and the patriarchs, without its being mentioned in Holy Writ that it had been so commanded of God. Bat there is what amounts to something like a command in the marked acceptance of God. This knowledge of His will is the mode of access open to the suppliant, which is all that he needs to know. If the Divine appointment is not expressly recorded, yet instances are mentioned where God was pleased with such offerings.

IV. THE ACCEPTED SACRIFICE. What God requires of us is some answer to His own love for us. My son, give Me thine heart. This is the return which God required of Adam in paradise; this He renews again, but it must be now through offering and sacrifice, as expressive of his changed condition. God is no respecter of persons, but He looks to the heart of the worshipper. The gifts are nothing to Him, but He prizes the intent of the giver. The heart is the altar that sanctifies the gift.

V. FAITH IN THE ATONEMENT. It is not given us to infer that Abel had explicitly this knowledge; but the question is how far any sense of this hallowing his heart gave efficacy to that sacrifice. The sacrifice of Christ alone imparted acceptableness to the animal sacrifices of old. And we may inquire how far any instinctive apprehension of this was in that faith of Abel by which he was justified. Our Lord says of Abraham, he rejoiced to see My day; he saw it and was glad. The same was probably true of Abel, the first of martyrs. And why should not the secret of the Lord have been in the heart of Abel as it was in that of St. Peter, when our Lord said unto him, Blessed art thou, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in Heaven? not by express declaration, but by the secret leading of the Spirit. It would be practically difficult to make a distinction between explicit and implicit acts of this nature. But the sanctifying of the heart under its secret influence is the same, and shown in like actions and feelings. Thus the knowledge of God in Christ became the measure of mans acceptance; and faith the seal of forgiveness, although as yet they could not understand that He should die. It may be that a sense of the Incarnation is not in itself alone the proof of saving faith; for God appearing as Man was the fond dream of heathen poets; but that there is no access to God but through His atonement, marks the faith of the redeemed. And what is much to be noticed–as with Abel in this sacrifice, with Noah in the ark, with Abraham in the offering of his son, with the children of Israel looking to the brazen serpent in the wilderness–God made the act of faith to be itself a resemblance of Christ; even it may be beyond all thought of those that took part in them. So is it with our lives; they are made of God to set forth great things, which as yet we know not of. Thou shalt show us wonderful things in Thy righteousness. They have a connection with Christ crucified more than we can now understand. Seeing what was in the heart of Abel, God led him on to set it forth on the altar in the slain animal, which represented the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; and then prepared him for a yet higher sacrifice, even that of his own life; a martyr to God, being slain because his works were righteous, whereby he being dead yet speaketh. Thus is he lifted up before all the world to the end of time as representing the Great Shepherd of the sheep. (I. Williams, B. D.)

Cain and Abel

I. THE CARNAL AND SPIRITUAL MIND.

II. THE RELIGION OF EACH.

III. THEIR LIVES. (A. Jukes.)

The two offerings

The act mentioned here is evidently not one, but a series of acts, as if it had been said, they were in the habit of bringing. Here let us mark such things as the following:

1. Both worship professedly the same Jehovah.

2. Both worship Him at the same place.

3. Both come at the same appointed times and seasons.

4. Both bring an offering in their hands, thereby acknowledging the allegiance which was due to Jehovah.

Thus far they are alike. But now the difference begins.

1. Abel comes as a sinner, having no claim upon God, and feeling that it is only as a sinner that God can deal with him. Cain approaches as a creature only; not owning sin, though willing to acknowledge the obligations of creaturehood.

2. Abel comes acknowledging death to he his due; for he brings a lamb, and slays it before the Lord, as a substitute for himself. Cain recognizes no sentence of death; he brings only his fruits, as if his grapes or his figs were all that he deemed God entitled to. His offering might cost him more toil than his brothers, but it spoke not of death. It was meant to repudiate the ideas of sin and death, and salvation by a substitute.

3. Abel comes with the blood in his hand, feeling that he dared not appear before God without it; that it would not be safe for him to venture nigh, nor honourable for God to receive him otherwise. Cain brings no blood–doubtless scorning his brothers religion as the religion of the shambles; a religion which increased instead of removing creations pangs.

4. Abel comes resting on the promise–the promise which revealed and pledged the rich grace of God. Cain comes as one that needs no promise and no grace. His is what men call the religion of nature; and in that religion there is no room, no need for these. (H. Bonar, D. D.)

The best offering

A proud king resolved that he would build a cathedral, and, while most anxious that the credit of it might be all his own, he forbade even from contributing to its erection, and on it his name was carved as the builder. But he saw in a dream an angel who came down and erased his name, and a name of a poor widow appeared in its stead. This was three times repeated, when the enraged king summoned the woman before him and demanded, What have you been doing, and why have you broken my commandment? The trembling widow replied, I loved the Lord, and longed to do something for His name, and for the building up of His church. I was forbidden to touch it in any way; so, in my poverty, I brought a wisp of hay for the horses that drew the stones. And the king saw that the same God who accepted the offering of Abel and not of Cain regarded the widow as having done more for the building of the cathedral than he had done with all his wealth. So he commanded that her name should also be inscribed upon the tablet.

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

CHAPTER IV

The birth, trade, and religion of Cain and Abel, 1-7.

Cain murders his brother Abel, 8.

God calls him into judgment for it, 9, 10.

He is cursed, 11, 12.

He despairs, 15, 14.

A promise given him of preservation, and a mark set on

him to prevent his being killed, 15.

He departs from God’s presence, 16.

Has a son whom he calls Enoch; and builds a city,

which he calls after his name, 17.

Cain has several children, among whom are Lamech, the first

bigamist, 18, 19.

Jobat, who taught the use of tents and feeding cattle, 20.

Jabal, the inventor of musical instruments, 21.

Tubal-cain, the inventor of smith-work, 22.

Strange speech of Lamech to his wives, 23, 24.

Seth born to Adam and Eve in the place of Abel, 25.

Enoch born, and the worship of God restored, 26.

NOTES ON CHAP. IV

Verse 1. I have gotten a man from the Lord.] Cain, , signifies acquisition; hence Eve says kanithi, I have gotten or acquired a man, eth Yehovah, the Lord. It is extremely difficult to ascertain the sense in which Eve used these words, which have been as variously translated as understood. Most expositors think that Eve imagined Cain to be the promised seed that should bruise the head of the serpent. This exposition really seems too refined for that period. It is very likely that she meant no more than to acknowledge that it was through God’s peculiar blessing that she was enabled to conceive and bring forth a son, and that she had now a well-grounded hope that the race of man should be continued on the earth. Unless she had been under Divine inspiration she could not have called her son (even supposing him to be the promised seed) Jehovah; and that she was not under such an influence her mistake sufficiently proves, for Cain, so far from being the Messiah, was of the wicked one; 1Jo 3:12. We may therefore suppose that eth Yehovah, THE LORD, is an elliptical form of expression for meeth Yehovah, FROM THE LORD, or through the Divine blessing.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

This modest expression is used both in Scripture and other authors, to signify the conjugal act or carnal knowledge. So Gen 19:8; 24:16; Num 31:17; Mat 1:25; Luk 1:34.

Cain, whose name signifies a possession. A man, a male child, as Gen 7:2, which was most welcome.

From the Lord; or, by or with the Lord, i.e. by virtue of his first blessing, Gen 1:28, and special favour. Or, a man the Lord, as the words properly signify: q.d. God-man, or the Messias, hoping that this was the promised Seed.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

1. Eve said, I have gotten a manfrom the Lordthat is, “by the help of the Lord”anexpression of pious gratitudeand she called him Cain, that is, “apossession,” as if valued above everything else; while thearrival of another son reminding Eve of the misery she had entailedon her offspring, led to the name Abel, that is, either weakness,vanity (Ps 39:5), or grief,lamentation. Cain and Abel were probably twins; and it is thoughtthat, at this early period, children were born in pairs (Ge5:4) [CALVIN].

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And Adam knew Eve his wife,…. An euphemism, or modest expression of the act of coition. Jarchi interprets it, “had known”, even before he sinned, and was drove out of the garden; and so other Jewish writers, who think he otherwise would not have observed the command, “be fruitful and multiply”: but if Adam had begotten children in a state of innocence, they would have been free from sin, and not tainted with the corruption of nature after contracted; but others more probably think it was some considerable time after; according to Mer Thudiusi, or Theodosius t, it was thirty years after he was driven out of paradise:

and she conceived and bare Cain; in the ordinary way and manner, as women ever since have usually done, going the same time with her burden. Whether this name was given to her first born by her, or by her husband, or both, is not said: it seems to have been given by her, from the reason of it after assigned. His name, in Philo Byblius u, is Genos, which no doubt was Cain, in Sanchoniatho, whom he translated; and his wife, or the twin born with him, is said to be Genea, that is,

, “Cainah”: the Arabs call her Climiah v and the Jewish writers Kalmenah w; who are generally of opinion, that with Cain and Abel were born twin sisters, which became their wives.

And said, that is, Eve said upon the birth of her firstborn,

I have gotten a man from the Lord; as a gift and blessing from him, as children are; or by him, by his favour and good will; and through his blessing upon her, causing her to conceive and bear and bring forth a son: some render it, “I have gotten a man, the Lord” x; that promised seed that should break the serpents head; by which it would appear, that she took that seed to be a divine person, the true God, even Jehovah, that should become man; though she must have been ignorant of the mystery of his incarnation, or of his taking flesh of a virgin, since she conceived and bare Cain through her husband’s knowledge of her: however, having imbibed this notion, it is no wonder she should call him Cain, a possession or inheritance; since had this been the case, she had got a goodly one indeed: but in this she was sadly mistaken, he proved not only to be a mere man, but to be a very bad man: the Targum of Jonathan favours this sense, rendering the words,

“I have gotten a man, the angel of the Lord.”

t Apud Abulpharag. Hist. Dynast. p. 6. u Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 1. c. 10. p. 34. v Abulpharag. ib. w Shalshaleth Hakabala, fol. 74. 2. x “virum Dominum”, Fagius, Helvicus, Forster, Schindler, Luther, Pellican, Cocceius; “virum qui Jehovah est”, Schmidt.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

The propagation of the human race did not commence till after the expulsion from paradise. Generation in man is an act of personal free-will, not a blind impulse of nature, and rests upon a moral self-determination. It flows from the divine institution of marriage, and is therefore knowing ( ) the wife. – At the birth of the first son Eve exclaimed with joy, “ I have gotten ( ) a man with Jehovah;” wherefore the child received the name Cain ( from = , ). So far as the grammar is concerned, the expression might be rendered, as in apposition to , “ a man, the Lord ” ( Luther), but the sense would not allow it. For even if we could suppose the faith of Eve in the promised conqueror of the serpent to have been sufficiently alive for this, the promise of God had not given her the slightest reason to expect that the promised seed would be of divine nature, and might be Jehovah, so as to lead her to believe that she had given birth to Jehovah now. is a preposition in the sense of helpful association, as in Gen 21:20; Gen 39:2, Gen 39:21, etc. That she sees in the birth of this son the commencement of the fulfilment of the promise, and thankfully acknowledges the divine help in this display of mercy, is evident from the name Jehovah, the God of salvation. The use of this name is significant. Although it cannot be supposed that Eve herself knew and uttered this name, since it was not till a later period that it was made known to man, and it really belongs to the Hebrew, which was not formed till after the division of tongues, yet it expresses the feeling of Eve on receiving this proof of the gracious help of God.

Gen 4:2-7

But her joy was soon overcome by the discovery of the vanity of this earthly life. This is expressed in the name Abel, which was given to the second son ( , in pause , i.e., nothingness, vanity), whether it indicated generally a feeling of sorrow on account of his weakness, or was a prophetic presentiment of his untimely death. The occupation of the sons is noticed on account of what follows. “ Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.” Adam had, no doubt, already commenced both occupations, and the sons selected each a different department. God Himself had pointed out both to Adam-the tilling of the ground by the employment assigned him in Eden, which had to be changed into agriculture after his expulsion; and the keeping of cattle in the clothing that He gave him (Gen 3:21). Moreover, agriculture can never be entirely separated from the rearing of cattle; for a man not only requires food, but clothing, which is procured directly from the hides and wool of tame animals. In addition to this, sheep do not thrive without human protection and care, and therefore were probably associated with man from the very first. The different occupations of the brothers, therefore, are not to be regarded as a proof of the difference in their dispositions. This comes out first in the sacrifice, which they offered after a time to God, each one from the produce of his vocation. – “ In process of time ” (lit., at the end of days, i.e., after a considerable lapse of time: for this use of cf. Gen 40:4; Num 9:2) Cain brought of the fruit of the ground a gift ( ) to the Lord; and Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and indeed ( vav in an explanatory sense, vid., Ges. 155, 1) of their fat,” i.e., the fattest of the firstlings, and not merely the first good one that came to hand. are not the fat portions of the animals, as in the Levitical law of sacrifice. This is evident from the fact, that the sacrifice was not connected with a sacrificial meal, and animal food was not eaten at this time. That the usage of the Mosaic law cannot determine the meaning of this passage, is evident from the word minchah , which is applied in Leviticus to bloodless sacrifices only, whereas it is used here in connection with Abel’s sacrifice. “ And Jehovah looked upon Abel and his gift; and upon Cain and his gift He did not look.” The look of Jehovah was in any case a visible sign of satisfaction. It is a common and ancient opinion that fire consumed Abel’s sacrifice, and thus showed that it was graciously accepted. Theodotion explains the words by . But whilst this explanation has the analogy of Lev 9:24 and Jdg 6:21 in its favour, it does not suit the words, “upon Abel and his gift.” The reason for the different reception of the two offerings was the state of mind towards God with which they were brought, and which manifested itself in the selection of the gifts. Not, indeed, in the fact that Abel brought a bleeding sacrifice and Cain a bloodless one; for this difference arose from the difference in their callings, and each necessarily took his gift from the produce of his own occupation. It was rather in the fact that Abel offered the fattest firstlings of his flock, the best that he could bring; whilst Cain only brought a portion of the fruit of the ground, but not the first-fruits. By this choice Abel brought , and manifested that disposition which is designated faith ( ) in Heb 11:4. The nature of this disposition, however, can only be determined from the meaning of the offering itself.

The sacrifices offered by Adam’s sons, and that not in consequence of a divine command, but from the free impulse of their nature as determined by God, were the first sacrifices of the human race. The origin of sacrifice, therefore, is neither to be traced to a positive command, nor to be regarded as a human invention. To form an accurate conception of the idea which lies at the foundation of all sacrificial worship, we must bear in mind that the first sacrifices were offered after the fall, and therefore presupposed the spiritual separation of man from God, and were designed to satisfy the need of the heart for fellowship with God. This need existed in the case of Cain, as well as in that of Abel; otherwise he would have offered no sacrifice at all, since there was no command to render it compulsory. Yet it was not the wish for forgiveness of sin which led Adam’s sons to offer sacrifice; for there is no mention of expiation, and the notion that Abel, by slaughtering the animal, confessed that he deserved death on account of sin, is transferred to this passage from the expiatory sacrifices of the Mosaic law. The offerings were expressive of gratitude to God, to whom they owed all that they had; and were associated also with the desire to secure the divine favour and blessing, so that they are to be regarded not merely as thank-offerings, but as supplicatory sacrifices, and as propitiatory also, in the wider sense of the word. In this the two offerings are alike. The reason why they were not equally acceptable to God is not to be sought, as Hoffmann thinks, in the fact that Cain merely offered thanks “for the preservation of this present life,” whereas Abel offered thanks “for the forgiveness of sins,” or “for the sin-forgiving clothing received by man from the hand of God.” To take the nourishment of the body literally and the clothing symbolically in this manner, is an arbitrary procedure, by which the Scriptures might be made to mean anything we chose. The reason is to be found rather in the fact, that Abel’s thanks came from the depth of his heart, whilst Cain merely offered his to keep on good terms with God-a difference that was manifested in the choice of the gifts, which each one brought from the produce of his occupation. This choice shows clearly “that it was the pious feeling, through which the worshiper put his heart as it were into the gift, which made the offering acceptable to God” ( Oehler); that the essence of the sacrifice was not the presentation of a gift to God, but that the offering was intended to shadow forth the dedication of the heart to God. At the same time, the desire of the worshipper, by the dedication of the best of his possessions to secure afresh the favour of God, contained the germ of that substitutionary meaning of sacrifice, which was afterwards expanded in connection with the deepening and heightening of the feeling of sin into a desire for forgiveness, and led to the development of the idea of expiatory sacrifice. – On account of the preference shown to Abel, “ it burned Cain sore (the subject, ‘wrath,’ is wanting, as it frequently is in the case of , cf. Gen 18:30, Gen 18:32; Gen 31:36, etc.), and his countenance fell ” (an indication of his discontent and anger: cf. Jer 3:12; Job 29:24). God warned him of giving way to this, and directed his attention to the cause and consequences of his wrath.

“ Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen? ” The answer to this is given in the further question, “ Is there not, if thou art good, a lifting up ” (sc., of the countenance)? It is evident from the context, and the antithesis of falling and lifting up ( and ), that must be supplied after . By this God gave him to understand that his look was indicative of evil thoughts and intentions; for the lifting up of the countenance, i.e., a free, open look, is the mark of a good conscience (Job 11:15). “ But if thou art not good, sin lieth before the door, and its desire is to thee (directed towards thee); but thou shouldst rule over it.” The fem. is construed as a masculine, because, with evident allusion to the serpent, sin is personified as a wild beast, lurking at the door of the human heart, and eagerly desiring to devour his soul (1Pe 5:8). , to make good, signifies here not good action, the performance of good in work and deed, but making the disposition good, i.e., directing the heart to what is good. Cain is to rule over the sin which is greedily desiring him, by giving up his wrath, not indeed that sin may cease to lurk for him, but that the lurking evil foe may obtain no entrance into his heart. There is no need to regard the sentence as interrogative, “Wilt thou, indeed, be able to rule over it?” ( Ewald), nor to deny the allusion in to the lurking sin, as Delitzsch does. The words do not command the suppression of an inward temptation, but resistance to the power of evil as pressing from without, by hearkening to the word which God addressed to Cain in person, and addresses to us through the Scriptures. There is nothing said here about God appearing visibly; but this does not warrant us in interpreting either this or the following conversation as a simple process that took place in the heart and conscience of Cain. It is evident from Gen 4:14 and Gen 4:16 that God did not withdraw His personal presence and visible intercourse from men, as soon as He had expelled them from the garden of Eden. “God talks to Cain as to a wilful child, and draws out of him what is sleeping in his heart, and lurking like a wild beast before his door. And what He did to Cain He does to every one who will but observe his own heart, and listen to the voice of God” ( Herder). But Cain paid no need to the divine warning.

Gen 4:8

He “ said to his brother Abel.” What he said is not stated. We may either supply “ it,” viz., what God had just said to him, which would be grammatically admissible, since is sometimes followed by a simple accusative (Gen 22:3; Gen 44:16), and this accusative has to be supplied from the context (as in Exo 19:25); or we may supply from what follows some such expressions as “ let us go into the field,” as the lxx, Sam., Jonathan, and others have done. This is also allowable, so that we need not imagine a gap in the text, but may explain the construction as in Gen 3:22-23, by supposing that the writer hastened on to describe the carrying out of what was said, without stopping to set down the words themselves. This supposition is preferable to the former, since it is psychologically most improbable that Cain should have related a warning to his brother which produced so little impression upon his own mind. In the field “ Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” Thus the sin of Adam had grown into fratricide in his son. The writer intentionally repeats again and again the words “ his brother,” to bring clearly out the horror of the sin. Cain was the first man who let sin reign in him; he was “of the wicked one” (1Jo 3:12). In him the seed of the woman had already become the seed of the serpent; and in his deed the real nature of the wicked one, as “a murderer from the beginning,” had come openly to light: so that already there had sprung up that contrast of two distinct seeds within the human race, which runs through the entire history of humanity.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

Cain and Abel.

B. C. 3875.

      1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.   2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

      Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters, ch. v. 4. But Cain and Abel seem to have been the two eldest. Some think they were twins, and, as Esau and Jacob, the elder hated and the younger loved. Though God had cast our first parents out of paradise, he did not write them childless; but, to show that he had other blessings in store for them, he preserved to them the benefit of that first blessing of increase. Though they were sinners, nay, though they felt the humiliation and sorrow of penitents, they did not write themselves comfortless, having the promise of a Saviour to support themselves with. We have here,

      I. The names of their two sons. 1. Cain signifies possession; for Eve, when she bore him, said with joy, and thankfulness, and great expectation, I have gotten a man from the LORD. Observe, Children are God’s gifts, and he must be acknowledged in the building up of our families. It doubles and sanctifies our comfort in them when we see them coming to us from the hand of God, who will not forsake the works and gifts of his own hand. Though Eve bore him with the sorrows that were the consequence of sin, yet she did not lose the sense of the mercy in her pains. Comforts, though alloyed, are more than we deserve; and therefore our complaints must not drown our thanksgivings. Many suppose that Eve had a conceit that this son was the promised seed, and that therefore she thus triumphed in him, as her words may be read, I have gotten a man, the LORD, God-man. If so, she was wretchedly mistaken, as Samuel, when he said, Surely the LORD’s anointed is before me, 1 Sam. xvi. 6. When children are born, who can foresee what they will prove? He that was thought to be a man, the LORD, or at least a man from the LORD, and for his service as priest of the family, became an enemy to the LORD. The less we expect from creature s, the more tolerable will disappointments be. 2. Abel signifies vanity. When she thought she had obtained the promised seed in Cain, she was so taken up with that possession that another son was as vanity to her. To those who have an interest in Christ, and make him their all, other things are as nothing at all. It intimates likewise that the longer we live in this world the more we may see of the vanity of it. What, at first, we are fond of, as a possession, afterwards we see cause to be dead to, as a trifle. The name given to this son is put upon the whole race, Ps. xxxix. 5. Every man is at his best estate Abel–vanity. Let us labour to see both ourselves and others so. Childhood and youth are vanity.

      II. The employments of Cain and Abel. Observe, 1. They both had a calling. Though they were heirs apparent to the world, their birth noble and their possessions large, yet they were not brought up in idleness. God gave their father a calling, even in innocency, and he gave them one. Note, It is the will of God that we should every one of us have something to do in this world. Parents ought to bring up their children to business. “Give them a Bible and a calling (said good Mr. Dod), and God be with them.” 2. Their employments were different, that they might trade and exchange with one another, as there was occasion. The members of the body politic have need one of another, and mutual love is helped by mutual commerce. 3. Their employments belonged to the husbandman’s calling, their father’s profession–a needful calling, for the king himself is served of the field, but a laborious calling, which required constant care and attendance. It is now looked upon as a mean calling; the poor of the land serve for vine-dressers and husbandmen, Jer. lii. 16. But the calling was far from being a dishonour to them; rather, they were an honour to it. 4. It should seem, by the order of the story, that Abel, though the younger brother, yet entered first into his calling, and probably his example drew in Cain. 5. Abel chose that employment which most befriended contemplation and devotion, for to these a pastoral life has been looked upon as being peculiarly favourable. Moses and David kept sheep, and in their solitudes conversed with God. Note, That calling or condition of life is best for us, and to be chosen by us, which is best for our souls, that which least exposes us to sin and gives us most opportunity of serving and enjoying God.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

GENESIS – CHAPTER FOUR

Verses 1-8:

“Adam knew Eve his wife,” in intimate sexual relationship. This does not imply that sexual relationships were forbidden or unknown in the Garden of Eden before the fall. The contrary is true, for the command to “multiply and fill the earth” was God’s mandate before the fall. The statement occurs here to indicate that while Adam and Eve came into being by a direct creation from God, humanity thenceforth is to be produced according to the established law of reproduction.

The firstborn of Adam and Eve was Cain, “acquisition,” from kanah “to acquire.” Eve’s faith is evident in that she addressed Jehovah as the One from whom she acquired this child, see Psa 127:3. In the birth of this her first son, Eve saw the guarantee of Jehovah’s faithfulness to fulfill His promise concerning her coming Seed, Gen 3:15.

“She again bare his brother,” literally, she “added to bear.” This is a peculiar Hebrew idiom in use as late as in the New Testament, see Luk 20:11. It does not imply that Cain and Abel were twins, although this is not outside the realm of possibility.

“Abel” is from habel, vanity. The name of this second son may be recognition of the judgment of woman in childbearing, Gen 3:16, and of the sorrows and miseries of humanity because of sin. It may also imply her disappointment in her firstborn son.

Abel’s occupation became that of a shepherd. Cain became a farmer. They likely received instruction and training in these crafts from their father Adam. There is nothing in either occupation which would imply a difference in moral character, nor that one occupation is more favored of God than the other. God called and used men of both occupations in His service: David, the shepherd; and Elisha and Amos, both farmers (1Ki 19:19-21; Amo 7:14).

“in process of time” is, “at the end of days.” This denotes a definite era or period of time. In this case, the starting point of this era is unknown; thus it is impossible to determine just how much time is involved.

In patriarchal times it was customary for the sacrificial offerings to be made by the head of the family. This implies that both Cain and Abel were by this time married and the heads of families. Otherwise, Adam would have been the one to offer these sacrifices.

Both Cain and Abel brought “an offering” unto Jehovah. Cain’s offering consisted of the “fruit of the ground.” Abel’s offering was of the firstborn and choice of his flock. The Lord accepted Abel’s offering and rejected Cain’s. The reason for this does not lie in the nature of the offerings themselves. In later years God required that His people offer sacrifice of the “fruit of the ground,” Lev 2:1-3. It would be inconsistent with His nature to suppose God rejected Cain’s offering merely because it was “of the ground.”

The reason Jehovah accepted Abel’s offering while rejecting Cain’s lies in the nature of the ones who made the offering. Abel’s offering was “by faith,” Heb 11:4, and this is the reason God accepted it. Abel’s faith made his sacrifice “more excellent” than that of Cain. God rejected Cain’s offering because of sin, which dominated Cain’s life, verse 7.

“Cain was very wroth,” literally, “it burned with Cain exceedingly.” There was no sorrow for sin, no repentance because God had not accepted his sacrifice. There was only anger, wounded pride, resentment toward God and toward his brother, burning and seething in Cain’s heart. Cain’s anger was evident to the eye of Jehovah. In mercy the Lord sought to convict Cain and to bring him to repentance and faith.

“if thou doest well,” points to Cain’s spiritual condition in which he made his offering. Had he presented the offering in the spirit of faith, as did Abel, God would have accepted it. The reason for his rejection is that sin was crouching before him as a ravening beast of prey, seeking to dominate his life. Cain could have attained mastery over sin, by following the steps of repentance and faith and submission. Instead, he gave in to sin, because of pride and arrogance in his heart.

The text does not give the content of Cain’s conversation with Abel. In the light of what followed, it may be that Cain discussed the matter of their respective sacrifices and this served only to increase Cain’s anger. It is likely that Cain’s act of violent murder was more than just a spur-of-the moment deed, but rather a deliberate act of pre-meditated murder.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

1. And Adam knew his wife Eve. Moses now begins to describe the propagation of mankind; in which history it is important to notice that this benediction of God, “Increase and multiply,” was not abolished by sin; and not only so, but that the heart of Adam was divinely confirmed so that he did not shrink with horror from the production of offspring. And as Adam recognised, in the very commencement of having offspring, the truly paternal moderation of God’s anger, so was he afterwards compelled to taste the bitter fruits of his own sin, when Cain slew Abel. But let us follow the narration of Moses. (222) Although Moses does not state that Cain and Abel were twins it yet seems to me probable that they were so; for, after he has said that Eve, by her first conception, brought forth her firstborn, he soon after subjoins that she also bore another; and thus, while commemorating a double birth, he speaks only of one conception. (223) Let those who think differently enjoy their own opinion; to me, however it appears accordant with reason, when the world had to be replenished with inhabitants, that not only Cain and Abel should have been brought forth at one births but many also afterwards, both males and females.

I have gotten a man. The word which Moses uses signifies both to acquire and to possess; and it is of little consequence to the present context which of the two you adopt. It is more important to inquire why she says that she has received, את יהוה ( eth Yehovah.) Some expound it, ‘with the Lord;’ that is, ‘by the kindness, or by the favor, of the Lord;’ as if Eve would refer the accepted blessing of offspring to the Lord, as it is said in Psa 127:3, “The fruit of the womb is the gift of the Lord.” A second interpretation comes to the same point, ‘I have possessed a man from the Lord;’ and the version of Jerome is of equal force, ‘Through the Lord.’ (224) These three readings, I say, tend to this point, that Eve gives thanks to God for having begun to raise up a posterity through her, though she was deserving of perpetual barrenness, as well as of utter destruction. Others, with greater subtlety, expound the words, ‘I have gotten the man of the Lord;’ as if Eve understood that she already possessed that conqueror of the serpent, who had been divinely promised to her. Hence they celebrate the faith of Eve, because she embraced, by faith, the promise concerning the bruising of the head of the devil through her seed; only they think that she was mistaken in the person or the individual, seeing that she would restrict to Cain what had been promised concerning Christ. To me, however, this seems to be the genuine sense, that while Eve congratulates herself on the birth of a son, she offers him to God, as the first-fruits of his race. Therefore, I think it ought to be translated, ‘I have obtained a man from the Lord’, which approaches more nearly the Hebrew phrase. Moreover, she calls a newborn infant a man, because she saw the human race renewed, which both she and her husband had ruined by their own fault. (225)

(222) The following passage here occurs in the original: — “ Cognoscendi verbo congressum viri cum uxore, rem per se pudendam, verecunde insinuat: quanquam coitus foeditas inter peccati fructus numeranda est; quia nascitur ex libidinis intemperie: porro licet,” etc.

(223) “ Ita duplicem partum commemorans, nonnisi de uno concubitu loquitur.”

(224) “ Possedi hominem per Deum.” — Vulgate. “ Εκτησάμην ἄνθρωπον διὰ τον Θεοῦ.” — Sept

(225) The reader will find a discussion of this remarkable passage worthy of his attention in Dr. J. P. Smith’s Scripture Testimony to the Messiah, vol. 1, p. 228. Third edition. 1837. This learned, indefatigable, and candid writer, argues with considerable force in favor of the translation, ‘I have obtained a man, Jehovah,’ and supposes that Eve really believed her first-born to be the incarnate Jehovah. There is, however, great difficulty in allowing that she could know so much as is here presupposed; and the remark of Dathe seems fatal to this interpretation: — ‘ Si scivit, Messiam esse debere Jovam, quomodo existimare potuit, Cainam esse Messiam, quem sciebat esse ab Adamo genitum.’ If Eve knew that Messiah must be Jehovah, how could she think that Cain was the Messiah, when she knew him to be the offspring of Adam? — Ed.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

THE DAWN OF HISTORY

Gen 1:1 to Gen 11:9.

IN beginning this Bible of the Expositor and Evangelist, I am keenly sensible of the seriousness of my task. The book to be treated is the Book of Books, the one and only volume that has both survived and increasingly conquered the centuries, and that now, in a hoary old age, shows no sign of weakness, holds no hint of decay or even decrepitude; in fact, the Book is more robust at this moment than at any time since it came to completion, and it gives promise of dominating the future in a measure far surpassing its influence upon the past.

The method of studying the Bible, to be illustrated in these pages, is, we are convinced, a sane and safe one, if not the most efficient one. Years since, certain statements from the pen of Dr. James M. Gray, superintendent of the Moody Bible Institute, fell under our eyes, and those statements have profoundly influenced our methods of study.

Five simple rules he suggested for mastering the English Bible:

First, Read the Book.

Second: Read it consecutively.

Third: Read it repeatedly.

Fourth: Read it independently.

Fifth: Read it prayerfully.

Applying these suggestions to each volume in turn, if ones life be long continued, he may not hope to master his English Bible, but he will certainly discover its riches increasingly, and possess himself more and more of its marvelous treasures,

It was on the first Sunday of July, 1922, that I placed before myself and my people the program of study that produced these volumes. To be sure, much of the work had been done back of that date, but the determination to utilize it in this exact manner was fully adopted there and then. It was and is my thought that the greatest single weakness of the present-day pulpit exists in the circumstance that we have departed from the custom of our best fathers in the ministry, namely, Scriptural exposition. If, therefore, these volumes shall lead a large number of my brethren in the ministry, particularly the young men among them, to become expository preachers, and yet to combine exposition with evangelism, my reward will be my eternal riches.

Stimulated by that high hope, I turn your attention to the study itself, and begin where the Book begins and where all true students should begin, with Gen 1:1, but in thought, an eternity beyond the hour of its phrasing, for by the opening sentence we are pushed back to God. In the beginning

GOD.

That is the starting point of all true studies. The scientist is compelled to start there, or else he never understands where he is, nor yet with what he deals. God, the One of infinite wisdom, infinite power, infinite justice and of infinite goodnessIn the beginning God.

Having heard that name and having understood the One to whom it is applied, we are prepared for what follows,created the heavens and the earth marvelous first verse of the Bible!

All in this first chapter is wrapped up in that first sentence; that is the explanation of all things; what follows is simply the setting forth of details.

I agree with Joseph Parker that the explanation is simple. No attempt at learned analysis; that the explanation is sublime because it sweeps in all of time, all of material suggestions, all of power and illustrates all of wisdomthe heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork; day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge, and it is a sufficient explanation, the only one that satisfies the mind of man.

Infidel evolutionists cannot account for the beginnings. The geologist who does not believe, digs down to a point where he says, Who started all of this? and waits in sadness while the dumb rocks are silent; but for the Christian student no such mystery makes his work an enigma.

Everywhere he sees the touch of God; in the plants, the animals, the birds and in man,God. Where the unbeliever wonders and questions to get no reply, the believer admires, saying, This is my Fathers hand, the work of my Fathers word. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear (Heb 11:3), and he joins with the Psalmist, Let all nations praise the name of the Lord for He commanded and they were created (Psa 108:5).

Competent scholars have called attention to the careful use of words in the Bible, a use so painstaking and perfect as to give a scientific demonstration of the verbal inspiration theory. When it is said that God created the heavens and the earth, the Hebrew verb bara is employed, and it means to create something from nothing, so that God gave the death blow to the evolution theory some thousands of years before that unprovable hypothesis was born! The same word bara is also used in the 21st verse (Gen 1:21) concerning the creation of mammals, and three times in the 27th verse (Gen 1:27) concerning the creation of man, while a kindred word asah (neither of which convey any such thought as growth or evolution) is employed concerning His making man in His own image in Gen 1:26.

God, then, is not a mechanic; He is a Creator. He did not come upon the scenes of the universe to fashion what existed independent and apart from Him, but to create and complete according to His own pleasure.

In later chapters we shall show how these creative acts are confirmed by science itself, and argue the utter folly of trying to find incompatibility between Gods Work and Gods Word.

So for the present we may pass from God the Creator, as revealed in the first chapter, to

ADAM THE MAN

of the second chapter. An infinite decline, somebody says. But let us be reminded that it is not so great as appears at this present hour. The only man God ever made outright was not what you and I see now. The man He made was in His own image, after His own likeness, only as far below

Him as the finite is below the infinite; as the best creation is below the best Creator.

The man God made was good. The man God made was great. The man God made was wise. The man God made was holy. The men we see now are not His children, but the children of the fallen Adam instead, for Eve, fallen, brought forth after her kind; and what a fall was that!

When man disobeyed, he brought on himself and all succeeding ages sin, and its wretched results. There are those who blame God for the fall of man and say, He had no business to make him so he could fall. But everything that is upright can fall, and the difference between a man who could not fall and a man who could fall is simply the difference between a machine and a sentient, intelligent, upright, capable being.

There was but a single point at which this man could oppose Providence. Situated and environed as Adam was, the great social sins that have crushed the race could make no appeal to him. It is commonly conceded that the Decalogue sweeps the gamut of social, ethical and even religious conduct. Adam had no occasion to bow down before another God, for Jehovah, his Creator, was his counsellor and friend, and of other gods he knew nothing nor had he need of such. There was no provocation that could tempt him to take the name of that God in vain. There was no Sabbath day, for all days were holy, and the condemnation to labor was not yet passed. There was no father and mother to be honored. To have committed murder was unthinkable; first because there was no provocation, and second, such an act would have left him in the world alone, his heart craving, unsatisfied, and his very kind to perish. The seventh commandment meant nothing to the man whose wife was in the image of God, and the only woman known. Theft was impossible, since all things belonged to him. False witness and covetousness against a neighborhe had no neighbor.

But when God selected for Himself a single tree, leaving the rest of the earth to Adam, and he proved himself unwilling to let the least of earthly possessions be wholly the Lords, he gave an illustration to the unborn millenniums that man, in his almost infinite greatness, would not abide content that God Himself should be over and above him; and from that moment until this, that very thing has been the crux of every contention between the Divine and the human. If we may believe the Prophets, it was that very temptation that caused Lucifers fall and gave us the devil and hell!

All talk of shallow minds that God condemned the race because one man happened to bite into an apple, is utterly wide of the mark. Condemnation rests upon the race because every man born of the flesh has revealed the same spirit of rebellion shown by our first parentswe will not have God rule over us even to the extent of keeping anything from us. The wealth of His gifts should shame and restrain against His few prohibitions.

But, alas for mans guilt and godlessness! Equally wide of the mark is that other superficial reasoning that it is unjust of God to condemn me because some one of my forefathers misbehaved! Why charge God with injustice concerning something He has never done and will never do? Why not let

Him speak for Himself in such matters, and listen when he declares, The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him (Eze 18:20).

If, therefore, Adam with a body, mind and spirit unsullied, never having been weakened by an evil act or habit, did not stand, what hope for any man in his own merit. Are we better than they? No, in no wise, for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles that we are all under sin. As it is written, There is none righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are altogether become unprofitable (Rom 3:9-12).

You say that the temptation was a subtle one. I answer, Yes, that is Satans way to this hour. You say, The desire was for wisdom. I answer, Yes, that is still Satans appeal; you need to see and to know more than you do, hence you had better try this sin.

Over one of the most palatial but wicked doorways of all Paris there used to be an inscription, Come in; nothing to pay, and so far as mere entrance to that place was concerned, that was true. But those who entered found when they had come out that they had visited the place at the cost of character, not to speak of that meaner thing money.

In passing, we call your attention to the justice of Gods judgment upon this sin. Its heaviest sentence fell upon the serpent, Satans direct agent; that wisest of all beasts of the field. He was accursed above all cattle, and brought down from his upright, manly-appearing position to go upon his belly and to eat dust all his days, and to be hated and killed by the seed of the woman with whom he had had such influence.

The second sentence in weight fell upon the woman who listened to this deception and led the way in disobedience. The man did not escape. The associate in sin never does. His love for the principal may in some measure mitigate Gods judgment, but the justice of God would be called in question, and even His goodness, if He permitted any sin to be unpunished.

EVE, THE PRINCIPAL PERSON

in this third chapter must have been in her unfallen state Adams equal, mentally and morally. We have had great women, beautiful women, women worthy the admiration of the world, but I have an idea that the worlds greatest woman was not Cleopatra, the beautiful but selfish; nor Paula, that firmest of all friends; nor Heloise, the very embodiment of affection; nor Joan or Arc, heroism incarnate; nor Elizabeth, the wonderful queen; nor Madam De Stael of letters; nor Hannah Moore of education; but Eve, our first mother.

When I think on her and look at the frail, feeble, sickly, sinful sister of the streets, I feel like weeping over the fact that our first mother fell; and today among her daughters are those so far removed from Gods ideal.

THE FAMILY

of the fourth chapter had its beginning in sin, and it is a dreadfully dark picture that is here presented. Envy, murder and lust appear at once. Abel is murdered, Cain made a criminal, polygamy introduced and all social vices which curse the sons of God. The picture would incite despair, but for the circumstance that in the third chapter God had made a promise which put Grace instead of Law.

There was need, for unless the womans seed should bruise the serpents head, that serpents venom will not only strike the heel of every son, but send its poison coursing to his heart and head; without God, without hopedead indeed!

Truly, as one writer has said, We lose our life when we lose our innocence; we are dead when we are guilty; we are in hell when we are in shame.

Death does not take a long time to come upon us; it comes on the very day of our sin. In the day when thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Before that sentence there is no hope, except in these words spoken of the seed of woman against that old serpent, Satan; It shall bruise thy head the first prophecy of the wonderful gift of Gods Son.

Of

CAIN AND ABEL

we appreciate the contrast! The self-righteousness on the part of one; self-abasement on the part of the other. Cains saying, The fruit of mine own hands shall suffice for my justification before God; Abel saying, Without the shedding of blood there is no remission, and that spirit of Cain dominates the early society, as we have already seen; for while the population grew rapidly, sin kept pace, and even seemed swifter still. From self-righteousness they rushed to envy, to murder, and to lust.

The Pharisee may thank God that he is not as other men are, but history is likely to demonstrate the want of occasion for his boasting, for pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

The most dangerous man is the man who recognizes no dependence upon another than himself; and the man most likely to be an extortioner, to be unjust, the man most apt to be an adulterer, yea, even a murderer, is this same Cain who says, See the fruit of my hands. The youthful Chicago murderers thought their fine family connections and their university educations would save them from suspicion and condemnation! I tell you, it is the humble man who is justified in Gods sight!

The man who cries, God be merciful to me a sinnerrather than the man who wipes his lips and says, I am clean, and is offended when you talk to him of the necessity of purifying Blood in which to baptize his soulhe is the man who is justified in Gods sight.

THE FIFTH CHAPTER

covers a period of about 1,500 years, and contains but one great name, not introduced in the other chapters, and this is the name of Enoch. Note that his greatness consisted in the single fact that he walked with God.

Dr. Dixon said, He did not try to induce God to walk with him. He simply fell in with Gods ways and work.

Some one asked Abraham Lincoln to appoint a day of fasting and prayer that God might be on the side of the Northern Army. To this that noble President replied, Dont bother about what side God is on. He is on the right side. You simply get with Him.

Enoch was an every-day hero! Walking patiently, persistently, continuously is harder than flying. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. Like Enoch of old, they shall not see death, for God shall take them, and before their translation they shall have this testimony that they please God.

We have said that this fifth chapter covers 1,500 years. I call you to note the fact that it contains a multitude of names; names that even the best of Bible students do not, and cannot call. Nobody has ever committed them to memory; nobody cares to. They are not worth it. They were given to no noble deeds; they lived and died. The only wonder we have about them is that God let some of them live so long, unless it be that we also wonder how they managed to live so long and accomplish so little. Yet these nonentities have a part in Gods plan. They were bringing forth children; grandchildren came, and great grandchildren, and the children of great-grandchildren until Enoch was born, and by and by Noah; then the whole line was noble from Seth, Adams better of the living sons, down to these great names. It is worth while for a family to be continued for a thousand years, if, at the end of that time, one son can be born into the house who shall bring things to pass; one Enoch who shall walk with God; one Noah who shall save the race! There are people who are greatly distressed because their parents were neither lords, dukes nor even millionaires. They seem to think that the child who is to come to much must descend from a father of superior reputation at least. History testifies to the contrary, and shows us that the noblest are often born into unknown houses. The most gifted sons, the most wonderful daughters have been bred by parents of whom the great world never heard until these children, by their fame, called attention to their humble fathers.

The multiplied concessions that advocates of the evolution theory are obliged to make by facts they face at every turn, excite almost tender pity for them. Professor Conklin, in his volume The Direction of Human Evolution puts forth an endeavor in splendid defense of this hypothesis worthy of a better cause, and yet again and again he is compelled to say the things that disprove his main proposition. Consider these words. Think of the great men of unknown lineage, and the unknown men of great lineage; think of the close relationship of all persons of the same race; of the wide distribution of good and bad traits in the whole population; of incompetence and even feeble-mindedness in great families, and of genius and greatness in unknown families, and say whether natural inheritance supports the claims of aristocracy or of democracy.

When we remember that most of the great leaders of mankind came of humble parents; that many of the greatest geniuses had the most lowly origin; that Shakespeare was the son of a bankrupt butcher and an ignorant woman who could not write her name, that as a youth he is said to have been known more for poaching than for scholarship, and that his acquaintance with the London theatres began by his holding horses for their patrons; that Beethovens mother was a consumptive, the daughter of a cook, and his father a confirmed drunkard; that Schuberts father was a peasant by birth and his mother a domestic servant; that Faraday, perhaps the greatest scientific discoverer of any age, was born over a stable, his father a poor sick black-smither, his mother an ignorant drudge, and his only education obtained in selling newspapers on the streets of London and later in working as apprentice to a book-binder; that the great Pasteur was the son of a tanner; that Lincolns parents were accounted poor white trash and his early surroundings and education most unpromising; and so on through the long list of names in which democracy glories when we remember these we may well ask whether aristocracy can show a better record. The law of entail is aristocratic, but the law of Mendel is democratic.

Quaint old Thomas Fuller wrote many years ago in his Scripture Observations,

I find, Lord, the genealogy of my Saviour strangely checkered with four remarkable changes in four immediate generations:

1. Roboam begat Abia, that is a bad father and a bad son.

2. Abia begat Asa, that is a bad father a good son.

3. Asa begat Josaphat, that is a good father a good son.

4. Josaphat begat Joram, that is a good father a bad son.

I can see, Lord, from hence that my fathers piety cannot be entailed; that is bad news for me. But I see also that actual impiety is not always hereditary; that is good news for my son.

It is not so much a question as to your birth, or to the line in which you are, as to the nobleness of the family tree, as it is what sort of a branch you are; what sort of a branch you may become.

The Duke of Modena flung a taunt at a Cardinal in a controversy, reminding him that his father was only a swineherd of the Dukes father. The Cardinal calmly replied, If your father had been my fathers swineherd, you would have been a swineherd still.

In the race of life it does not make so much difference where we start as how we end.

I do not mean to despise the laws of heredity. They are somewhat fixed, wise and wonderful. The child of a good father has the better chance in this world, beyond doubt. But our plea is that no matter who the fathers are, we may so live that our offspring shall be named by all succeeding generations. I call attention to Enoch in illustration.

About

NOAH

four chapters or more enwrap themselves. Gods man has a large place in history. It is hard enough for Him to find one who is faithful, but when found He always has an important commission for him.

The most important commission ever given to any man was given to this man; namely, that of saving the race. Noah did his best, but when he saw that he was not succeeding with the outside world, he turned his hope to himself as the last resort; to his family as his possible associates. That is always the last resort. Man must save himself, or he can save no one else. The man who saves himself by letting God save him, stands a good chance of being accepted by his own family, and his faith will doubtless find its answer in their salvation as well. Even if it fail with the outside world, that world will be compelled to remember, when Gods judgment comes, that this commissioned one did what he could for them.

In Hebrews we read, By faith Noah moved with fear prepared an ark to the saving of his house. The fear of man bringeth a snare. The fear of God effects salvation. The fear of man makes a coward; the fear of God incites courage. The fear of man means defeat; the fear of God accomplishes success. Be careful whom you fear! I like the man who can tremble before the Father of all. I pity the man who trembles before the face of every earthly foe.

The story is told that two men were commissioned by Wellington to go on a dangerous errand. As they galloped along, one looked at the other, saying, You are scared. Yes, replied his comrade, I am, but I am still more afraid not to do what the commander said. The first turned his horse and galloped back to the Generals tent and said, Sir, you have sent me with a coward. When I looked at him last his face was livid with fear and his form trembled like a leaf. Well, said Wellington, you had better hurry back to him, or he will have the mission performed before you get there to aid. As the man started back he met his comrade, who said, You need not go. I have performed the mission already.

It was through Noah that the Lord gave to humanity a fresh start. God is always doing that. It is the meaning of every revolutionGod overrules it for a fresh start. That is the meaning of wars they may be Satanic in origin, but God steps in often and uses for a fresh start. That is the meaning of the wiping out of nationsa fresh start, and man is always doing what he did at the firstfalling again.

Noah was a righteous man; with his family he made up the whole company of those who had been loyal to God, and one might vainly imagine that from such a family only deeds of honor, of valor, acts of righteousness would be known to earth. Alas for our hope in the best of men!

He has scarcely set foot upon dry ground when we read, (Gen 9:20-21), Noah began to be a husbandman and he planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine, and was drunken, and he was uncovered in his tent, and down the race went again! Man has fallen, and his nakedness is uncovered before God, and the shame of it is seen by his own blood and bone. Truly, by the deeds of the law no flesh shall be justified in His sight, because our deeds are not worthy of it. Faith becomes the only foundation of righteousness. That is what the eleventh chapter of Hebrews was written to teach us. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he, and when once a man has fixed his faith in the living God, and keeps it there, the God in whom he trusts keeps him, and that is his only hope. For by grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast (Eph 2:8-9).

NIMROD

the principal personage in the tenth chapter has his offices given. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord, and he was a king. The beginning of his kingdom by Babel and Erich, and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

Our attention has been called to the fact that before this chapter, nations are unknown, but now established government appears. Chapter 9:6 is the basis of it, and in Rom 13:2-4 we see that God set the seal of His approval upon it. Nimrod comes forth as the first autocrat and conqueror. One can almost hear the marches to and fro of the people in this chapter; cities are going up and civilization doubtless thought it was making advance, but how far it advances we shall speedily see.

The things in its favor were dexterously employed. Some wise men suddenly remembered that they all had one speech and said, We ought to make the most of it. True, as Joseph Parker says, Wise men are always getting up schemes that God has to bring to naught. Worldly wise men have been responsible for the most of the confusion our civilization has seen. Men who get together in the places of Shinar and embark in real estate, and lay out great projects and pull in unsuspecting associates, and start up tremendous enterprises, and say, under their breath, in their secret meetings, We will get unto ourselves a great name. We will exalt ourselves to heaven, and after the world has done obeisance to us, we will walk among the angels and witness them bow down; but God still lives and reigns. The men who count themselves greatest are, in His judgment, the least; and those that reckon themselves most farseeing, He reckons the most foolish; and those who propose to get into Heaven by ways of their own appointment, He shuts out altogether and drives them from His presence, and they become wandering stars, reserved for the blackness of darkness; for we must learn that self-exaltation brings Gods abasement. He that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. God is willing that man shall come to Heaven but, as some one has said, If we ever get to Heaven at all, it will not be by the dark and rickety staircases of our own invention, but on the ladder of Gods love in Christ Jesus.

God is willing that we should have a mansion, but the mansion of His desire is not the wooden or brick structure that would totter and fall, but the building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. God is willing that we should dwell in towers, but not the towers of pride and pomp, but those of righteousness wrought out for us in Christ Jesus.

Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley

CRITICAL NOTES.

Gen. 4:1. Gotten a man from the Lord.] Or, perhaps, Gotten a man, even Jehovah. The rendering of the A. V. is no doubt the one more generally followed. Leeser and Murphy have, from the Lord; Young, by the Lord; Gesenius, by the aid of Jehovah; Davies, with the Eternal, i.e., with His presence and help; in like manner the Sept. renders the words, ; and the Vulg. per Deum. Lange is dissatisfied with this translation as too weak, and proposes to read: a man, with Jehovah; that is, he says, one who stands in connection with Jehovah. In the blessed confidence of female hope, she would seem, with evident eagerness, to greet, in the new-born, the promised womans seed (ch. Gen. 3:15) according to her understanding of the word. We are not surprised that Prof. Tayler Lewis (in Langes Genesis) should pronounce even with Jehovah a harsh and difficult rendering; and that the juxtaposition of eth Cain eth Jehovah (she bare eth Cain, and said, I have gotten a man eth Jehovah) seems to shut us up to the rendering: I have borne a man, the very Jehovah, or, I have borne a man, the very God, the very Jehovah. There are, in truth, three considerations which must be well weighed in order to appreciate at its just value the evidence in favour of this last rendering.

(1.) The meaning of the name Jehovah (Yahweh); for which we must refer to Critical Notes on Ch. 2 and on Exodus
3. From the exposition there given it will be seen that this name of covenant grace was not wholly inapplicable to the womans promised seed, and did certainly, in a general way, comprehend the promise of the redemption.
(2.) The common usage of the particle eth (eth-Yahweh) in which it is much more frequently a sign of the definite accusative than anything else. In other words, I have gotten a man even Yahweh is the rendering suggested at first sight of the original.

(3.) The error of Eve on one point does not convict her of error on another. Her exclamation, rendered as now suggested, assumes two things:(a) That the promised seed would be Yahweh himself; and (b) that this her first-born was the promised seed. Her pardonable error as to (b), in no way brings discredit on her persuasion as to (a). And be it remembered that the naturalness of such an exclamationnot its entire correctnessis sufficient to remove any objection from this source to the translation before us. On the whole, we are constrained to regard this as the better translation.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Gen. 4:1-2

DOMESTIC LIFE

I. That it is designed for the numerical increase of humanity. The position of Adam and Eve prior to the birth of their two sons was unique. They were alone in the great world. In Eden they would not be so deeply conscious of this solitude, as there their solitude was filled with God and holy thoughts. But, now, in their altered condition of life, they would feel more keenly the need of earthly companionship. Their intercourse with Jehovah is not so easy and natural as it used to be, and, as they cannot live without fellowship, they would hail with joy the birth of a son. It is the tendency of fallen manhood to supply the place of the Divine with the human, to substitute earth for heaven. Parental loneliness is a grief to many. Their home rings not with the happy voice of childhood. But still it is impossible that any parents now can be lonely as the progenitors of our race. The intellectual, and social, and moral companionships of the outside world are too numerous to leave domestic life in solitude.

2. The position of Adam and Eve prior to the birth of their two sons was interesting. They are now in a great crisis of their lives. They have passed through all the bitter experiences of sin. They have become cognizant of Satanic influence. They are fallen creatures. They have been driven from the supreme enjoyments of a holy life and residence into the struggle of a hard life. Yet they are encircled by Divine mercy. How will they act? In what manner and spirit will they conduct their new and arduous life? Will they push further into sin, or will they begin their domestic life in purity and hope? How will their recent sin affect their rising progeny? These and kindred questions invest the position of Adam and Eve at this time with deep and extraordinary interest. Hence the domestic relations of life were intended to people the country, to provide men from the intellectual, commercial and moral pursuits of life.

II. That it should be careful as to the nomenclature of its children. Eves first-born was called Cain, her next son was designated Abel. We observe that:

1. Child nomenclature should be appropriate. The name Cain signifies possession. Eve regarded her first-born son with delight. He was her property. Some parents only regard their children as so much property, as worth so much to them in the labour market. But Cain was to our first parents a moral possession. They regarded him as the gift of God. Children are the most happy, and yet the most solemn and responsible possession of domestic life. They are not to be regarded as encumbrances, but as capable of healthy work and sublime moral destiny. They are to be well cultured. They ought to increase the spiritual value of the home to which they belong. They ought to be trained for the God from whence they came. Give them appropriate names, expressive of their early dispositions, their infantile circumstances, or of some holy thought connected with the providence of God in your history.

2. Child nomenclature should be instructive. While the name of Cain signified possession, that of Abel signified vanity. Many conjectures have been offered as to the reason of the name given to Abel. The probability is that our first parents were getting into the painful experiences of life, and embodied their verdict of it in the name of their child. Thus the name of their second son gathers up the history of their past, and the sorrows of their present condition. It would ever be a monitor to both child and parents. When either is tempted to be led away by earthly things, it would serve to remind them of their vanity. It is well to have Scriptural names in a family. They are deeply instructive.

3. Child nomenclature should be considerate. The names that parents sometimes give to children, while they are appropriate, instructive, and prophetic, should always be in harmony with good taste and refined judgment. Some parents give their children several names, as if one or two were not enough to distinguish them, or as if they wished to give them good practice in writing in future days. How many men are ashamed of the uneuphonious and jawbreaking names that have been given to them in childhood. Hence parents should be considerate in the domestic nomenclature of their offspring. Let their names be pictures of goodness, and patterns of truth.

III. That it should judiciously bring up children to some honest and helpful employments.

1. These two brothers had a daily calling. They were not allowed to idle away their time at home, without instruction to prepare them for the active duties of life, or without work to develop their growing and youthful energies. Every young man, irrespective of his social position, or great expectations, ought to be brought up to some useful employment. The world invites his effort. Commerce is calling for it. Art would prize it. Literature would repay it. Heaven will reward it. Indolence is the curse of family life.

2. Each of these brothers had his distinctive calling. Abel was a keeper of sheep. Cain was a tiller of the ground. Thus the two brothers were not engaged in the same pursuit. It is well for a family to cultivate within itself all the employments of civilized life. Then one member of it becomes the happy compliment of another, and all are in a state of comparative independence. Some men look down on the agriculturalist. They have no reason to. It is the most ancient trade. It is most honourable. It is mediatorial in its character, for it takes the gifts from the hand of God to distribute them to supply the wants of humanity. This should evoke gratitude.

3. These brothers had a healthful calling. Both of them worked in the open air. Some parents allow their boys to be confined in sultry offices, or in ill-ventilated workshops, where physical manhood is weakened by daily labour. Men should study health in their secular pursuits. Work ought to strengthen rather than weaken.

4. These brothers had a calling favourable to the development of intellectual thought. Shepherds, and tillers of the ground, ought to be men of great souls, and sublime ideas. They are students of nature. Their daily occupation brings them near to God. Many of the Psalms are the outcome of a shepherd life.

IV. That it should not be unmindful of its religious obligations. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.

1. These offerings are rendered obligatory by the mercies of the past. This first family had received many blessings at the Divine hand. Their spared lives. Their increasing family. Their fruitful gardens. It was natural that they should be inspired with the idea of religious worship. There is not a family in the world but has reason to worship God.

2. These offerings should be the natural and unselfish outcome of our commercial prosperity. Cain and Abel were prosperous in their avocations, and hence it was only natural and right that they should offer to God the fruit of the earth and the firstlings of the flock. The first fruits of trade should be presented to the Lord. They are His due. It would show our unselfish reception of His gifts. It would enrich His church, and aid His moral enterprise in the world.

3. These offerings ought to embody the true worship of the soul. People say that they can worship God without giving him anything. They sing His praise, they pray to Him, but they never give to Him the firstlings of their flocks. They are wealthy, yet they give the Lord nothing. Their worship is a mockery. If their prayers were true, their gifts would be ready. In such a case the gift is the measure of the prayer. The poor widow will give her mite. The penitent heart will give itself. LESSONS:

1. That domestic life is sacred as the ordination of God.

2. That children are the gift of God, and are often prophets of the future.

3. That working and giving are the devotion of family life.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Gen. 4:1-2. Providence has distinguished men from their first birth into the world.

The propagation of the human race is outside of Paradise, not because it is first occasioned by sin, but rather because it supposes a distinct development of mankind, and is tainted with its sin [Lange].

Adam had, no doubt, already commenced both occupations, and the sons selected each a different department. God himself had pointed out both to Adamthe tilling of the ground by the employment assigned him in Eden, which had to be changed into agriculture after his expulsion; and the keeping of cattle in the clothing which He gave him (Gen. 3:21). Moreover, agriculture can never be entirely separated from the rearing of cattle; for a man not only requires food, but clothing, which is procured directly from the hides and wool of tame animals. The different occupations of the brothers, therefore, are not to be regarded as a proof of the difference in their dispositions. This comes out first in the sacrifice, which they offered after a time to God, each one from the produce of his vocation [Keil and Delitzsch.]

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

PART SEVENTEEN
THE BEGINNING OF TRUE RELIGION

(Gen. 4:1-15)

1. Preliminary Definitions

It is doubtful that there is a more ambiguous word in our language today than the word religion. It has literally come to mean all things to all men.
The pagan etymology of the word is given us by Cicero, the Latin essayist. He derives it (De Natura Deorum, 2, 28, 72) from the Latin third-conjugation verb, relego, relegere, meaning to go over again, to consider carefully, that is, in thought, reading, and speech; and hence, as used by him, to mean reverent observance of duties to the gods. This etymology expresses fully the concept of religion that lay back of the idolatry and ritualism of pagan cults.

In our day the word is used to embrace everything from per se devotion to an object, on one hand, to sheer superstition, on the other. (In no area has this been more evident than in the innocuous wumgush expressed in the series of broadcasts some years ago, and later published in book form, under the title, This I Believe.) Considered subjectively, of course, as devotion to an object, it can take in almost any attitude or cult imaginable. From this common denominator point of view alone, to be religious is to be serious about something, to be serious enough to regard that something as of supreme value in life, and to take an attitude of commitment to the object that is so valued. Obviously, from this viewpoint, religion may have anything for its object, provided the anything is regarded as worthy of devotion. (Cf. John Deweys definition of God as the unity of all ideals arousing us to desire and actionsthis occurs in his little book, A Common Faith, p. 42.) Others have defined religion as anything in which one believes. From this point of view devil-worship could be called a religion. From this viewpoint, the object of religion may be a Party or a Cause (and indeed the Leninists do, in this sense, make a religion of atheism); it may be an idol or an icon, or a whole pantheon of anthropomorphic gods and goddesses; it may be a fetish or an amulet, or some impersonal magic force (known variously as mana, manitu, orenda, wakan, etc.); it may be the celestial bodies (sun, moon, star) or it may be Mother Earth (Terra Mater), as in the ancient Cult of Fertility; it may be an animal, a bird, or even an insect (cf. totemism); it may be the male generative organs (phallic worship); it may be man himself (hence, Comtes so-called religion of humanity); it may even be the Devil, as in some spiritualistic cults. Or, indeed it may be the God of the Bible, the living and true God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:18-32, Exo. 3:13-15, Deu. 6:4-5, Act. 17:24-31, 1Th. 1:9-10; Eph. 1:17; Eph. 1:3, etc.). The use of the word religion in our day is so equivocaland the word itself has taken on such vapidityas to make it all but meaningless. We are reminded here of the Ohio College which referred to its Religious Emphasis Week as Be Kind to God Week, and to the words of William Temple: A lot of people are going to be surprised one day to find out that God is interested in a lot of things besides religion.

Faith, hope, and love are not criteria in themselves of their worth; rather, the criteria are the objects of ones faith, the goal of ones hope, and the recipient of ones love. So it is with religion: as just being serious about something, it is of very questionable value; the value lies in the object about which one is serious and to which one gives personal devotion. In short, the nobility of a religion (like that of faith, hope, or love) is to be determined, not by its subjective aspect, but by its objective realities. To define religion solely in subjective terms is only to denature it, or at least to vitiate its significance.
2. What True Religion Is Not. (1) It is not just respectability. Mere respectability is a far cry from genuine righteousness. (2) It is not just a status symbol, although thousands of church members undoubtedly use it as such. (3) It is not ritualism. Pagan cults have always been built around solemn festivals and processions, and pagan temples have always reeked with the fumes of incense. (4) It is not a matter of barter, saying to God, You scratch my back, and Ill scratch yours. Some persons can pray like a bishop in a thunderstorm who never think of God at any other time. (5) It is not an escapist device. True religion is worshiping and serving God, not especially from fear of punishment or hope of reward, but out of sheer love for God. One of our oldtime preachers used to say that he was afraid of hell-scared Christians because one had to keep them scared all the time. As a matter of fact, irreligion is more liable than religion to be a device for escape from reality.

God and the doctor we alike adore
Just on the brink of danger, not before;
The danger passed, both are unrequited,
God is forgotten, and the doctor slighted.

(6) It is not just wishful thinking, the projection of the father-image, etc. The chief concerns of genuine religionself-abnegation, self-discipline, self-surrender, commitment (Rom. 12:1-2)are at the opposite pole from any kind of fantasy. (7) Religion is not just a convenience, as the ultra-sophisticates would have it, something that needs to be maintained to stabilize-moral and social order. Again, although it does serve these ends, they are not its primary concern. Its primary concern is the right relationship between the person and his God (Joh. 3:1-6, 2Co. 5:17-20). (8) Religion is not primarily a social institution. Nor is it designed to be used as a support of social stability. Again, although it does serve to do this as a secondary end, true religion is essentially personal: it is personal commitment to the living and true (personal) God (Joh. 4:24): it is communion of the human spirit with the Divine Spirit (Rom. 5:5; Rom. 8:26-27; Rom. 14:17; Heb. 12:14; 2Pe. 3:18). Cf. Whiteheads oft-quoted statement: Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. (9) It is not just morality in the popular sense of that term by which it is equated largely with mere respectability. However, in the true sense of the word, in the sense that morality takes in ones duties to self, to society, and to God, religion is morality. At the same time, it goes beyond morality in the sense of including ones deepest personal attitudes toward, and devotion to, and communion with, the Heavenly Father. (10) It is not nature-worship. The esthetic experience is not necessarily a religious experience. True religion looks beyond the appreciation of nature itself to the worship of natures God. Nature is the created; God is the Creator.

3. What True Religion Is. (1) I make no apology for using the term true religion. Religion, to be religion in the full sense of the word, accepts (1) the fact of the existence and the awfulness of sin, (2) the fact that man has allowed sin to separate him from God, (3) the fact that because God is the offended One, He alone has the right to state the terms on which He grants forgiveness, pardon, remission, justification, etc., and so receive the offender back into covenant relationship with Himself, (4) the fact that if man is ever to attain that righteousness and sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord (Heb. 12:14; Rom. 8:10; Rom. 14:17; Mat. 5:8), he must have a revealed system of faith and practice designed to heal the schism caused by sin and to effect his reconciliation with the Father of spirits (Heb. 12:9), (5) that, furthermore, this Remedial System must provide an adequate Atonement (Covering) for sinadequate in that it is sufficient to vindicate the Absolute Justice challenged by mans rebelliousness, and at the same time sufficient to overcome that rebelliousness by a demonstration of Gods ineffable love for the one whom He created in His own image (Joh. 3:16; Gen. 1:27; Gen. 2:7). That there is such a Remedial System, and that its details are revealed in the Bible, is our thesis here. The essence of true religion is reconciliation (2Co. 5:11-21, Eph. 2:11-22), and this is the grand objective of the Christian System as fully revealed in the New Testament. It has been rightly said that the test of a culture is the manner in which it treats that which was created in Gods image. The French mystic Amiel has written: The best measure of the profundity of any religious doctrine is given by its conception of sin and of the cure of sin. (6) The Bible has little to say about the meaning of the word religion; indeed in one instance it seems to equate religion and superstition. Scripture makes it clear, however, what true religion is per se, and how it manifests itself. Essentially, as stated above, true religion is reconciliation. This is in complete harmony with mans spiritual needs as determined by his own experience, that is, if he is honest with himself and honest with God. (Atheism is sheer stupidity, the product of ignorance or of a perverted will: no man can logically think his way into it.)

(7) Hence, the etymology of the word, in its Biblical sense, is precisely what it is said to be by Lactantius (Institutes, 4, 28) and Augustine (Retractions, 1, 13,), and others of the Church Fathers. They derive the word from the first-conjugation Latin verb, religo, religare, meaning to bind back or to bind anew. Harpers Latin Dictionary (LD, revised by Lewis and Short) has this to say (s.v.): Modern etymologists mostly agree with this latter view, assuming as root, lig, to bind, whence also lictor, lex and legare; hence, religio sometimes means the same as obligatio. The close relationship of the family of words formed around the root lig (ligament, ligature, oblige, etc.) to that formed around the root leg (lex, legis, law, hence legislate, legal, etc.) is too obvious to be ignored. These two families of words both have the connotation of a binding force. Whatever the word religion may have meant to the pagan world, the fact remains that the essence of Biblical religion is a binding of a person anew to God (healing of the schism caused by sin: the God of the Bible is the covenant God) and is fully expressed in the word reconciliation (2Co. 5:17-21). Just as the essential principle of music is harmony; of art, beauty; of government, authority; of sin, selfishness; so the fundamental principle of true religion is reconciliation (Eph. 2:11-22; 2Co. 5:18-20; 2Co. 6:14-18).

(8) In the Bible, and only in the Bible, do we find revealed the Remedial System by which is effected the healing of the wounds caused by sin. As a consequence of this healing through regeneration and continuous sanctification (2Pe. 3:8, Heb. 12:14), the righteous person ultimately attains holiness (from holon, whole), which is wholeness or perfection (that is, completeness, from per plus facere, to make thorough, complete). For the true Christian, eternal life begins in the here and now, through union with Christ (Gal. 3:27, Rom. 8:1); the attainment of spiritual wholeness is consummated, of course, in the ultimate redemption of the body (Mat. 5:48; Col. 1:12; Rom. 8:18-24; Rom. 8:11; 1Co. 15:35-58; 2Co. 5:1-10; Php. 3:20-21). (Cf. also Rom. 3:23 and 2Co. 5:20.)

4. The Formula of True Religion

True religion, as defined above, is that System of faith and practice revealed in Scripture that is designed to bind man anew to God in Covenant relationship. This systemthe actualizing of Gods Eternal Purpose, His Plan of Redemption, for mannecessarily includes two departments or agencies (the divine and the human), and three elements (irreducibles, essential institutions). The two departments are (1) the things that God has done, and will do, for us; and (2) the things we must do for ourselves in obedience to His revealed Will. That is to say, God overtures and states the conditions on which He will grant us forgiveness and remission of sins; and we, out of loving obedience, accept and comply with the terms; and so reconciliation is effected, and we are bound anew to our Father in covenant relationship. Two basic principles emerge at this point, from Biblical teaching, namely, (1) That the root of true religion on the divine side is the grace of God (Eph. 2:1-10, esp. Eph. 2:8). (a) As Campbell has written (CS, 36): The whole proposition must of necessity in this case come from the offended party. Man could propose nothing, do nothing, to propitiate his Creator, after he had rebelled against Him. Heaven, therefore, overtures; and man accepts, surrenders and returns to God. The Messiah is a gift, sacrifice is a gift, justification is a gift, the Holy Spirit is a gift, eternal life is a gift, and even the means of our personal sanctification is a gift from God. Truly, we are saved by grace. Heaven, we say, does certain things for us, and also proposes to us what we should do to inherit eternal life. . . . We are only asked to accept a sacrifice which God has provided for our sins, and then the pardon of them, and to open the doors of our hearts, that the Spirit of God may come in and make His abode with us. God has provided all these blessings for us, and only requires us to accept of them freely, without any price or idea of merit on our part. But He asks us to receive them cordially, and to give up our hearts to Him. (b) All the principles, institutions, laws and blessings of true religion issue from the grace of God. Grace, writes Cruden, is taken for the free and eternal love and favor of God, which is the spring and source of all the benefits which we receive from Him. Grace is properly defined as unmerited favor to sinners. (Joh. 3:16-17; Tit. 3:5-7; Act. 15:11; Rom. 3:24; Eph. 1:3-6; Eph. 2:4-9; Eph. 3:9-11). The mother who sacrifices herself for her sick child does it, not because she must, but because she loves the child. In like manner, to say that we are saved by grace is to say that we are saved without any necessity on Gods part to save us. This means that God did not provide the Plan of Redemption for man, with its accompanying benefits and blessings, because He was under any kind of obligation to man, or to any other creature, to do so. It means, rather, that foreseeing man in a lost condition and in danger of perishing for ever, God out of His ineffable love for him, arranged, provided and offered the necessary Plan and means to reclaim and to regenerate him, to build him up in holiness, and to prepare him for citizenship in Heaven (Php. 3:20-21, Rom. 8:28-30, Col. 1:12-15). Both Creation and Redemption have their source and root in Gods amazing love, mercy, and compassion. Every blessing of the Gospel Plan, every privilege and blessing of Christian faith, worship and practiceall are manifestations of Gods grace. In short, through Gods grace, salvation has been brought within the reach of all mankind; however, man must accept and appropriate this salvation on the terms laid down under the New Covenant (Tit. 2:11, Joh. 3:16-17, Eph. 2:8). No gift, however precious, is of any value to the recipient, unless and until the latter accepts it and appropriates it to his own good. (c) Gods grace includes, necessarily, the Atonement provided by the Son through the offering of His body and the shedding of His blood (Rom. 3:25; Rom. 5:11; 1Pe. 2:24; 1Jn. 1:7; 1Jn. 2:2; 1Jn. 4:10). (This Atonement made effectual the salvation of the elect of all Dispensations: see the ninth and tenth chapters of Hebrews.) The Son was under no necessity of providing this Covering for mans sin, but did so willingly, because of His overwhelming love for mankind (Heb. 10:10-13, Joh. 15:13), and for the joy that was set before him, the joy of making possible the redemption of lost sinners (Heb. 12:1-2). Gods grace also includes the revelation by the Holy Spirit sent forth from Heaven (1Pe. 1:12) of the conditions on which God proposes to receive men anew into covenant relationship with Himself. The Bible is the inspired and authoritative record of this divine revelation (1Th. 2:13; 2Ti. 3:16-17; 1Co. 2:6-16; Eph. 3:4-5; 1Pe. 1:10-12; 2Pe. 1:21).

(2) That the root of true religion on the human side is an obedient faith. (a) Mans part in true religion is that of accepting and appropriating the benefits and blessings of the gifts and the calling of God (Rom. 11:29). This he does by faith in Christ (Heb. 11:6; Joh. 1:10-13; Joh. 14:1; Joh. 20:30-31; Mat. 16:16; Act. 16:31; Rom. 5:1; Rom. 10:9-10; Gal. 3:26-27). This faith in Christ, however, is far more than mere intellectual assent to the Christian formula as embodied in the Good Confession (Mat. 10:32-33; Mat. 16:16; Rom. 10:9-10; 1Ti. 6:13): it is full commitment, in spirit and soul and body, to the Mind and Will of Christ (Jas. 2:18-26, Rom. 12:1-2, 1Co. 2:16; Php. 2:5; Php. 4:13; Gal. 2:20, Col. 3:17). The faith in Christ that is faith unto the saving of the soul (Heb. 10:39) necessarily includes both obedience to Christ (Joh. 14:15; Joh. 15:14; Heb. 5:8-9; 1Jn. 2:3; 1Jn. 5:2-3), and stedfast abiding in Christ (Mat. 7:24-27; Mat. 28:20; Joh. 8:31-32; Joh. 15:4-7; 2Jn. 1:9; Rev. 2:7; Rev. 14:13). It should be noted that abiding, in Scriptural terms, signifies activity on mans part, consecration, worship, servicein a word, continuing stedfastly, always abounding in the work of the Lord (1Co. 15:58, Mat. 25:31-46). The abundant life is the abounding life (Joh. 10:10). (b) Every act of the truly Christian (Spiritual) Life is an act of faith (Gal. 5:22-25). Repentance is faith turning the individual from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God (Act. 26:18, 2Co. 7:10, Rom. 2:4). The Good Confession is faith declaring itself in the presence of witnesses (Mat. 10:32-33, Rom. 10:9-10; 1Jn. 2:23; 1Jn. 4:2). Baptism is faith yielding to the authority of Christ (Mat. 28:18, Act. 2:38; Gal. 3:27; cf. Mat. 3:15). The Lords Supper is faith remembering the Atonement provided for man by the Christ of the Cross (1Co. 15:3; 1Co. 11:23-26; Mat. 26:26-29; Mar. 14:22-25; Luk. 22:14-21; Heb. 10:25). Prayer is faith communing with the Father through Christ the Son and Mediator (Heb. 11:6, Joh. 14:13, 1Ti. 2:5). Liberality is faith acknowledging Gods ownership and mans stewardship (Gen. 1:28; Psa. 24:1; Psa. 50:12; 1Co. 10:26; Act. 17:24-28; Mal. 3:8-10; Luk. 16:2-4; 1Co. 16:1-2). Meditation is faith pondering, and praise is faith exalting our God and His Anointed. The true Christian walks in faith, lives by faith, and dies in the faith (Rev. 14:13). Faith so motivates the truly religious life, that it is said in Scripture that whatsoever is not of faith is sin (Rom. 14:23). (c) True religion, in its practical aspects, that is, as lived day by day by Gods saints, is growth in holiness (Rom. 14:17, Heb. 12:14, 2Co. 3:18, 2Pe. 1:4), and love, mercy, compassion, and service toward all our fellows (Mat. 25:31-46, Luk. 10:25-37, Jas. 1:27), especially toward them that are of the household of the faith (Gal. 6:10). True religion embraces all human activities that proceed from the actual living of the two Great Commandments (Deu. 6:5, Lev. 19:18, Mat. 22:34-40). The conclusive evidence of the practice of true religion in personal life is the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit (Mat. 6:33; Mat. 7:15-23; Gal. 5:22-25). (d) The great tragedy of our time is the tendency to downgrade sin, even to scorn the fact of sin, Freudians would try to eliminate sin by curing guilt. However, the facts are so obvious that only the spiritually blind refuse to see (Mat. 15:14, Luk. 6:39); wilful ignorance of spiritual matters becomes more widespread as population growth gathers momentum. The fact is that the devil is not just a sick angel, that sin is tragically more than a mental illness to be treated by psychotherapy and rehabilitation, as the experts would have us believe. Sin is open rebelliousnessand rebellionagainst God and His moral law. And there is but one remedythe remedy provided by the agencies of true religion. The sad fact is that when the blind continue to lead the blind, and the blind continue to be willing to be led by the blind, both shall fall into the pit (Mat. 15:14). (e) The formula of true religion is the following: Amazing grace (on Gods side) plus the obedience of faith (on mans side) equals true religion, equals eternal salvation (Heb. 5:9, 2Pe. 1:11). Note, finally, Eph. 2:8by grace have ye been saved through faith; and thatthat is, that salvationnot of yourselves, it is the gift of God. This is the formula, Scripturally stated, of true religion, which embraces salvation, reconciliation, pardon, remission, justification, regeneration, sanctification, and immortalization.

5. The Dispensations of True Religion. (1) It is often taken for granted that we have revealed in Scripture at least two, and probably three, different religions, namely, the Patriarchal, the Jewish, and the Christian. Strictly speaking this is not true. In the light of Bible teaching itself, we do not have three religious systems revealed therein; we have, rather, the record of the three successive Dispensations of the one progressive revelation of true religion (cf. Isa. 28:10; Isa. 28:13; Mar. 4:28). Those who fail to recognize this fact, and those who deliberately refuse to recognize it, put themselves outside the possibility of any comprehensive understanding of the Scriptures. Only those who accept the Bible for what it isone Book, the Book of the Spirit, with one theme, redemption through Christ Jesus (Joh. 1:29), can hope to acquire any adequate knowledge of its content. (Cf. 2Ti. 2:15; 2Ti. 1:13; 2Ti. 2:2.) Failure to distinguish what belonged to each of the Covenants, and to each of the Dispensations, of Biblical religion, has been, from the beginning, a prolific source of error and confusion throughout Christendom, and even more so throughout the non-Christian world. A vast percentage of professed church members in our day have no concept whatever of these distinctions, and the so-called clergy is not far behind them in maintaining this tragic lacuna in Scripture knowledge. (2) The word dispensation is a Bible word: it occurs four times in the New Testament, in 1Co. 9:17, Eph. 1:10, Eph. 3:2, and Col. 1:25. It designates the procedure by which God, in each successive period of revelation, has chosen to dispense both His requirements and His blessings on all who choose to enter into covenant relationship with Him (Jer. 31:31-34, 2Co. 3:1-11, Heb. 8:1-13, 1Jn. 1:1-4). The Greek original, oikonomia, means literally household management, commonly designated the economy of a given system; hence it may be translated administration, provision, dispensation, or even stewardship (even God is sometimes presented in Scripture as a steward). (3) Note the following matters of fact: (a) The three Dispensations of Biblical religion are the Patriarchal, which extended from Adam to Moses at Sinai; the Jewish, which extended from Sinai to Pentecost (it was abrogated by Christs death on the Cross, Col. 2:13-15, but God graciously permitted it to continue as a social institution down to the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70); and the Christian, extending from Pentecost to the Second Coming of Christ. (b) Each Dispensation may properly be designated a dispensation of divine grace; however, this phrase is descriptive, in its full sense, only of the present or Christian Dispensation (which might also be designated the Dispensation of the Holy Spirit, who came on the Day of Pentecost to abide in, and to vitalize, the Church, the Body of Christ: Act. 2:38, Rom. 5:5, Eph. 2:22). It will be recalled that Alexander Campbell spoke of the Patriarchal Dispensation as the starlight age, the Jewish Dispensation as the moonlight age, the special ministry of John the Baptizer to the Jewish nation as the twilight age, and the Christian Dispensation as the sunlight age, of Divine revelation. (c) Dispensations changed as the type of priesthood was changed. Throughout the Patriarchal Dispensation the patriarch or father of the family (which frequently took in several generations of offspring) acted as priest, that is, as mediator between God and the members of his household (Heb. 7:4, Act. 7:8). Throughout the Jewish (or Mosaic) Dispensation, the Levitical (Aaronic) priesthood served as mediators between God and the nation, the children of Israel (Exo. 6:16-20; Exo., ch. 28; Num. 17:8-11, Heb. 5:1-10; Heb. 7:11-28). Under the Christian Dispensation, the New Covenant, all Christians are priests unto God, and Christ Himself is their High Priest (1Pe. 2:5; Heb. 7:16-17; Heb. 9:11-12; Heb. 9:24-28; 1Ti. 2:5; Rev. 1:6; Rev. 5:10; Rev. 20:6, etc.). Thus it will be noted that Dispensations changed as the type of priesthood changedfrom the family to the national to the universal (Joh. 1:29).

6. The Beginning of True Religion (Gen. 4:1-5 a).

1 And the man knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said: I have gotten a man with the help of Jehovah. 2 And again she bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto Jehovah. 4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And Jehovah had respect unto Abel and to his offering: 5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.

A. Campbell (LP, 131, 132): There was no religion before the fall of man, either in Heaven or Paradise. That would be a startling proposition in the pulpit, yet it is irrefutably true. What is the meaning of the word religio, from which our word religion is derived? Is it not to bind again? Could there be a second binding, if there had not been an antecedent bond? There was no religion in Paradise, while it was the home of Adam, for there was no bond broken. Accordingly, religion began after the fall of man. In like manner, there was no religion in heaven, There was superlative admiration and adoration, but no religion. This brief discussion of the word religion will save you many blunders and much unprofitable thought; provided you understand how it radiates and ramifies throughout all the statutes of morality and piety. Now, while there was no religion in Paradise, and no necessity for it, until there was a bond broken and rights forfeited, there was piety. What is the meaning of the word piety? It is no more nor less than gratitude. An ungrateful being is a monster; hence Paul teaches us to hate ingratitude. Ingratitude is religious sin, and sin is no more nor less than ingratitude. Paul once said, let children learn to show piety, by gratitude to their parents. In consequence of sin, man is now in a preternatural state, not supernatural. The grace of God enables him to rise to the supernatural state. To this end Christianity is a scheme of reconciliation, and where there is no alienation, there can be no reconciliation. Campbell again (CS, 36 and 36, n): Religion, as the term imports, began after the Fall; for it indicates a previous apostasy. A remedial system is for a diseased subject. The primitive man could love, wonder and adore, as angels now do, without religion; but man, fallen and apostate, needs religion in order to his restoration to the love and worship and enjoyment of God. Religion, then, is a system of means of reconciliationan institution for bringing man back to Godsomething to bind man anew to love and delight in God. Religio with all its Latin family, imports a binding again, or tying fast that which was dissolved. Religion was made for man, for fallen man, and not man for religion. According to the Genesis record, true religion had its beginning in the account of the sacrifices offered to Yahweh by Cain and Abel (Gen. 4:1-15).

7. The Elements of True Religion. By elements we mean the irreducibles, the essentials (those factors without which true religion could not be true religion). These elements are, and have been from the beginning, the Altar, the Sacrifice, and the Priesthood. (1) The Altar in Patriarchal times was an artificial erection of earth, turf, and unhewn stones, on which the patriarch offered sacrifices for his household. It was to serve as a place of meeting for man with God, who was to be approached with a gift in the form of a sacrifice (Gen. 8:20; Gen. 12:7-8; Gen. 12:13-18; Gen. 22:9; Gen. 26:25; Gen. 33:20; Exo. 17:15; Exo. 20:24-26; Jos. 8:30; Jos. 22:10; Jdg. 6:25-27; Jdg. 21:4; 1Sa. 7:17; 1Sa. 14:35; 2Sa. 24:21; 2Sa. 24:25; 1Ki. 18:30-32; 2Ch. 4:1, etc.). In the Jewish Dispensation, the Altar was incorporated into the Tabernacle, and later into the Temple, and was known as the Altar of Burnt-Offering (Exo. 27:1-8, 2Ch. 4:1). In the Christian Dispensation, Christ Himself is both Altar and Sacrifice. Some hold that at Calvary our Lord offered up His divine nature or the Altar of His perfect human nature (Joh. 1:14; Mat. 1:18-24; cf. Heb. 4:15; Heb. 7:26; Exo. 20:25-26). (2) Sacrifice under the Patriarchal and Jewish Dispensations was usually that of a lamb, a male, the firstling of the flock, without blemish and without spot (Gen. 4:4, Exo. 12:5). These animal sacrifices were, of course, substitutionary and typical: they were designed to point to (prefigure) the Supreme Sacrifice, that of the Lamb of God, our Passover, the Perfect Atonement for the sin of the world (Joh. 1:29, Isa. 53:7, 1Pe. 1:19, 1Co. 5:7, Rev. 13:8). (3) The type of Priesthood changed, as noted above, with the change of Dispensationsfrom the Patriarchal Priesthood to the Aaronic or national Priesthood, both of which were abrogated with the ratification of the New Covenant, and were superseded by the universal Priesthood of all obedient believers in Christ, with Christ Himself acting as their great High Priest (1Pe. 2:5; Romans 12; Rev. 1:6; Rev. 5:10; Rev. 20:6; Heb. 7:26-28; Heb. 9:11-12; Heb. 9:24-28).

7. The Story of Cain and Abel. (1) Geography. There is no indication in the Genesis record as to where the events occurred that are related here. It is to be taken for granted, however, that they took place somewhere outside, and perhaps in the vicinity of, the Garden of Eden, the gates of which had been closed forever to fallen man. (2) Chronology. It is impossible to formulate any accurate chronology of the events related in the early chapters of Genesis. Usshers figures (now almost uniformly rejected), following in general the Hebrew text literally, cover a period from 4004 B.C. for the Creation, to 2348 B.C. for the Flood. Other authorities, following the chronology of the Septuagint and of the writings of Josephus, range from 5426 B.C. for the Creation, to 3171 B.C. for the Deluge. In terms of pottery chronology, the early archaeological periods of Palestinian culture are usually given as follows: the Neolithic Age, c. 60004500 B.C. (marking the development of plant and animal domestication, with pottery first appearing toward the close); the Chalcolithic Age, c. 45003000 B.C. (the period of irrigation culture, and of the widespread use of pottery, in Palestine); the Bronze Age, c. 30001200 B.C. (the period generally of Egyptian control in Palestine, terminating in the bondage of Israel in Egypt, the Exodus, and the Conquest of Canaan under Joshua); the Iron Age, c. 1200333 B.C. (from the time of the Judges to that of Alexander of Macedon and the Hellenistic Period). Because of certain incalculable factors it is impossible to formulate any accurate chronology of the events related in Genesis prior to the Call of Abraham. The following tersely cogent statement will suffice here for the present: The creation is sufficiently dated by that immortal phrase, in the beginning . . ., so distant is it (NBD, 213). (For elaboration of the chronological problems. of the events recorded in Genesis, see infra, Part XVIII.)

(3) Gen. 4:1. And the man knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, etc. Note Whitelaws comment (PCG, 77): The Divine blessing (ch. Gen. 1:28), which in its operation had been suspended during the period of innocence, while yet it was undetermined whether the race should develop as a holy or fallen seed, now begins to take effect (cf. ch. Gen. 18:14, Rth. 4:13, Heb. 11:11). (ButDoes not Scripture teach that Gods Eternal Purpose included His Scheme of Redemption, in view of His foreknowledge of mans lapse into sin? Does not the Cosmic Plan envision Redemption as the consummating phase of Creation?) (Cf. 1Pe. 1:18-20, Mat. 25:34, Eph. 1:4; Rev. 13:8; Rev. 17:8.) And bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man with the help of Jehovah, etc. The meaning of the name is metalworker or smith; here, however, it is represented as a derivation of a word meaning acquire, get (IBG, 517); hence, a possession. Cain seems to have been a progenitor of the Kenites (Gen. 15:19, Num. 24:21-22). Note Eves statement, I have gotten a man along with Yahweh, that is, in cooperation with Yahweh. Was this just the spontaneous outcry of joyful motherhood? Or was it essentially an utterance of faith, harking back to the oracle of Gen. 3:15; that is, Did Eve suppose that this fruit of her womb was the oracularly promised seed? Does her designation of this newborn babe as a man indicate that she had previously borne daughters only? Some commentators, including Murphy, think this possible. Certainly her statement was a manifestation of her faith in Yahweh, and in all likelihood she did recognize in Cains birth the earnest and guarantee of the promised seed. However, the impression conveyed by the narrative indicates that this was her first-born, and indeed the first-born of the human family. Whether either the Man or the Woman was aware of the Messianic implication in the oracle of Gen. 3:15 we have no means of knowing. Scripture teaching seems to indicate, however, that this implication became a matter of progressive revelation, reaching its highest point in the testimonies of the Hebrew prophets and especially in the work of John the Baptizer, the last of this great prophetic line.

(4) Gen. 4:2. Does this mean that the brothers were twins? Some have thought so, basing their view on the repeated phrases, thy brother and my brother throughout the narrative. It seems obvious, however, that this is conjecture: no such idea is necessarily conveyed in the text. Note that the name Abel means breath, vanity, etc. was this an unconscious melancholy prophecy of his premature removal by the hand of fratricidal rage? Certainly it was a proper designation of the short span of life and its tragic end that was experienced by this brother. (Cf. Jas. 4:14; Job. 7:7; Job. 14:1-2; Psa. 39:5; Psa. 102:3; Psa. 144:4; Ecc. 1:2; Isa. 40:6-8; 1Pe. 1:24-25.) Note that whereas Abel became a keeper of sheep (a sheepherder, sheep including goats, of course), Cain chose to be a tiller of the ground (a farmer). Both occupations had already been Divinely authorized by the terms of the penalty imposed on mankind (Gen. 3:17-19) and the coats of skins provided for Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:21). Is this an attempt to explain why the brothers offered different kinds of sacrifice? Did Cains choice of occupationthe agricultural rather than the pastoralserve to point up an innate rebelliousness, as if to assert himself and to his fellows his sheer independence, and his sovereignty over nature as well, by his toilsome wresting of a livelihood from the ground which was under a Divine anathema? On the other hand, in choosing the agricultural life was not Cain simply carrying out the terms of the penalty previously decreed on fallen man? We see no really justifiable grounds for necessarily relating differences of moral character in Cain and Abel to their respective choices of occupations.

8. The Beginning of Sacrifice (Gen. 4:1-5 a). (1) As noted heretofore, the beginning of sacrifice marked the beginning of true religion. Although the essential element of sacrificethe shedding of bloodis intimated in Gods provision of coats of skins for Adam and Eve, the first account of sacrifice as a Divine institution occurs here in connection with the story of Cain and Abel. Cain, we are told, brought an offering of the fruit of the ground unto Yahweh, but Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and the fat pieces thereof (the best of the best). What was the consequence? God, we are told, accepted Abel and his offering (by what kind of sign we have no means of knowing, cf. Lev. 9:24, 1Ch. 21:26, 2Ch. 7:1, 1Ki. 18:38), but He rejected Cain and his offering. We encounter here one of the most profound and most significant problems of Divine revelation, namely, Why did God accept Abels offering and reject Cains? The answer to this problem might well be said to be the key to the understanding of Gods Eternal Purpose and His Plan of Redemption for mankind.

(2) Throughout this entire course it has been repeatedly emphasized that one cannot expect to get a correct and comprehensive understanding of Scripture unless he studies each text or passage, not only in the light of its immediate context, but also in the light of Bible teaching as a whole; and, it might well be added, unless he is willing to be open-hearted in accepting what he gets by this method. Perhaps in no Scripture narrative do we find examples of the confusion which results, and of the fantastic ideas which can be put forward by persons biased in some respect, than we find in the various explanations commonly offered as solutions of the problems which arise from the story of Cain and Abel, their respective offerings, and the Divine responses to them. Why was Abels offering accepted, and Cains rejected, by Yahweh? Obviously, the distinction is to be traced (a) to the dispositions of the two brothers, or (b) to the materials of the respective offerings, or (c) perhaps to both of these factors. Cornfeld (AtD, 22) suggests the following: Probably soil cultivation and cattle raising developed side by side; but Gods preference for Abels offering of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions reflects a Semitic standard of values which regards the austere nomadic life as the good life. (To be sure, Jewish commentators can hardly afford to accept the simple New Testament explanation of this problem as presented below.) Skinner also suggests the entirely subjective explanation (ICCG, 105, 106): Why was the one sacrifice accepted and not the other? . . . Since the reason is not stated, it must be presumed to be one which the first hearers would understand for themselves; and they could hardly understand that Cain, apart from his occupation and sacrifice, was less acceptable to God than Abel. On the other hand they would readily perceive that the material of Cains offering was not in accordance with primitive Semitic ideas of sacrifice. . . . The whole manner of the narration suggests that the incident is conceived as the initiation of sacrificethe first spontaneous expression of religious feeling in cultus. If that impression be sound, it follows also that the narrative proceeds on a theory of sacrifice: the idea, viz., that animal sacrifice alone is acceptable to Yahve. . . . Behind this may lie (as Gunkel thinks) the idea that pastoral life as a whole is more pleasing to Yahve than husbandry. (IBG, 518): It is possible that a reason was given in an original document, and that its omission by J was a piece of polemic against the peasant custom of bringing the fruit of the ground as an offering to the Lord, instead of the time-honored nomad offering of an animal. See also HBD, 2: Whether the gift of Abel was more acceptable because it was blood, the essence of life, instead of grain, or because it was offered with greater sincerity, is not clear. In the story of Abels death we read of the struggle between pastoral and agricultural phases of society. Note that these comments presuppose only a human theory (or tradition) of sacrifice: the possibility of a Divine ordinance of sacrifice is not even taken into consideration. (JB, 19 n.): The younger is preferred to the elder. This theme runs throughout the whole Bible and, in Genesis, its first appearance here is followed by others (Isaac preferred to Ishmael, Jacob to Esau, Rachel to Leah). Such preference demonstrates the freedom of Gods choice, his contempt for earthly standards of greatness, and his regard for the lowly. (But in each of these cases mentioned, the Divine choice was not an arbitrary one, but in response to certain spiritual excellences (aspects of faith), or lack of them, on the part of the persons involved). Tos (ABOT, 63): The Yahwist editor did not want to present absolute genealogies or objective descendency. His purpose was to bring home the lesson: Once man rebels against God he becomes an enemy even to his fellow man. Therefore, he used a traditional story in which God favored a good shepherd over his wicked brother who was a farmer. This was a story that would be treasured and appreciated by the Hebrews who had been a pastoral people before they settled in Palestine. Elliott (MG, 54) presents a somewhat different view: Entering into the acceptance and nonacceptance was the matter of attitude. Certainly there was some degree of sincerity on the part of both men. The key, however, is that Abel brought the very first and best. The word used for his offering was firstling or best of the flock. It comes from a root which indicates something carefully chosen. Abel recognized himself as Gods slave with God as the master to whom the first and the best should be given. Cain simply gave a token to show that he was grateful for services received; he felt it was the thing to do, much in the spirit of tipping the porter for carrying the bags. . . . Cain may have given a little grudgingly, as though he was forced to do so by his superior, very much the way some folk give the tithe. The lesson underscored is that a gift, regardless of what, or how large or small, is a blessing to the giver only if his heart is right as he gives. Here, the essence of religion is impliedgiving God the very best. (Cf. 1 Samuel 12, 1Sa. 15:22; Isa. 1:11-13; Jer. 7:3-10; Jer. 7:21-26; Hos. 2:8-13; Amo. 5:14-15; Mic. 6:8; Lev. 19:17.) This author goes on to say: The correct answer to the acceptance of the offering is to be seen in what has been suggested above and not in any theory of the blood versus the nonblood offering, for the laws on sacrifice had not been given yet. This last statement is a little short of amazing, to say the least. Does this writer, or anyone else, have any legitimate ground for asserting so dogmatically that the law of sacrifice had not as yet been given, or that the matter of blood versus nonblood offering had nothing to do with the human attitudes and the Divine responses in this tragic case? Especially does anyone have sufficient evidence to support such statements in view of the fact that they flatly contradict the plain teaching of the New Testament?

(3) It will be noted that in all the excerpts quoted above the matter of faith and its source, or the lack of it, on the part of the worshipers is completely ignored. One wonders just why this is so. Why did Yahweh accept Abels offering of the firstlings of his flock, but reject Cains offering of the fruit of the ground? Why any offering at all, if the laws of sacrifice had not been given? The only answer that can be cited which really answers the problems involved in the interpretation of this narrative is the simplest that can be given, the answer which is presented with such crystal clarity in the New Testament, viz., that Abel made his offering by faith and thus obeyed Gods Word, whereas Cain presumed to assert his will above the will of God and brought an offering of his own choice. Human presumption, assertion of human authority in neglect of, or in disobedience to, the sovereignty of God, is indeed the way of Cain (Jud. 1:11, 1Jn. 3:12).

(4) Heb. 11:4By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts: and through it, he being dead yet speaketh. But how is faith acquired? In only one way, insofar as the Scriptures inform us: Faith comes from hearing the Word of God (Rom. 10:17, Gal. 3:2; Gal. 3:5; 1Co. 1:21). (This is a fact, proved to be such in human experience: the whole evangelistic (missionary) program of the church is based on the fact that where there is no preaching, no hearing, there is no faith, no conversion, no church.) If Abel was motivated by faith in presenting his offering to Yahweh, it necessarily follows that the offering was in harmony with the Divine Word, and hence that the law of sacrifice had been divinely ordained. This means, of course, that the essentials of the institution of sacrifice, the observance of which marked the beginning of true religion, had already been made clear to Adam and Eve and their offspring. This means, too, that it had already been decreed by God that the very essence of sacrifice (and animal sacrifice was the primary and essential form of sacrifice under the Old Covenant) was the shedding of precious blood because the life is in the blood (Lev. 17:11, Heb. 9:22). Therefore, it follows that God accepted Abels offering because Abel obeyed the Divine law of sacrifice in presenting a blood offering; Cain, on the other hand, disobeyed this most fundamental aspect of true religion. Indeed the shedding of blood is intimated in Gen. 3:21 : we are told here that God, as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, made coats of skins, and clothed them: this necessitated the slaying of animals and hence the shedding of their blood. This reasoning is further authenticated by the language of Jesus in which He referred to Abel the righteous (Mat. 23:35; cf. Luk. 11:51, Heb. 12:24). What is righteousness, and who is a righteous person? The righteousness which is of faith consists in obeying the Divine Word (Rom. 10:6-10; Gen. 6:19, Heb. 11:7-8, etc.); hence the righteous person is one whose disposition is at all times to do the Fathers Will to the full (Mat. 3:13). This was the disposition which Abel manifested in bringing his offering to Yahweh. This was the disposition which Cain did not manifest: on the contrary, he manifested the disposition to put his own will (his own way of doing things) above Gods Will (Gods way of doing things). What could a just God do but reject his offering? Thus it will be seen that Gods acceptance of Abels offering and His rejection of Cains offering was not an arbitrary act on His part: indeed we are told repeatedly in Scripture that our God is no respecter of persons as such (Deu. 10:17, 2Ch. 19:7, Act. 10:34, Rom. 2:11, Gal. 2:6, Eph. 6:9, 1Pe. 1:17). In a word, both the inner attitudes of the two brothers, and their respective offerings as well, were the factors which elicited Gods responses in this case: their offerings were simply proofs of the interior state of their hearts, respectively. These facts are all corroborated by the teaching of the Bible, from the first to the last, that every lamb that was ever offered on the Patriarchal and Jewish altars was divinely intended to typify (point forward to) the Lamb of GodChrist our Passoverwhose Vicarious Sacrifice actualized the election (salvation) of all obedient believers of all generations of mankind, those of the Old Covenant as well as those of the New (Joh. 1:29; Joh. 1:35; 1Co. 5:7; Isa. 53:7; Act. 8:32-33; 1Pe. 1:19; Rev. 5:6; Rev. 5:8; Rev. 5:12; Rev. 6:1 ff.; Heb., chs. 7, 8, 9; Heb. 10:1-4; Heb. 10:8-14, etc.). Moreover, it should be noted here that Cains rebelliousness is clearly indicated by the fact that he presented an offering from the ground, the very ground which had already been placed under a Divine anathema (Gen. 3:17, Rom. 8:20-22). To disregard these truths of Scripture is to disregard the Word of God itself, and to flout the testimony of the Holy Spirit. (See especially Heb. 10:29.) It is to spread confusion in an area in which the truth is so simple and clear that wayfaring men, yea fools, need not err therein (Isa. 35:8). Finally, it follows that the other integral parts (elements) of true religion were present here, viz., the Altar and the Priesthood. Although no mention of the altar occurs in the text, it is necessary to infer its use: altar and offerings are inseparably linked in the institution of sacrifice. Moreover, this event occurred at the very fountainhead of the Patriarchal Dispensation with its patriarchal (or family) priesthood; hence Abel must have served in that capacity. The time element connecting mans sojourn in Eden with his history in the world outside is so indefinite (as a matter of fact it is completely ignored) in the Genesis record that we cannot rule out the possibility that many, many personseven as descendants of Adam and Evewere on earth by this time (cf. Gen. 5:3-5).

(Note here Scripture passages in which God is represented as manifesting respect for an object or the person associated with it (Gen. 4:4-5; Exo. 2:25, Lev. 26:9, 2Ki. 13:23, Psa. 138:6). Note other texts in which God is represented as not being a respecter of persons (Deu. 10:17, 2Ch. 19:7, Act. 10:34, Rom. 2:11, Gal. 2:6, Eph. 6:9, 1Pe. 1:17). Are these contradictory passages? Not at all. The two series simply have reference to very different kinds of respect. The former signifies a righteous and benevolent respect based on proper discrimination as to character; the latter signifies God as acting without partiality (cf. Haley, ADB, p. 81).)

To summarize: Why did God accept Abels offering and reject Cains? The answer is, unequivocally: Because Abel acted by faith, and Cain did not; because Abel did what God had told him to do, and Cain did not. Lange (CDHCG, 256): It is a fact that a difference in the state of heart of the two brothers is indicated in the appearance of their offerings. . . . This difference appears to be indicated, in fact, as a difference in relation to the earliness, the joyfulness, and freshness of the offerings, After the course of some time, it means, Cain offered something from the fruits of the ground. But immediately afterward it is said expressly, Abel had offered (preterite); and farther it is made prominent that he brought of the firstlings, the fattest and best. These outward differences in regard to the time of the offerings, and the offerings themselves, have indeed no significance in themselves considered, but only as expressing the difference between a free and joyful faith in the offering, and a legal, reluctant state of heart. It has too the look as though Cain had brought his offering in a self-willed way, and for himself alonethat is, he brought it to his own altar, separated, in an unbrotherly spirit, from that of Abel. Murphy (MG, 148, 149): There was clearly an internal moral distinction in the intention or disposition of the offerers. Habel had faiththat confiding in God which is not bare and cold, but is accompanied with confession of sin, and a sense of gratitude for His mercy, and followed by obedience to His will. Cain had not this faith. He may have had a faith in the existence, power, and bounty of God; but it wanted that penitent returning to God, that humble acceptance of His mercy, and submission to His will, which constitute true faith. . . . But, in this case, there is a difference in the things offered. The one is a vegetable offering, the other an animal; the one a presentation of things without life, the other a sacrifice of life. Hence the latter is called pleion thusia; there is more in it than in the former. The two offerings are therefore expressive of the different kinds of faith in the offerers. They are the excogitation and exhibition in outward symbol of the faith of each. M. Henry (CWB, 13): That which is to be aimed at in all acts of religion is Gods acceptance: we speed well if we attain this, but in vain do we worship if we miss it (2Co. 5:9). . . . The great difference was this, that Abel offered in faith, and Cain did not. There was a difference in the principle upon which they went. Abel offered with an eye to Gods will as his rule, and Gods glory as his end, but Cain did what he did only for companys sake, or to save his credit, not in faith, and so it turned into sin to him. Abel was penitent; Cain was unhumbled; his confidence was within himself. (Let me suggest here that for homiletic purposes Matthew Henrys Commentary on the Whole Bible, edited by Church, published by Zondervan, is in a class by itself.)

9. The Divine Origin of Sacrifice. The first specific reference to the Plan of Redemption is found in the oracle that the Seed of the Woman should crush the Old Serpents head (Gen. 3:15). The second is found in the institution of sacrifice, of which we have the earliest account in the story of Cain and Abel. The Divine origin of sacrifice is proved by the following facts: (1) By the very character of the institution itself. Although having moral significance in the sense that it involved the moral virtue of obedience to God, it is essentially a positive institution. W. T. Moore (in Campbell, LP, 111, n.): The Moral is commanded, because it is right; the Positive is right, because it is commanded. Again (ibid., 110, n.): The idea of Sacrifice lies at the foundation of all religion. And this is very conclusive proof that religion itself is of Divine origin, for no man could ever have originated the idea of sacrifice. That man would have come to the conclusion, a priori, that the life of an innocent victim would propitiate Deity is an absurdity which is equaled only by the insanity of infidelity itself. The first thought to a mind, unassisted by revelation, would be that the anger of Deity would be kindled at the idea of such a Sacrifice; and consequently, it would never have been used as a means of appeasing anger, unless done by the authority of some Divine command. Hence, we conclude that God originated it. Whitelaw (PCG, 78): The universal prevalence of sacrifice rather points to Divine prescription rather than to mans invention as its proper source. Had Divine worship been of purely human origin, it is almost certain that greater diversity would have prevailed in its forms. Besides, the fact that the mode of worship was not left to human ingenuity under the law, and that will-worship is specifically condemned under the Christian dispensation (Col. 2:23), favors the presumption that it was Divinely appointed from the first. Campbell (CS, 38): Sacrifice, doubtless, is as old as the Fall. The institution of it is not recorded by Moses. But he informs us that God had respect for Abels offering, and accepted from him a slain lamb. Now had it been a human institution, this could not have been the case; for a divine warrant has always been essential to any acceptable worship. The question, Who has required this at your hands? must always be answered by a thus saith the Lord, before an offering of mortal man can be acknowledged by the Lawgiver of the universe. In vain, said the Great Teacher, do you worship God, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. God accepted the sacrifices of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc., and in the Jewish system gave many laws and enactments concerning it. Campbell (CS, 38, n.): It is a curious and remarkable fact, that God covered Adam and Eve with the skins of the first victims of death, instead of their fig-leaf robes. This may have prefigured the fact that, while sin was atoned or expiated as respects God by the life of the victim, the effect as respects man was a covering for his nakedness and shame, or his sin, which divested him of his primitive innocence and beauty, and covered him with ignominy and reproach. We cannot imagine that Cain and Abel themselves originated the idea of bringing offerings to the Lord. Evidently, as Errett writes (EB, in loco): God had made known to our first parents some means and methods of approach to Him, and their children were trained in the observance of these.

(2) By its universality, (For an excellent example of sacrificial rites as practised by the Greeks under Agamemnon, during the Trojan War, see Homers Illiad, Bk. I, 11. 428487.) As Faber has written: Throughout the whole world there is a notion prevalent that the gods can be appeased only by bloody sacrifices. There is no heathen people that can specify a time when they were without sacrifice. All have had it from a time which is not reached by their genuine records. Tradition alone can be brought forward to account for its origin. Again, Dummelow (CHB, Intro., 139): The dependence on an unseen spiritual being, or beings; the consciousness of broken communion; the consequent need of some new, heaven-given means of accessthese ideas, as well as the simpler and more childlike thought of tribute or of free-will offerings of homage and thankfulness, lie at the root of those sacrificial customs in which religion has always expressed itself even among pagans. Toy (IHR, 505, 506): The various theories of the origin and efficacy of sacrifice (omitting the ambassadorial conception) are thus reducible to three types: it is regarded as a gift, as a substitution, or as an act of securing union (physical or spiritual) with the divine. These have all maintained themselves, in one form or another, up to the present day. As with respect to all universal traditions, e.g., those of a Tree of Life, mans Golden Age of innocence, his Temptation and Fall, the role of Satan in these events, Noahs Flood, etc., so it is with that of the institution of Sacrifice. It points up two facts in bold relief: (a) the fact of diffusion from a common origin, and (b) the fact of corruptions, by diffusion, of an original purity. Concepts that are so wide-spread as to be woven into the traditions of peoples everywhere, no matter how degenerate they may have become as a result of popular diffusion, point back unmistakably to genuine originals. No counterfeit ever existed that did not presuppose a genuine.

(3) By the distinction between clean and unclean animals, explicitly stated to have prevailed as early as the time of Noah (Gen. 7:2). It follows by necessary inference that this distinction must have been characteristic of the institution of sacrifice from the time of the Fall and the consequent ordination of the elements of true religion.

(4) By the corroborative testimony of Scripture: as evidenced (a) by the correlation of such passages as Heb. 11:4 and Rom. 10:17; (b) by the tenor of Bible teaching from beginning to end that animal sacrifice under the Old Covenant was substitutionary, hence typical of the great Antitype, the Lamb of God, whose Vicarious Sacrifice provides Atonement (covering) for the sin of mankind (Joh. 3:16; Joh. 1:29; 1Co. 5:7, 1Pe. 2:24, Heb. 9:26; cf. Isaiah 53, Isa. 63:1). (It must be remembered that there was no remission of sin under the Old Covenant, but only a passing over of sin by Yahweh from year to year. Cf. Rom. 3:21-26; Act. 17:30; Act. 24:16; Heb. 9:6-10; Heb. 9:23-28; Heb. 10:1-4, etc.)

10. The Basic Design of Sacrifice, that is, in Gods Eternal Purpose, was twofold: (1) To give to the sinner a means of approaching God and to give to God a place of meeting with the sinner; and (2) as stated above, to point forward in type to the Supreme Sacrifice at Calvary: every Patriarchal and Jewish altar prefigured the death of Gods Only Begotten, Christ our Passover (Joh. 1:29, 2Co. 5:7). Gods positive ordinances are divine appointments. When a man agrees, for instance, to meet a friend at a certain time and place, that is an appointment. So Gods positive ordinances are Divine appointments where Divine grace and human faith meet in a holy tryst. In olden times, God and man met at the altar of sacrifice (Gen. 22:1-19, Exo. 20:24-26). Similarly, the Christian ordinances are Divine appointments. In the ordinance of Christian baptism, God meets the penitent believer and there confers upon him, through the efficacy of the atoning blood of Christ, the full and free blessing of remission of sins. Hence, baptism is said in Scripture to be the institution in which sins are washed away (Act. 22:16); and is also said explicitly to be for salvation (Mar. 16:16, 1Pe. 3:21), for remission of sins (Act. 2:38), and for induction into Christ (Gal. 3:26-27). The Lords Supper is likewise the divinely-appointed observance in which the elect of God under the New Covenant meet with their Savior, King, and Elder Brother, Jesus Christ, in solemn religious convocation and communion, on each first day of the week (Mat. 26:26-29, Luk. 22:14-20, Act. 20:7; 1Co. 10:16; 1Co. 11:23-29; 1Co. 16:1-2, etc.). On the human side, then, the ordinances are essentially manifestations and acts of faith. When the truth is once fully appreciated by Christian people that the Lords ordinances are not rites, forms or meaningless ceremonies, but solemn, spiritual, heart acts, essentially acts of faith, and solemn meetings with our Heavenly Father and with our Great Redeemer, then indeed a great spiritual awakening will be engendered throughout the whole of Christendom. Then, but not until then, it may be possible for Christian unity to be achieved (Joh. 17:20-21). The change most needed in our time is a proper evaluation of the Divine ordinances in the light of Scripture teaching (cf. Rom. 6:1-11; Rom. 6:17).

11. The Fourfold Significance of Sacrifice. (1) It is a propitiation, in the sense that it is designed to satisfy the demands of justice on the sinner (cf. Rom. 3:25; 1Jn. 2:2; 1Jn. 4:10). Gods moral kingdom, like His physical world, is established upon a foundation of Divine law. Transgression of this Divine law is sin (1Jn. 3:4). Consequently, when the Divine law is disobeyed, justice requires that something be done about it, in order that the sanctity and majesty of the law may be properly sustained. Even under human government, to allow infraction of the civil law to go unpunished or unpropitiated, is to encourage further violation and rebellion, and eventually, in effect at least, to completely nullify the law itself. A great many human teachers, in their eagerness to emphasize the love of God, completely, ignore the fact of His unfailing justice (Psa. 89:14). In virtue of His justice, therefore, He cannot consistently allow transgression of His laws to go unpropitiated (unvindicated) and at the same time extend mercy to the transgressor. To do so would be to put a premium on sin and thus to undermine the foundations of His government. Campbell (CS, 39): The indignity offered His person, authority and government, by the rebellion of man, as also the good of all His creatures, made it impossible for Him, according to justice, eternal right, and His own benevolence, to show mercy without sacrifice. . . . In this sense only, God could not be gracious to man in forgiving him without a propitiation, or something that could justify Him both to Himself and all His creatures. In short, God could not be wholly just and extend mercy to the sinner, without an offering from or for the latter, sufficient to satisfy the claims of perfect Justice with respect to the Divine law violated. (Cf. Rom. 3:24-26.) Propitiation is, in a sense, a legal term. (2) It is a reconciliation, in the sense that it is designed to bring the offended party and the offender together, and so to make peace between them. Insofar as it honors law and justice, then, sacrifice reconciles God to forgive; and insofar as it brings love and mercy to the offender, it overcomes the rebellion in his heart and reconciles him to his offended Sovereign. Campbell (CS, 40): Gods anger is turned away; not a turbulent passion, not an implacable wrath, but that moral sentiment of justice which demands the punishment of violated law, is pacified or well pleased; and mans hatred and animosity against God is subdued, overcome and destroyed in and by the same sacrifice. Thus, in fact, it is, in reference to both parties, a reconciliation. It is that factor which makes covenant relationship between God and man possible to both (Eph. 2:15-16, 2Co. 5:18-20). (3) It is an expiation, in the sense that it is designed actually to cleanse and purify the heart of the guilt and pollution of sin. Campbell (CS, 40): The terms purification or cleansing are in the common version preferred to expiation. . . . If any one prefer purification to expiation, or even cleansing to expiation, so long as we understand each other, it is indeed a matter of very easy forbearance. The main point is, that sacrifice cancels sin, atones for sin, and puts it away. He put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (Heb. 9:26): this is expiation. (4) If is a redemption, in the sense that it is designed to buy back the sinner from the bondage of sin into which he has sold himself and to consecrate him anew to the service of God. Rom. 3:24, 1Co. 6:19-20, Act. 20:28; Gal. 3:13; Gal. 4:4-5; Eph. 1:7, Col. 1:14, 1Ti. 2:5-6, Tit. 2:14; Heb. 9:12; Heb. 2:14-15; 1Pe. 1:18-19, Rev. 5:9, etc. (5) Finally, it should be noted here that the doctrine of Atonement is inseparably linked with the institution of sacrifice, Atonement is equivalent to Propitiation. Campbell again (CS, 38, n.): The Hebrew term copher, translated in the Greek Old Testament by ilasmos, and in the common English version by atonement or propitiation, signifies a covering. The word copher, to cover, or to make atonement, denotes the object of sacrifice; and hence Jesus is called the ilasmos, the covering, propitiation, or atonement for our sins. (Cf. 1Jn. 2:2; 1Jn. 4:10.) To make atonement, therefore, is to satisfy the claims of justice with respect to the Divine law which has been violated, and hence to provide a covering for the guilt, and ultimately for the consequences, of the sins of all persons who accept the Gift and by so doing enter into covenant relationship with God. The Atonement, the Propitiation, the Covering, the Gift, is Gods Only Begotten (Joh. 3:16). There is no other.

12. Pagan Versus Biblical Sacrifice. The distinguished Jewish author, Yehezkel Kaufmann, calls attention to the profound differences between the theories and practices of sacrificial rites in the pagan world and those characteristic of the Patriarchal and Jewish Dispensations of Biblical history. The pagan concepts he lists as follows (RI, 110115): sacrifice (1) as providing nutriment for the gods, (2) as mystic union with God, and (3) as exerting influence on the Divine powers, to heighten the powers of good over the demonic powers of evil. He writes as follows: The mythological and magical framework that lent cosmic significance to sacrifice in paganism is wanting in the Bible. YHWH is not conceived of as dependent upon food, drink, or any external source of power. This precludes the idea that sacrifice is nutriment for the God. . . . For biblical religion, it is decisive that the mythological setting of this conception is entirely wanting. . . . The Biblical peace offering has been interpreted as a form of communion; part is consumed by the deity (the fat and the blood), the rest by the offerer in what is assumed to be a common meal with the deity. But this interpretation has no warrant beyond the pagan models upon which it is based. The Bible itself says nothing about communion. The peace offering is eaten beforenever withYHWH (cf. e.g., Deu. 12:7; Deu. 12:18; Deu. 14:23; Deu. 14:26; Deu. 15:20). The Priestly Code makes the flesh of the peace offering the property of YHWH. The human partaker of it is, as it were, a guest of YHWH; this is the nearness to God that is symbolized by eating the peace offering (Lev. 7:20 f.). Nothing supports the notion that man becomes an associate of the deity, is elevated for the moment to divine rank, or shares in the life of the God. Joy, not mystic union, is the basic emotional content of the Israelite cult; this joy too is beforenot withYHWH (Deu. 12:12; Deu. 12:18, etc.). The difference is fundamental, and its linguistic expression, though subtle, is crucial. . . . Pagan purification rites aim to influence the divine powers, to heighten the powers of good over the demonic powers of evil. When we examine their biblical analogues we find no echo of a struggle between evil and good, no trace of either the mythological or the magical element which underlies the pagan idea. (It should be noted here that hangovers of these magical and mystical cults still persist in the theologies and rituals of institutional Christianity, although absent from the Christianity of the New Testament. The magical aspects persist in such dogmas as those of sacramentalism, transubstantiation, consubstantiation, impanation, baptismal regeneration, etc.; the mystical, in alleged special revelations, miraculous conversions, trances, indeed all psychical (or metapsychical) phenomena of the various forms of so-called ecstatic and orgiastic religions.) (Note here especially the pertinent statement of W. Robertson Smith (RSFI, 62): To reconcile the forgiving goodness of God with His absolute justice, is one of the highest problems of spiritual religion, which in Christianity is solved by the doctrine of the atonement.)

13. The First Murder (Gen. 4:5 b8).

5 And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. 6 And Jehovah said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? 7 If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door: and unto thee shall be its desire, but do thou rule over it. 8 And Cain told Abel his brother. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

(1) What a human interest story this is! More profoundly realistic psychology is to be found in the Bible than in any other book known to man! The Bible pictures human beings just as they aresome good, some bad, some mediocre; no doubt this is the reason why so many human rebels, puffed up in their own conceits, hate the Bible and will do anything in their power to discredit it. The apostle puts all such persons in the class to which they really belong: they are the wilfully ignorant, blinded by the god of this world (2Co. 4:4, 2Pe. 3:5). There are other causes of moral evil than ignorance, and one of the most potent of these is a perverted will. (2) Cain was very wroth, literally incensed (inflamed): the wrath was a fire in his soul (Lange): cf. Jer. 15:14; Jer. 17:4. No sorrow for sin here, no spirit of inquiry, self-examination, prayer to God for light or pardon, clearly showing that Cain was far from the right state of mind (Murphy). Not a semblance of recognition of his own dereliction: nothing but fierce resentment against his brother and most certainly resentment toward God. It is common for those who have rendered themselves unworthy of Gods favor to have indignation against those who are dignified by it (M. Henry). (Note how the Pharisees walked in the way of Cain, Luk. 11:52.) Evil is always resentful in the presence of the good, because in the light of the good the evil is shown up in its true colors, and resents the expose. Think how prone professing Christians are to put the blame on God when overtaken by adversity (God shouldnt have done this to me!). The world, even the church, is filled with puny souls who can only whimper and whine in the hour of tribulation (cf. Joh. 16:33). (3) His countenance fell. Cain hung down his head, and looked upon the earth. This is the posture of one darkly brooding (Jer. 3:12, Job. 29:24), and prevails to this day in the East as a sign of evil plottings (Lange). What a picture of the impudent, rebellious, sullen posture and face of a spoiled brat! (3) Gen. 4:6-7. Here we have another instance of those vivid anthropomorphic portrayals of our Heavenly Father dealing with the rebellious child created in His own image, seeking to arrest him from a precipitous plunge into an act of violence that would ruin his whole life, as envy of the true witness welled up in his heart. To paraphrase Yahwehs words of warning and encouragement to do the right: Why this consuming anger, Cain? Why this sullenness? If you are doing the good, your countenance will be radiant with joy. If you are not doing what is right and good, then sin is couching (lieth) at your hearts door. Retrace your steps, amend your offering, and rule over this beast that threatens you. As we listen to those words of Fatherly admonition and encouragement to self-control and obedience, we recall the words of the Psalmist, Like as a father pitieth his children, So Jehovah pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust (Psa. 103:13-14). Alas! as is so often the case, the warning went unheeded! The same warning comes ringing down through the ages to all of Gods saints, even those of our own time. If you are disgruntled at the minister or the congregation, critical of your brethren in Christ, and have a tendency in your heart to speak evil things of those who are trying to be Christians, just remember that sin is couching (lying, lurking) at the door of your heart; and, unless with our Lords help, you assert your control of circumstances, sin will spring upon you like a wild beast and drag you down to the depths of infamy. Cf. Eph. 6:16

Life is one continued battle,
Never ended, never oer;
And the Christians path to glory
Is a conflict evermore.
Satan ever watches round him,

Seeks to find the weakest part;

And in moments most unheeded

Quickly throws his fiery dart.

(4) The Murder, Gen. 4:8. In the fieldthis means the open country, where Cain thought he would be safe from observation (IBG, 519). Whitelaw (PCG, 80): Beyond all question the historian designs to describe not an act of culpable homicide, but a deed of red-handed murder; yet the impression which his language conveys is that of a crime rather suddenly conceived and hurriedly performed than deliberately planned and treacherously executed. Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. Heavenly counsel failed to deter the rebel; the wild beast couching at his hearts door sprang, and the tragic deed was done. Not just a homicide, but a fratricide! Rage, born of consuming envy, becomes lust for blood. As it has been said of the crucifixion of Jesus: Hate is a passion never stilled, until it crucifies (1Jn. 3:15, Joh. 8:44). Thus did the first Man become a prey of Satan, and his first-born a murderer and an outcast. Bowie (IBG, 518): It was a strange contradiction that the first murder came with an act of worship. It was while he was approaching God that Cain knew how much he hated his brother. He felt frustrated because he felt somehow that Gods truth ranked Abel higher than himself; and if he knew within himself that this was what he deserved, he struck out all the more blindly and bitterly against the superiority that shamed him. This is the explanation of the vindictive hostility that men may express toward those whose achievements they envythe hostility of the citizen to a great political leader or the dislike which a minister may feel for a more honored brother minister.

14. A Second Inquest (Gen. 4:9-15).

9 And Jehovah said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brothers keeper? 10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brothers blood crieth unto me from the ground. 11 And now cursed art thou from the ground, which hath opened its mouth to receive thy brothers blood from thy hand; 12 when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee its strength; a fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be in the earth. 13 And Cain said unto Jehovah, My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the ground; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that whosoever findeth me will slay me. 15 And Jehovah said unto Cain, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And Jehovah appointed a sign for Cain, lest any finding him should smite him.

(1) A second inquest: why so designated? Because this is essentially a repetition of the substance of Gen. 3:9-13. Again the loving Father seeks to bring His rebellious son to repentance and confession (catharsis), the only possible way to restoration and inner peace for the rebel. (2) Gen. 4:9. The inquisition no doubt took place at the customary place of sacrifice and at the time of the next offering. Did God speak through Adam, the father? or through Cains own conscience? Or directly and vocally to Cain himself, in words uttered from between the Cherubim (Gen. 3:24)? Note the question: a question fitted to go straight to the murderers conscience, and no less fitted to rouse his wrathful jealousy, as showing how truly Abel was the beloved one. Not that Yahwehs question was in any sense the cause of Cains jealousy, but that it brought out the interior wrathful jealousy that was already consuming the rebels heart. (It is often said that national prohibition of the nineteen-twenties brought about the spread of lawlessness. This we deny. It simply brought to the surface the lawlessness that was already there, in the hearts of the people.) (3) Note Cains answer. What a combination of bravado, flippancy, sheer impudenceevery-thing but the manifestation of an honest and good heart (Luk. 8:15)! Whitelaw, quoting Willet (PCG, 80): He showeth himself a liar in saying, I know not; wicked and profane in thinking he could hide his sin from God; unjust in denying himself to be his brothers keeper; obstinate and desperate in not confessing his sin. (Cf. Psalms 10.) How sin spreads: at first, murder; now, lying, deceit, effrontery and profanity (feeling himself tracked by avenging justice, Cain resorts to the use of every weapon in the arsenal of sin!). Am I my brothers keeper? A question of universal significance: one that must be answered in some way by every son and daughter of Adam (cf. Mat. 25:31-46). Murphy (MG, 153): There is, as usual, an atom of truth mingled with the amazing falsehood of this surly response. No man is the absolute keeper of his brother, so as to be responsible for his safety when he is not present. This is what Cain means to insinuate. But every man is his brothers keeper so far that he is not himself to lay the hand of violence on him, nor suffer another to do so if he can hinder it. This sort of keeping, the Almighty has a right to demand of every onethe first part of it on the ground of mere justice, the second on that of love. But Cains reply betrays a desperate resort to falsehood, a total estrangement of feeling, a quenching of brotherly love, a predominance of that selfishness which freezes affection and kindles hatred. This is the way of Cain (Jud. 1:11).

(4) Gen. 4:10-12. Yahweh sees that His attempt to arouse self-examination in the sinner has not elicited the slightest evidence of a favorable response. Cains character has proved itself to be tragically corrupt, even to the extent of manifesting not even the slightest appreciation of Gods love and mercy. Hence, thunders Yahweh: What hast thou done?a question that puts in bold relief the sheer enormity of the course of sin that Cain had chosen to pursue! The voice of thy brothers blood crieth unto me from the ground. Note the repeated phrase, thy brother: is not fratricide a truly heinous form of homicide? Knowing that the guilty fratricide was not going to confess his sin, Yahweh charged him with it directly. The ground which had already been cursed so that it yielded thorns and thistles (Gen. 3:18) was now cursed by the blood of the first martyr, Abel the righteous (Mat. 23:35, 1Jn. 3:12). This was the first curse pronounced upon a human being: only the serpent had been cursed in Eden; Adam and Eve had not (Gen. 3:14). Murphy defines a curse thus (MG, 211): A curse is any privation, inferiority, or other ill, expressed in the form of a doom, and bearing, not always upon the object directly expressed, but upon the party who is in the transgression. In the case before us, Abels blood cried out to God for the punishment of the murderer, and that same cry has rung down through the ages proclaiming retribution upon the shedder of innocent blood. Anthropologists will testify uniformly that no people has ever been found without a customary or statutory law for the punishment of murder. (The blood feud or blood revenge, the most common form of the lex talionis, (the infliction of death upon a murderer by the relatives of his victim), was the only device which men had, for the prevention of murder; later, of course, with the formation of nations, this right of vindication was taken from individuals and families and put under the authority of the state. Incidentally, vindication is the proper term to use here, as expressing the function of punishment, rather than vengeance or revenge: true law never seeks revenge, but it must seek vindication when violated, that is, it must have a penalty for violation, and that penalty is designed to sustain the majesty of the law itself, that is, to vindicate the justice of the law and of the will of the lawgiver as well. Law is not law at all, lacking a penalty for its violation, the power to enforce the penalty, and the actual enforcement of it, if and when violated.) (It must be understood, of course, that murder is properly defined as the taking of the life of another person on ones own authority and with malice aforethought: that is, it is an individual act, a crime under the civil law, a sin under the moral law. This definition of the act has its ethical basis in two sublime truths, namely, that life is the gift of God, and hence mans greatest good (Gen. 2:7, Act. 17:24-25). These have always been, and still are, the foundation stones of our Western cultural heritage.) (Note that in Abels case, the blood seeks not retribution on its own, but cries out unto Yahweh for it. For instances of sin crying out to God, see Gen. 18:20-21; Gen. 19:13; Exo. 3:9; Heb. 12:24; Jas. 5:4.) Murphy (MG, 154): The curse which now fell on Cain was in some sense retributive, as it sprang from the soil which received his brothers blood. The particulars of it are the withdrawal of the full strength or fruitfulness of the soil from him, and the degradation from the state of a settled dweller in the presence of God, to that of a vagabond in the earth. Again (MG, 155): It is plain that no man has an inherent right to inflict the sanction of a broken law on the transgressor. This right belongs originally to the Creator, and derivatively only to those whom He has intrusted with the dispensation of civil government according to established laws (cf. Rom. 13:1-7, Mat. 22:21). (5) Note well that this Divine anathema was to come upon Cain from the ground, and in two ways: (a) in refusing him its substance: a further look at Cains progeny, as we shall see later, makes it clear that they did not make any success of agriculture; this refusal of the earth to yield its substance to them seems to have pushed them into the building of cities and the development of what we would today call the useful arts; and (b) in refusing him a home: he and his posterity became wanderers, an unsettled, restless people, prone to violence, without stability and without faith. The further study of Cains descendants will surely disclose their basic irreligiousness, secularism (worldliness), proneness to pride in their own conceits, even wickedness and violence. Thus the earth did not become a participant in the curse pronounced on Cain, but Gods minister of that curse. (There is a special significance, it seems to me, in these Divine anathemas having reference to the ground (earth) and to those creatures who were to be punished through the agency of the ground. Surely, they point up the Divine repudiation of, and warning against, the Cult of Fertility which prevailed throughout the entire ancient pagan world, and which had its roots in the worship of the Earth Mother (in Greek, Ge-mater, or Demeter; and in Latin, Terra Mater). This Cult, with its practices of ritual prostitution, sexual promiscuity, phallic worship, and like perversionsindeed the grossest forms of immoralitywas the foremost obstacle to the spread of the knowledge of the living and true God throughout the world of Old Testament times and the ever-present temptation to that people whom God called out to preserve this knowledge, the fleshly seed of Abraham, to forsake their Divine calling and election for the idolatrous practices of their heathen neighbors and the satisfaction of their own carnal lusts.)

(6) Gen. 4:13. My punishment is greater than I can bear. Utter insensitivity to personal guilt now leads to self-pity, the psychological refuge of a man who will not be honest with himself or with God by facing up to the facts. As if to say, Jehovah, you are not treating me fairly! You are being unjust to me! A repetition of Satans rebellious charge that our God is a tyrant! The cry of every fanatical devotee of unlimited personal liberty. The cry of a spoiled brat. (How anyone can question the fact that Cains wickedness was real and that it stemmed from his interior profanitydisregard for divine thingsand hence from his total lack of faith, is beyond our comprehension. Everything he said and did attests the truth of the explanation given in Heb. 11:4. Rejection of this thoroughly trustworthy Biblical explanation is surely a mark of ignorance, or that of a perverted will directed by a closed mind (cf. 2Pe. 3:5, Mat. 15:14, Isa. 6:8-10, Mat. 13:14-15, Act. 28:25-28, 2Co. 3:15, etc.). Even though some measure of remorse might be indicated by Cains outcry here, still and all, it is remorse saturated with despair, the reaction that terminates in repentance unto spiritual death (2Co. 7:10), or, as in the case of Judas, unto physical death by suicide (Mat. 27:3-10, Act. 1:16-19). Cains sorrow, if anything, was the sorrow of the world, the sorrow that arises from complete lack of any understanding of Gods ineffable grace.

(7) Gen. 4:14-15. (a) Cains language here is clearly a reference to that punitive device of early familial and tribal life known as the blood feud, blood revenge, the device which early man found necessary to prevent wholesale murder and thus to maintain social order (see supra). In the course of time, as population increased, this device began to create a serious problem. The great Greek writer of tragedy, Aeschylus, known as the poet of great ideas, deals with the problem in what is known as his Orestean trilogy, consisting of the three plays, the Agamemnon, the Choephori, and the Eumenides. In the Agamemnon, the Greek chieftain is pictured as returning from the conquest of Troy, only to face the smoldering wrath of his wife Clytemnestra, who hated him because of his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia at Aulis (supposedly to quell the fury of the goddess Artemis which had been aroused by Agamemnons killing of a deer in one of her sacred groves: at any rate this was Agamemnons version of the incident). Soon after reaching Argos, Agamemnon was murdered by Clytemnestra and her paramour, Aegisthus. Orestes, the son, was saved from the same fate by his sister Electra who had spirited him away secretly to the court of the Phoenician king, Strophius, whose wife was Agamemnons sister. There Orestes formed a close friendship with the kings son, Pylades. On attaining maturity Orestes went secretly with Pylades to Argos, where, on the authority of Apollo, at the tomb of Agamemnon he executed strict justice (Dike) by killing both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. This part of the drama is presented in the Choephori (The Libation Bearers). But Orestes now was not just an ordinary executioner in the ordinary sense of blood revenge; his crime was matricide, a particularly heinous kind of killing. Hence, who was now to execute the demands of justice on Orestes? And who should kill the man who would kill Orestes, all, of course, in the name of rigid legal justice? How long was this vicious circle to continue? Was there any way of putting an end to it? If so, how was this to be done without violating justice in some way? Orestes is now beset by the Furies: he goes crazy and begins to wander from land to land, until finally, again by the advice of Apollo, he takes refuge in the temple of Athena at Athens. How does Aeschylus resolve the issue, essentially a problem of finding a way of tempering justice with the more humane quality of mercy? The dramatist uses the device of the deus ex machina. He brings Athena, the goddess of wisdom, into the picture; she convenes the Court of the Areopagus to hear his plea. Orestes is acquitted by this Court, becomes sane again, and the Furies are transformed into the Eumenides (The Benignant Ones). The profound moral problem thus elaborated by Aeschylus was twofold: the deeply felt doctrine of strict legal justice, but also the existence in Heaven of an Understanding and a Will that is supreme even over the Law. (The same profound doctrine is to be found also in the Antigone of Sophocles, LCL edition, p. 349, 11 450 ff.). Thus it will be seen that the dramatist resolved this problem in precisely the same way in which man resolved it, that is, by taking the execution of the penalty away from the jurisdiction of the family and putting it under the authority of the state (the People vs. John Doe). (b) Whosoever findeth me, cried Cain, shall slay me. This raises the question: Just what and how many other persons were on earth at the time to execute blood revenge? Or, as often stated by the caviler: Where did Cain get his wife? (cf. Gen. 4:17). (A carping old reprobate once said to an old-time evangelist: If you will show me how and where Cain got his wife, Ill jine the church. The evangelist was equal to the challenge. He answered: Old man, until you can quit worrying about other mens wives, youre not fit to jine the church or anything else that is decent.) Cornfeld writes (AtD, 23): Where did Cain get his wife, if Abel and Cain were Adam and Eves only children? It is clear that the Cain and Abel story belonged to a different tradition which assumed the presence of other people in the world besides the family of Adam. The kind of rational and critical interest which characterizes our age was remote from the ancient narrators, particularly when it came to tracing ancestral genealogies. T. Lewis (Lange, CDHCG, 259) suggests that neither Adam nor Cain may have had any reason to know that the earth was not populated with their kind. This view, however, seems a bit far-fetched. The most reasonable explanation is that Cain married into the Adamic family into which he was born. We are told that after 130 years Adam begat Seth, and that throughout his long life he begat sons and daughters (Gen. 5:3-5); in proportion to his longevity he must have sired progeny of some dimensions (cf. Exo. 12:37-42). Hence in the first 130 years of the conjugal union of Adam and Eve, undoubtedly other, many other, children were born to them. The matter of the identity of Cains wife is no problem. He might even have married one of his own sisters: this would not have been regarded as incest during the infancy of the race. (Cf. Act. 17:30, also Gen. 20:12here we are told that Abraham married his half-sister). Certainly Adams offspring were not limited to just the two brothers and their wives (provided that Abel also was a married man) at the time of Abels murder. The reason for the Biblical story of Cain, Abel, and Seth exclusively, again is one that will not be apprehended, by the person who fails to take into consideration the teaching of the Bible as a whole. The reason is a very simple one, namely, that the Bible is not intended to be a history of the race, but the history only of the Messianic Line or Genealogy, the Line that began with Adam and culminated in Jesus Christ. (Luke apparently gives the real genealogy through Mary, Luk. 3:23Joseph was the son-in-law of Heli; Matthew, writing specifically to the Jews, gives the legal genealogy, Mat. 1:16.) There is but one grand design in the content of the Bible from beginning to end, namely, to provide the evidence in oracle, prophecy, and historical fulfilment to authenticate the Messiahship of Jesus. (Cf. Mat. 16:16, Joh. 20:30-31, Rom. 10:9-10.) Only when approached and studied from this point of view, does the Bible have the significance that its Author, the Holy Spirit, designed it to have, that is, the fulness of the truth to liberate man from the guilt and from the consequences of sin (Joh. 8:31-32, 1Th. 5:23). (Cf. 1Pe. 1:10-12, 2Pe. 1:21, Joh. 16:7-15, 1Co. 2:6-16.)

(c) Cains contemplation of his miserable doom filled his guilty heart with apprehension that some of his own kind in the flesh might take his life in retaliation (as required by the lex talionis) on hearing of his wanton slaughter of his brother Abel. But, again, as in his cry, from thy face shall I be hid, he manifests his utter insensitivity to the fact of Gods ineffable grace. Yahwehs face was not turned away from him completely. On the contrary, he received from God a twofold response: first, the promise that anyone who might slay him would incur vengeance sevenfold (that is, Cains violent death, should it occur, would be fully avenged); second, Yahweh appointed a sign for Cain, lest any finding him should slay him. Commentators disagree as to whether this sign was a visible one for the purpose of warning away would-be avengers, or an inward assurance to Cain himself that he should not suffer blood revenge at the hands of a kinsman. In the case of Cains murderer there was to be no mitigation of the penalty as in the case of Cain himself; on the contrary, he would be visited more severely than Cain, as being guilty not only of homicide, but of transgressing the Divine commandment which said that Cain was to live (Whitelaw, PCG, 82). What was this mark of Cain? No one knows. The essential facts about it are that it was not a sign of Gods forgiveness, but only a pledge of His protection; that it was not a brand of shame, but a covering of Divine grace; that it served to establish the principle, at the very outset of mans life on earth, that vindication belongs to God (Rom. 12:19, 2Th. 1:8). Murphy (MG, 156): The whole dealing of the Almighty was calculated to have a softening, conscience-awakening, and hope-inspiring effect on the murderers heart. Whether this desired reformation (regeneration) of Cain ever occurred, we do not know; however, judging from the general irreligiousness of his posterity as indicated in the remaining part of chapter 4, the evidence is wholly to the contrary. After all, even though subhuman nature is powerless to resist the decrees of God, there is one power in the universe which can resist His Will and, sorry to say, His lovethat power is the human will (Joh. 5:40, Mat. 23:37-39, Act. 7:51-53).

* * * * *

FOR MEDITATION AND SERMONIZING

Am I My Brothers Keeper?

Cains profane reply to Gods first query reveals the spirit of a social outcast. But his antisocial attitude was only part and parcel of his murderous act. Practically all anarchists become such through their own crimes against society. If we are not willing to help those about us, we are bound to be willing to harm them and to drag them down. The entire human race is bound up in one bundle of interdependence, and every human being must choose between social altruism and social animosity.

If it is impossible for anyone to keep from radiating moral or immoral influence, as the case may be, how much more so for Gods saints. The one who professes to be a Christian takes upon himself the obligations inherent in spiritual brotherhood, whose fundamental laws are love for God and love for his fellows, and especially for those who are of the household of the Faith (Mat. 22:34-40; Mat. 25:31-46; Luk. 10:25-37; Jas. 1:27; Rom. 14:21; Gal. 6:2, etc.). Conversion is the passing from the kingdom of this world, in which the ruling principle of life, individual and social, is selfishness, the choice of selfs way of doing things above Gods way of doing things, into the Kingdom of Christ, the Reign of Messiah, in which the ruling principle of life, both individually and collectively, is sacrifice, the choice of Gods way of doing things above mans way of doing things (Act. 26:17, Mat. 6:31-34, Rom. 12:1-2, Gal. 5:16-25). Love is the fulfilment of the law (Rom. 13:10); in the very nature of the case, love is the motive which prompts Christians, members of the Body, to bear one anothers burdens. and so to fulfil the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2; 1Jn. 4:7-11; 1Co. 9:21; Rom. 8:2; Jas. 1:25; Jas. 2:8; Jas. 2:12).

The Voice That Cries From the Ground

The voice of thy brothers blood crieth unto me from the ground, said Yahweh to Cain. God speaks in the same words today to the unbeliever, the murderer, the fornicator, the adulterer, the abuser of himself with men, the sorcerer, the idolater, the drunkard, the coveter, the seducer, the liarindeed all who live and die outside of Christ. In this universal sense (Rom. 3:23), it is the blood of Christthe blood that speaketh better than that of Abel (Heb. 12:24)the blood that was shed for an Atonement for the sin of the world (Joh. 1:29), that cries out from the ground for the execution of justice upon all who refuse to shelter themselves by faith under this Heavenly Covering (2Co. 5:21, Heb. 10:26-31). And so will God speak to you in Judgment, fellow Christians, if you allow your loved ones to live and die without Christ, without your speaking a word to them about their souls salvation. So will He speak to you, if you permit the multitudes to go past your door, down the broad way that leads to destruction (Mat. 7:13-14), without ever a warning word, a feeling of concern, or a manifestation of interest on your part. Are you going through life without ever a thought of the millions who are dying without Christ and the Redemption which He has freely provided? The business of the Church is to snatch precious souls from the burning. The Church of our time can never regain its power until it undergoes a rebirth of the evangelistic passion that characterized the saints of the apostolic age (Act. 8:4, 1Ti. 3:15, Mat. 24:14). Unfortunately for man, his sins of omission seem to be far more numerous than those of commission (Jas. 4:17; Jas. 1:22). And this brand of sin is most flagrantly obvious today in the lackadaisical attitude of institutionalized Christianity with respect to the Churchs mission to the unsaved: in all too many instances the Great Commission seems to be the lost word (Mat. 28:18-20).

Christ has no hands but our hands
To do His work today;
He has no feet but our feet
To lead men in His way;
He has no tongue but our tongues
To tell men how He died;
He has no help but our help

To bring them to His side.

The Cry of the Lost Soul

My punishment is greater than I can bear, was Cains cry, not of confession, but of sheer desperation. Through ignorance of the divine character, he pronounced his sin too great to be pardoned. It was not that he really knew his sin, but that he knew not God. He fully exhibited the terrible fruit of the fall in the very thought of God to which he gave utterance. He did not want pardon, because he did not want God. He had no true sense of his own condition, no aspirations after God, no intelligence as to the ground of a sinners approach to God. He was radically corruptfundamentally wrong, and all he wanted was to get out of the presence of God, and lose himself in the world and its pursuits (C.H.M., NBG, 75).
From thy face I shall be hid. To the foregoing it should be added that Cain did not want God because he did not, in any sense of the term, know God. Like Judas who went out and hanged himself when he might have enjoyed salvation on the terms of the Gospel, Cain, thinking himself beyond the pale of Divine compassion and mercy, resigned himself to an earthbound existence. He thought he could live well without God, and he therefore set about decorating the world as well as he could, for the purpose of making it a respectable place, and himself a respectable man therein, though in Gods view it was under the curse, and he was a fugitive and a vagabond (C.H.M., NBG, 75).

Cains cry of desperation might well be said to have been an archetype of the cry of lost souls in the Judgment. Fully realizing at last the awfulness of their complete loss of God, they shall call on the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them and hide them from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb (Rev. 6:15-17). Truly it will be a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:31), unrepentant, disobedient, and hence utterly rejected (Heb. 6:4-8; Heb. 10:26-30; Rom. 2:4-11; Mat. 25:41-46). In this world the wheat and the tares must grow together until the harvest (Mat. 13:24-30), But let no son of man question the fact that there will be a harvest in which the wheat shall be gathered into the garner (granary, Mat. 3:12) and the tares shall be burned with unquenchable fire (cf. Mat. 13:36-43). Whatever other sanctions may overtake the neglectful and the impenitent at the Last Judgment (Act. 17:30-31), we can be sure that, again as a consequence of their full realization of what eternal loss of God and all good really means, the raging fires of conscience will issue truly in the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. Indeed it may well turn out that memory is the worm that never dies, and conscience the fire that is never quenched (cf. Luk. 16:19-31, Mar. 9:48, Isa. 66:24).

The Marks of Real Faith

Genuine faith always (1) does what God commands, and (2) does it in the way God commands it to be done. Errett (EB, 36): We sometimes listen to sneers at the conscientious observance of ordinances, and often hear it suggested that if morals had more attention, there need be small concern about ritualistic observances. True, there may be enslavement to a ritual, and especially to rituals of human contrivance, which partake more of the nature of Cains offering than of Abels; and when precision in such observances is exalted above a pure morality, it is a sad day alike for the church and the world. But let it also be remembered that when God has appointed a ritual observance, the same spirit of evil that rejects it, or corrupts it, will also, when occasion serves, reject also all that is good in morals. Hence, the same evil spirit that led Cain to despise Gods law of sacrifice, led him also to cast aside all moral restraints and to murder his brother. The spirit of rebellion is the same, whether it strikes at a divine ordinance or at the life of a brother.

We hear a great deal in our day about what is called vital Christianity (faith, religion, etc.) as distinguished from what is called formal Christianity, etc. The Bible makes no such distinctions. Gods ordinances are His ordinances, regardless of their essential character, and not one of them is to be trifled with. Everything in Christianity is vital or it is not of Christian faith.

The Moral is commanded, because it is right; the Positive is right, because it is commanded. In all Dispensations God has required of His elect both internal and external worship. The external, although embodying the moral virtue of obedience, is designed to serve as a testimony to the outside world. Baptism, for example, is the positive institution in which the obedient believer witnesses to the facts of the Gospelthe death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (1Co. 15:1-8); hence, any act short of a burial and resurrection (an immersion in water and an emersion therefrom) vitiates the testimonial character of the ordinance, and simply cannot be Scriptural baptism. Again, how often do we hear baptism spoken of as a mere outward act, mere external performance, etc. This kind of terminology is blasphemy: it is an evidence of the profanity which characterized Cains attitude toward the ordinance of sacrifice. When, in the name of both reason and faith, did our Lord go into the business of ordaining mere outward acts or mere external performances? There is design in everything that God commands us to do: that design embraces both mans good and Gods glory (Col. 3:17, 1Co. 10:31, Eph. 3:21, Rev. 7:12).

It is notoriously true that modifications, by human authority, of Gods positive ordinances, have generally been to serve the ends of convenience. In all likelihood Cain was the first substituter. He brought the kind of offering which was the more convenient for him (by occupation he was a tiller of the ground) to bring to Yahweh, It may well be said that he substituted, for the kind of offering God had ordained, an offering which heCain, proud Cainconsidered to be just as good. How many millions in our day, as in all ages past, are trying to substitute civic morality, respectability, social service, fraternalism, intellectualism, tradition, etc., for the obedience of faith! How many, how very many, substitute lodge, cult, ethical society, service club, etc., for the Church of the living God! Sprinkling is just as good as immersion. I am willing to take my chances without immersion. I am willing to take my chances without attending church every Lords Day. I am a moral manthats good enough for me! But are these substitutes good enough for God) God says that all such things are vainthat is, utterly futile! In vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men (Mat. 15:8-9, Isa. 29:13, Col. 2:8, 1Ti. 6:20, 2Ti. 2:16, Jas. 1:26). All such substitutes are walking in the way of Cain (Jud. 1:11).

Note what the righteousness which is of faith has to say: the word is nigh thee . . . the word of faith, which we preach (Rom. 10:8). Faith does what God commands, and does it in the way He has commanded it to be done. Faith without the works of faith is dead (Jas. 2:26).

Gods Covering of Grace

There is nothing that the earth has to offer that can provide atonement (covering) for the transgression of a law of God, or that can open up the way to God. Abel recognized this truth and brought an offering of blood. Blood is life (Lev. 17:11), and lifeevery kind of lifeis the gift of God (Gen. 2:7, Act. 17:25). Cain refused to witness to these truths of true religion and brought an offering of the ground, the ground which had already been placed under the Divine anathema (Gen. 3:17). Cain represents the man who tries to approach God on the basis of something of merit within himselfcommonly defined morality, good citizenship, fraternalism, social service, intellectualism, etc. He represents the class described by the Lord Jesus in Mat. 7:15-23.

C.H.M. (NBG, 63, 64): An unpardoned sinner coming into the presence of Jehovah, to present an unbloody sacrifice, could only be regarded as guilty of the highest degree of presumption. True, he had toiled to produce this offering: but what of that? Could a sinners toil remove the curse and stain of sin? Could it satisfy the claims of an infinitely holy God? Could it furnish a proper ground of acceptance for a sinner? Could it set aside the penalty which was due to sin? Could it rob death of its sting, or the grave of its victory?could it do any or all of these things? Impossible! Without shedding of blood there is no remission. Cains unbloody sacrifice, like every other unbloody sacrifice, was not only worthless, but actually abominable, in the divine estimation. It not only demonstrated his entire ignorance of his own condition, but also of the divine character. God is not worshiped with mens hands, as though He needed anything; and yet Cain thought He could be thus approachedand every mere religionist thinks the same. Cain has had many millions of followers, from age to age. Cain-worship has abounded all over the world. It is the worship of every unconverted soul, and is maintained by every false system of religion under the sun.

Dean (OBH, 13): Cains offering was only such as Adam and Eve in the innocence of Eden might have offered. It expressed no sense of sin, no prayer for pardon. Moreover, Cain lacked the faith of his brother Abel (Heb. 11:4). His spirit, as contrasted with Abels, was one of unbelief, self-righteousness, self-will. It was a case of Pharisee and Publican at the gate of Eden.

We cannot expect to approach God on the basis of anything within ourselves. The so-called moralist is the modern Pharisee, who stands off, with a great show of piety, and prays, Lord, I thank Thee I am not like other men (Luk. 18:11), or, in modern terms, I thank Thee, Lord, that I am not like all those poor hypocrites in the church, etc. The moralist puts all confidence in himself, rather than in Christ, His only hope of glory (Col. 1:27); and, in the end, his house will crumble because it is built on sand (Mat. 7:24-27).

There is but one way back to Godthat Way is Christ (Joh. 14:6, 1Ti. 2:5-6). There is but one remedy for sinthat remedy is the blood of Christ (1Jn. 1:7, Heb. 9:14, 1Pe. 1:18-19, Mar. 14:24, Act. 20:28, Rom. 3:25; Rom. 5:9; Eph. 1:7, Col. 1:14; Heb. 9:22; Heb. 13:20; Joh. 1:29). There is but one method of presenting and applying this remedy, namely, the preaching of the Gospel for the obedience of faith (1Co. 1:21; Rom. 1:16; Rom. 10:12-17; Joh. 14:1; Joh. 20:30-31; Act. 16:31; Act. 2:38; Act. 8:12; Mat. 28:18-20; Luk. 15:18-19; 2Co. 7:10; Rom. 10:9-10; Rom. 6:1-11; Act. 22:16, Gal. 3:27, etc.).

The Way of Cain

To summarize: What are the attitudes (motives) which characterize those who walk in the way of Cain (Jud. 1:11). Obviously, the following:

1. Spiritual insensibility. As shown above, Cains outcries manifested his lack of any real knowledge of God, hence of any appreciation of the Divine love and mercy (cf. Joh. 3:16; Rom. 8:38-39; Rom. 11:33-36; Eph. 3:14-19). His reaction to Gods rejection of his offering was one of sheer spiritual obtuseness (cf. 1Co. 2:14), apparently lacking even the slightest notion that, if he should correct his offering (as the LXX reads, if thou offer correctly, shalt thou not be accepted?), he would receive Gods full and free pardon. He simply did not know God in the sense of having any appreciation of Him or of His love. Hence, not one of Gods questions which were calculated to induce reformation, ever got through to him. (Of course, in our day, even we Christians find it difficult to understand that Gods love is such that when He forgives, He forgets: Psa. 103:10-18, Jer. 31:31-34, Heb. 8:12.)

2. Unbelief. Faith does what God commands in the way He has commanded it to be done. Abel brought an offering of faith in that it met the requirements of the positive institution of sacrifice. It was a blood-offering, as it had to be to foreshadow the blood-offering of Gods Only Begotten, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Joh. 17:24, Eph. 1:4, 1Pe. 1:18-20, Rev. 13:8, 1Co. 5:7). This fact was, of course, an integral part of Gods Eternal Purpose (Heb. 9:11-28; Heb. 10:1-25). The Old Testament saints may not have known, indeed could hardly have known, the reason for this fundamental requirement (Heb. 9:22)but God knew. This was sufficient for Abel, as it is for every man of faith. To Cain, however, who walked by sight and not by faith (2Co. 5:7), the details of Gods law of sacrifice meant little or nothing (Heb. 11:4); hence in all justice there was only one response that Yahweh could make, and that was to reject his offering. Blind unbelief is sure to errof course, it errs because it is blind.

3. Self-will, self-assertiveness. Cain elevated his own righteousness (way of doing things) above the righteousness of God (Gods way of doing things), the righteousness which is of faith (Rom. 10:6-10). On his own authority he came before Yahweh with his own kind of offering. As suggested above, this obviously was the convenient thing for him to do. He was the first of that long line of substituters (ersatz Christians) who choose what they esteem to be just as good as that which God has ordained. Such was the way of Cain, in which way millions are, at this moment, rushing on. Such persons are not, by any means, divested of the religious element in their character. They would like to offer something to Godto do something for Him. They deem it right to present to Him the results of their own toil. They are ignorant of themselves, ignorant of God; but with all this there is the diligent effort to improve the world, to make life agreeable in various ways, to deck the scene with the fairest colors. Gods remedy to cleanse is rejected, and mans effort to improve is put in its place. This is the way of Cain, Jud. 1:11 (C.H.M., N.B.G. 75, 76). Again (ibid., p. 77): There is abundance of religion, so called; but alas! charity itself is compelled to harbor the apprehension that very much of what passes for religion is but a screw in the vast machine which has been constructed for mans convenience and mans exaltation. Man would not be without religion: it would not be respectable; and therefore he is content to devote one-seventh of his time to religion, or, as he thinks and professes, to his eternal interests, and then he has six-sevenths to devote to his temporal interests; but whether he works for time or eternity, it is for himself, in reality, Such is the way of Cain. Let my reader ponder it well. Let him see where this way begins, whither it tends, and where it terminates.

4. Profanity (worldliness, secularism, irreligion). Cain, like Esau, was profane (Heb. 12:16); that is to say, he lived his life outside the temple: he not only lived in the world, he was also of the world. It seems, moreover, that he bequeathed this worldliness, this secularism, this restlessness, to his posterity (cf. Exo. 20:5-6). Not the slightest semblance of humility is to be found in anything he said or did, or in anything that is reported about the particular line which he sired. Again C.H.M. (ibid., pp. 74, 77): It is well to see that Cains act of murder was the true consequencethe proper fruitof his false worship. His foundation was bad and the superstructure erected thereon was also bad. Nor did he stop at the act of murder; but having heard the judgment of God thereon, despairing of forgiveness through ignorance of God, he went forth from His blessed presence and built a city, and had in his family the cultivators of the useful and ornamental sciencesagriculturists, musicians, and workers in metals. . . . How different the way of the man of faith! Abel felt and owned the curse; he saw the stain of sin, and, in the holy energy of faith, offered that which met it, and met it thoroughlymet it divinely. He sought and found a refuge in God Himself; and instead of building a city on the earth, he found but a grave in its bosom.

The way of Cain is indeed the broad way over which the multitudes travel, not to eternal fellowship with God, but to Godless, Christless eternity.

Abel and Christ: Analogies

The Scriptures do not expressly state that Abel was intended to be typical of Christ: nevertheless, the analogies are striking, as follows:
1. In the similarity of their occupations. Abel chose the occupation of a shepherd. Christ is the Good Shepherd (Joh. 10:16, Heb. 13:20, 1Pe. 5:4) of human souls.

2. In the similarity of their offerings. Abel brought the best of his flock, and the fat thereof, to the Lord. This was an offering of blood and fat, the richest offering that could be made under the Old Testament plan of worship. So our Christ offered Himself freely for the sin of the world (Joh. 1:29; Heb. 12:2; Heb. 9:14; Eph. 5:1; Mat. 20:28; 1Ti. 2:5-6). The blood of Abels offering prefigured the blood of Christ which was shed for the remission of sins (Heb. 9:29, Mat. 26:28, Eph. 5:25). The fat of Abels offering prefigured the inherent excellency of Christs body (a consequence of His begetting by the Holy Spirit, Luk. 1:35, Act. 2:24) which was offered up on the Cross for the sin of mankind (Joh. 1:29, 1Co. 11:24, 1Pe. 2:24; Heb. 10:5; Heb. 10:10; Heb. 10:20). All this adds up to the fact that our Lords vicarious sacrifice of Himself was the richest (because the costliest) offering that Heaven could provide for the redemption of fallen man (Joh. 3:16, Rom. 3:24).

3. In the similarity of their deaths. Abel was murdered by his own brother. The Lords Anointed was put to death at the importunities of His own people, and especially of their ecclesiastical leaders. Cain exclaimed, Am I my brothers keeper? Yahweh replied: The voice of thy brothers blood crieth unto me from the ground. When the Jewish leaders, supported by the mob which they had assembled to enforce their demands, besought Pilate to turn Jesus over to them that He might be put to death, their raucous cry was, His blood be on us, and on our children (Mat. 27:25). By their wanton act, the ground has been stained by a blood that speaketh better than that of Abel (Heb. 12:24). God took them at their word, as all subsequent history shows. In A.D. 70, the Roman armies entered Jerusalem, after a horrible two years siege, sacked the city, destroyed the Temple, and carried the Jews into captivity.

4. In the similarity of the penal sanctions which overtook their murderers. Cain was branded and sent out into the land of wandering; he became an outcast and a vagabond, and his restlessness was transmitted to his posterity. From the day of Messiahs Crucifixion, the Jewish nation has never had a flag it could call its own: even today, despite the establishment of the state of Israeli, the Jewish people remain scattered among all nations, and their Zionistic state faces a precarious future. (Cf. Mat. 8:11-12; Mat. 21:42-44; Mat. 23:29-39; Mat. 24:1-2; Mar. 12:10-11; Mar. 13:1-2; Luk. 11:45-52; Luk. 13:34-35; Luk. 19:41-44; Luk. 20:9-18; Luk. 21:20-24; Luk. 23:27-31; cf. also Deu. 28:37; Mar. 11:12-14; Act. 3:13-15; Act. 7:51-53.) The story is told of Frederick the Great of Prussia, who was inclined toward skepticism, once asked one of the ministers of his realm: Reverend Sir, what is the most convincing proof you can give me of the divinity of Christ and the divine inspiration of the Scriptures? The clergyman hesitated not a moment. Sire, said he, the most convincing proof of the divinity of Christ and the inspiration of Scripture that I, or any other person, could give you, is the history of the Jewish people. But, let us not overlook the fact that the blood of Christ is upon the Gentiles as well as the Jews. According to tradition, Pilate, who presumed to cleanse himself of this blood by ceremonially washing his hands in front of the mob (Mat. 27:24-26), later died a suicide in Gaul. Moreover, the death of Christ signaled also the setting in of the dry rot which culminated in the downfall of the Roman Empire itself. The simple fact is that our sins, your sins and mine, crucified the Lord of glory. He bore them all upon His body on the Tree! We have all, Jews and Gentiles alike, been concluded under sin that we might all return to God in the same way and on the same terms (Rom. 3:23, Eph. 3:11-21).

C.H.M. (NBG, 77, 78): The earth, which on its surface displayed the genius and energy of Cain and his family, was stained underneath with the blood of a righteous man. Let the man of the world remember this; let the man of God remember it; let the worldly-minded Christian remember it. The earth which we tread upon is stained by the blood of the Son of God. The very blood which justifies the Church condemns the world. The dark shadow of the cross of Jesus may be seen by the eye of faith, looming over all the glitter and glare of this evanescent world. The fashion of this world passeth away. It will soon all be over, so far as the present scene is concerned. The way of Cain will be followed by the error of Balaam, in its consummated form; and then will come the gainsaying of Core; and what then? The pit will open its mouth to receive the wicked, and close it again to shut them up in blackness of darkness forever. (Jud. 1:11-13). (Cf. Num., chs. 22, 23, 24; esp. Num. 24:3-9 with Num. 31:8; Num. 31:15 ff, 2Pe. 2:15, Rev. 2:14; Num., ch. 16, Gen. 26:9-10, Gen. 27:1-5, with Jud. 1:11.)

* * * * *

REVIEW QUESTIONS ON PART SEVENTEEN

1.

State the pagan etymology of the word religion as given by Cicero.

2.

Considered subjectively, what generally is the word religion used to signify?

3.

Name some of the practices which are commonly associated with the term.

4.

State John Deweys definition of the term.

5.

What significance has the object of religious devotion to the theory and practice in any particular system?

6.

Name those matters which true religion is not.

7.

What are the basic premises of true religion?

8.

What is the essence of true religion?

9.

What does the term signify in Biblical religion?

10.

Explain what is meant by the phrase, the Remedial System.

11.

What does the Remedial System include?

12.

What is the mainspring of true religion on the Divine side? What is it on the human side?

13.

What does Gods grace include?

14.

What are the various manifestations of faith which characterize the Spiritual Life?

15.

State the formula of true religion.

16.

What does the word Dispensation signify? Name the Dispensations of true religion, and state the extent of each.

17.

What kind of change marked changes in Dispensations?

18.

In what Genesis narrative do we find the account of the beginning of true religion?

19.

State A. Campbells explanation of the beginning of true religion.

20.

In what interior condition of man did the necessity for true religion arise?

21.

By what specific measures did God meet this human need?

22.

Was religion provided for man before or after the Fall?

23.

What are the elements of true religion?

24.

What was the altar in the Patriarchal Dispensation? In the Jewish Dispensation? What is it in our Dispensation?

25.

What was the type of priesthood in the Patriarchal and Jewish Dispensations respectively? What is it in our Dispensation?

26.

What type of sacrifice was characteristic of the Old Testament Dispensations?

27.

What did these offerings point forward to (typify)?

28.

State the approximate dates of the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Ages. When did the Iron Age begin?

29.

Who were the first sons of Adam and Eve? What different occupations did they choose?

30.

Give the details of the first account of sacrifice.

31.

In this connection, explain the probable significance of Gen. 3:21.

32.

Whose offering was rejected, and whose accepted, by Yahweh?

33.

What is the prevailing naturalistic explanation of Gods acceptance of the one offering and His rejection of the other?

34.

What is the Biblical explanation?

35.

Show how these examples illustrate a basic principle of Biblical interpretation.

36.

What is meant by the righteousness which is of faith?

37.

What is the significance of the blood in the institution of sacrifice?

38.

Who is our Passover? Cite the Scripture text which states this fact explicitly.

39.

State the proofs of the Divine origin of sacrifice.

40.

Distinguish between moral law and positive law.

41.

What was the twofold basic design of the institution of sacrifice?

42.

Why have men in all ages tended to ignore, neglect, modify, even scoff at Gods positive ordinances?

43.

What is the Scriptural significance of a positive divine ordinance?

44.

What is the testimonial significance of the Christian ordinances of baptism and the Lords Supper?

45.

Explain what is meant by sacrifice as a propitiation, as a reconciliation, as an expiation, and as a redemption.

46.

What does the word atonement mean? State clearly the Biblical doctrine of the Atonement.

47.

What were the chief characteristics of pagan sacrifices?

48.

Why do we say that pagan sacrifices were probably corruptions of the original law of sacrifice as revealed in Scripture?

49.

Name some of the remnants of the magical and mystical pagan cults of sacrifice that were carried over into institutionalized Christianity.

50.

Who committed the first murder, and why?

51.

How did God proceed in dealing with the murderer? What did He first try to do?

52.

What was Cains reaction?

53.

In what sense did Cains offering lack efficacy?

54.

What did Cain try to do after killing Abel?

55.

What did he say when God bluntly charged him with the crime?

56.

What was his attitude?

57.

In what sense, would you say, is every man his brothers keeper?

58.

What was the blood feud or blood revenge?

59.

In what way did man finally, by law, resolve this problem of blood revenge?

60.

Distinguish between vengeance and vindication.

61.

Trace the development of sinful feelings into actual crime, as exemplified in the way of Cain.

62.

What was the first curse ever pronounced on a human being?

63.

What is indicated in Cains cry, My punishment is greater than I can bear?

64.

In what way or ways did the ground serve as the instrument of punishment to Cain and his posterity?

65.

What is the answer to the question, Where did Cain get his wife?

66.

Why are Cain, Abel, and Seth the only three children of Adam and Eve mentioned in Scripture?

67.

What relation has this fact to the grand design of the Bible as a whole?

68.

What was the mark of Cain?

69.

What purpose was served by this mark? Was it a mark of punishment or a mark of Divine grace? Explain your answer.

70.

What special obligations does the Christian have toward his brothers in the flesh?

71.

What special obligations does the Christian have especially toward those of the household of the faith?

72.

What proofs do we have from Cains outcries that he had no real understanding of God?

73.

How does Cains cry of desperation point to the cry of lost souls at the Judgment?

74.

What are the marks of genuine faith? How are these related to the Christian ordinances, especially that of Christian baptism?

75.

Explain what is meant by the phrase, Gods covering of grace.

76.

What are the devices to which men resort as substitutes for this Divine covering?

77.

What folly is involved in mans presumption that civic morality, fraternalism, respectability, intellectualism, tradition, and the like, will have the efficacy to save him from sin?

78.

What is the folly of trying to substitute something just as good for implicit obedience to Gods laws?

79.

How does genuine faith respond to the Divine ordinances?

80.

What are the chief characteristics of those who walk in the way of Cain?

81.

Explain Jud. 1:11.

82.

What does the word profanity especially imply in Scripture?

83.

What are the analogies between the lives of Abel and Christ?

84.

In what sense did the punishment which descended on Cain point forward to that which descended on the Jews and Gentiles who crucified Christ?

85.

What is the blood that speaketh better than that of Abel?

86.

In what sense does this blood cry out against all mankind? What, then, is mans only remedy?

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

IV.
THE FOUNDING OF THE FAMILY, AND COMMENCEMENT OF THE NON-PARADISIACAL LIFE.

(1) She . . . bare Cain, and said . . . In this chapter we have the history of the founding of the family of Cain, a race godless and wanton, but who, nevertheless, far outstripped the descendants of Seth in the arts of civilisation. To tillage and a pastoral life they added metallurgy and music; and the knowledge not only of copper and its uses, but even of iron (Gen. 4:22), must have given them a command over the resources of nature so great as to have vastly diminished the curse of labour, and made their lives easy and luxurious.

I have gotten a man from the Lord.Rather, who is Jehovah. It is inconceivable that eth should have here a different meaning from that which it has in Gen. 1:1. It there gives emphasis to the object of the verb: God created eth the heaven and eth the earth, that is, even the heaven and even the earth. So also here, I have gotten a man eth Jehovah. even Jehovah. The objection that this implies too advanced a knowledge of Messianic ideas is unfounded. It is we who read backward, and put our ideas into the words of the narrative. These words were intended to lead on to those ideas, but they were at present only as the germ, or as the filament in the acorn which contains the oak-tree. If there is one thing certain, it is that religious knowledge was given gradually, and that the significance of the name Jehovah was revealed by slow degrees. (See on Gen. 4:26.) Eve attached no notion of divinity to the name; still less did she foresee that by the superstition of the Jews the title Lord would be substituted for it. We distinctly know that Jehovah was not even the patriarchal name of the Deity (Exo. 6:3), and still less could it have been Gods title in Paradise. But Eve had received the promise that her seed should crush the head of her enemy, and to this promise her words referred, and the title in her mouth meant probably no more than the coming One. Apparently, too, it was out of Eves words that this most significant title of the covenant God arose. (See Excursus on names Elohim and Jehovah-Elohim, at end of this book.)

Further, Eve calls Cain a man, Heb., ish, a being. (See on Gen. 2:23.) As Cain was the first infant, no word as yet existed for child. But in calling him a being, even the future one, a lower sense, often attached to these words, is not to be altogether excluded. It has been said that Eve, in the birth of this child, saw the remedy for death. Death might slay the individual, but the existence of the race was secured. Her words therefore might be paraphrased: I have gained a man, who is the pledge of future existence. Mankind is thus that which shall exist. Now, it is one of the properties of Holy Scripture that words spoken in a lower and ordinary sense are often prophetic: so that even supposing that Eve meant no more than this, it would not exclude the higher interpretation. It is evident, however, from the fact of these words having been so treasured up, that they were regarded by Adam and his posterity as having no commonplace meaning; and this interpretation has a suspiciously modern look about it. Finally, in Christ alone man does exist and endure. He is the perfect manmans highest level; so that even thus there would be a presage of immortality for man in the saying, I have gained a man, even he that shall become. Grant that it was then but an indefinite yearning: it was one, nevertheless, which all future inspiration was to make distinct and clear; and now, under the guidance of the Spirit, it has become the especial title of the Second Person in the Holy Trinity.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

CAIN AND ABEL, Gen 4:1-15 .

“The consequences of the fall now appear in the history of the first family. By careful attention to the record, we may learn the true nature of the primitive religion, its rites, its hopes, and faith. We may also see here most instructive traces of the primeval civilization. While fearful sin stains the firstborn of man, sadly crushing the joyful hopes of the first mother, a pious son also appears, setting forth thus early the contrast and conflict between good and evil, which is to run through human history. The good at first is overcome by the evil; Abel is slain by Cain; but another son (Seth, set or placed) is set in his place at the head of the godly line.” Newhall.

In the following chapter the careful reader will note, 1) in the two types of men the first outward development of the two seeds that of the serpent and that of the woman, (Gen 3:15😉 2) agriculture and the keeping of flocks as the earliest employments of men; 3) the doctrine of sacrifices established at the very gate of Paradise: 4) God’s earliest manifestations of favour to the righteous and of displeasure towards the sinner; 5) the beginnings of polygamy; 6) art, culture, and human depravity and sinfulness keeping pace with one another; so that an advanced civilization, in spite of all the refining and ennobling tendencies of art and culture, may, without the divine favour, only serve to intensify the corruption and violence of men; 7) the Cainites, in founding the first city, and by worldly inventions and arts, lead the way in building up the godless kingdom of the beast, the world-power of Antichrist; the godly seed, by faith and piety begin to build the kingdom of heaven.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

1. Adam knew Eve A euphemism, based upon a profound conception of the marital relation . “Generation in man is an act of personal free-will, not a blind impulse of nature . It flows from the divine institution of marriage, and is, therefore, knowing the wife . ” Keil .

Bare Cain In the Hebrew the word Cain has the emphatic particle before it, the Cain . In these most ancient narratives names have special significance, and the name Cain is most naturally derived from the Hebrew , kun, or , kana, the word immediately used by Eve, and translated in our text, I have gotten. A better translation would be, I have begotten . The name Cain, then, would signify offspring, or one begotten, rather than possession, as held by many writers . See Furst’s Hebrews Lex . and T . Lewis’s note in Lange in loc .

A man from the Lord Literally, a man, the Jehovah . This exact rendering appears to us better than our common version, which follows the Targum of Onkelos; better than the Sept . and Vulg . by the Lord; better than any attempt to paraphrase the passage, or construe the as a preposition . With MacWhorter (see Bib . Sacra for January, 1857, and the volume entitled “Yahveh Christ, or, the Memorial Name”) and Jacobus, we understand Eve’s exclamation as a kind of joyful eureka over the firstborn of the race, as if in this seed of the woman was to be realized the promise of the protevangelium recorded in chap . 3:15 . Keil’s objection to this view, on the ground that Eve knew nothing of the divine nature of the promised seed, and could not have uttered the name Jehovah, because it was not revealed until a later period, is unwarrantable assumption . The statement of Exo 6:3, (where see note,) that the name Jehovah was not known to the patriarchs, does not mean that the name was never used before the days of Moses; and if these are not the very words of Eve, or their exact equivalent, why should we believe that she said any thing of the kind? If the name JEHOVAH was used at all by Eve, it is likely that something of its profound significance had been revealed in connexion with the first promise of the coming One. And it would have been very natural for the first mother, in her enthusiasm over the birth of her first child, to imagine him the promised Conqueror. But, as T. Lewis observes, “The greatness of Eve’s mistake in applying the expression to one who was the type of Antichrist rather than of the Redeemer, should not so shock us as to affect the interpretation of the passage, now that the covenant God is revealed to us as a being so transcendently different. The limitation of Eve’s knowledge, and perhaps her want of due distinction between the divine and the human, only sets in a stronger light the intensity of her hope, and the subjective truthfulness of her language. Had her reported words, at such a time, contained no reference to the promised seed of the woman, the Rationalist would doubtless have used it as a proof that she could have known nothing of any such prediction, and that therefore Gen 3:15, and Gen 4:1, must have been written by different authors, ignoring or contradicting each other.” Eve’s hasty and mistaken expectation of the coming Deliverer is a fitting type of the periodic but mistaken pre-millennialism of New Testament times, which has, with almost every generation, disturbed the Church with excitement over the expected immediate coming of Christ.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The Generations of the Heavens and the Land, Gen 2:4 to Gen 4:26.

In chapters 1, and Gen 2:1-3, the sacred writer gives us his account of the creation of the heavens and the land; he now proceeds to give us their generations, . His historical standpoint is the day from which these generations start; the day when man was formed of the dust of the ground, and of the breath of life from the heavens. So the first man is conceived of as the product of the heavens and the land by the word of God. Hence, Adam was the son of God, (Luk 3:38,) and the day of his creation was the point of time when Jehovah-God first revealed himself in history as one with the Creator . In chapter i, which narrates the beginning of the heavens and the land, we find mention of Elohim only, the God in whom (as the plural form of the name intimates) centres all fulness and manifoldness of Divine Powers . At the beginning of this section stands the name , Jehovah, the personal Revealer and Redeemer, who enters into covenant with his creatures, and places man under moral law .

The information supplied in this chapter is fundamental to the history of redemption. Here we learn of man’s original estate; the conditions of the first covenant of works; the sanctity of the family relation; and the innocency of the first human pair. Without the information here supplied the subsequent history of man and of redemption would be an insoluble enigma.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘And the man knew Eve his wife and she conceived and bore Cain (qayin from the stem qon), saying, “I have obtained (qanithi from the stem qanah) a man with Yahweh.” ’

“Knew” is a regular euphemism for sexual intercourse. Eve’s words are interesting. Notice that she does not say ‘I have borne a child’ but ‘I have obtained a man’. There may possibly be the thought here that here is someone to help them with their hard labour (the birth of a boy in agricultural areas in many Eastern countries is still looked on as a special joy because he will be able to share the work burden), compare Gen 5:29 where Lamech rejoices in Noah’s birth because he will help with the work. It may even emphasise that she felt she had already had too many daughters and had wanted another son.

“Cain” – ‘qayin’ – later meaning spear. It may be that his mother was hoping he would be a hunter to bring meat to the family and that the original word translated qayin meant a throwing instrument of some kind. Instead he becomes a hunter of men. But in Arabic ‘qyn’ equals ‘to fashion, give form’. Thus it could mean ‘one formed’.

“With Yahweh” – this is an unusual use of ‘with’ (‘eth’). We must probably translate ‘with the help or agreement of Yahweh’, the point being that she feels that this is one more step in her reinstatement, which is with Yahweh’s approval. Akkadian ‘itti’ is used with this meaning as is sometimes the Hebrew ‘im (‘with’ – 1Sa 14:45). It could thus mean ‘in participation with’, acknowledging that Yahweh gave life in conception. For this idea see Psa 139:13, ‘for you formed (qanah) my inward parts’.

There is an indirect play on words between qayin and qanah but it is not drawn out, and there is no similar word association with Abel. (The original account would be passed down in a primitive language. The translator is seeking to express the pun in his translation as best he can).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The Story of Cain and Abel ( Gen 4:1 to Gen 5:1 a).

Gen 4:1-16 . The Sin of Cain TABLET III

It is quite clear that this section once existed separately from Genesis 2-3. The immediate and lasting change from ‘Yahweh Elohim’ (Lord God) to ‘Yahweh’ (Lord), after the almost pedantic use of the former in the previous narrative, suggests this, as does the rather abrupt way in which the connection is made between the two accounts. The account is in covenant form being built around two covenants, so that there were originally two ‘covenant’ histories, that with Cain and that with Lamech, but as the former at least was in the days before writing it would have been remembered and passed down among the Cainites in oral form, not just as a story but as sacred evidence of a covenant with God. Later the covenant with Lamech would receive similar treatment. Thus the record in Gen 4:1-16 originally stood on its own. Remembering this can be basic to its interpretation. It is too easy to read it as though it was simply a direct continuation of Genesis 3.

On the latter assumption it is regularly assumed that Cain and Abel (Hebel) were Adam’s first two sons, but that assumption is made merely because of the position of the present narrative. There is no suggestion anywhere in the text that this is so, and had Cain been the firstborn this would surely have been emphasised. It demonstrates the reliability of the compiler that he does not say so.

Thus in another record we are told ‘when Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters’. This is in ‘the histories of Noah’ (see article, ” “) (Gen 5:1 to Gen 6:9). We note that in this section there is no mention of Cain and Abel, even though Cain is still alive (for Seth was born after Abel – Gen 4:25), and if we did not have Genesis 4 we would have assumed that Seth was the firstborn. The reason for this is that chapter 5 wishes to put the emphasis on Seth because he is the ‘father’ of the line that leads up to Noah. All Adam’s children other than Cain, Abel and Seth are always totally ignored, probably because no reliable information about them had been passed down.

Two points emerge. One is that Adam and Eve had ‘other sons and daughters’. Notice that that is a refrain that follows the birth of each son mentioned in the line. It is of course possible that each son mentioned in the line was a firstborn son, but there appears to be nothing apart from the phrase that suggests so. Probably, in the list in Genesis 11, Arpachshad is not the eldest son, for in Gen 10:21-22 he is listed third out of five, yet the list in Genesis 11 gives no hint of this. Thus the phrase ‘had other sons and daughters’ is stressing the patriarchs’ fruitfulness, not saying that the patriarch in question had had no previous children before the one mentioned. In Genesis 5 it is the line leading up to Abraham that is being emphasised.

If Adam was 130 years old when he ‘bore’ Seth (if we are to take the age literally, and even if not it certainly means ‘of good age’), it is extremely unlikely then that before that date he would only have had two sons (compare the fruitfulness of Cain in Gen 4:17). It would therefore be reasonable to assume that before that date Adam and Eve also had other sons and daughters, and one of them may have been the firstborn.

The story of Cain and Abel specifically acts as the background to God’s covenant with Cain, and speaks of the first shedding of man’s blood. This is why it was recorded and remembered. But, as has been often noted, it does in fact assume the existence of daughters of Adam (Gen 4:17) and of other relatives, for Cain says ‘whoever finds me will kill me’ (Gen 4:14). So Cain and Abel should be seen as two among many sons, mentioned simply because of the incident that occurred, not because of their priority. They were not the only ones on the earth at the time.

Furthermore it must also be considered that they (and Seth) may not actually have been direct sons of Adam and Eve. The Bible (and other ancient literature) often refers to someone as being ‘born of’ someone when the former is a descendant rather than the actual son (this can be seen by comparing genealogies in the Bible, including the genealogies of Jesus). It could well be that the depiction is simply made in order to stress the connection of Cain and Abel with Adam by descent.

The ancients were not as particular in their definitions of relationship as we are. They would find no difficulty in saying ‘so and so bore so and so’ when they mean ‘the ancestor of so and so’. Indeed, this narrative must have been originally put into Hebrew when Hebrew was a very primitive language, and words would have had an even greater width of meaning than they had later, and would not at that stage have been so closely defined. As T. C. Mitchell in the New Bible Dictionary (1st edition) entry on Genealogy comments – ‘the word ‘ben’ could mean not only ‘son’, but also ‘grandson’ and ‘descendant’, and in like manner it is probable that the verb ‘yalad’ could mean not only ‘bear’ in the immediate physical sense, but also ‘become the ancestor of ’ (the noun ‘yeled’ from this verb has the meaning of descendant in Isa 29:23)’. The main thing that militates against this interpretation here is Gen 4:25 where Seth is regarded by Eve as replacing Abel, but even this may have been put on her lips as having been ‘said’ by her through her descendant who bore Abel and Seth.

The account of Cain and Abel was very suitable for the purpose of following Genesis 3, for Cain’s occupation caused him to wrestle with ‘the thorns and the thistles’, the wrestling with which was the consequence of the curse (Gen 3:18), whilst Abel as the cattle drover was able to provide the coats of skins with which man now covered himself (Gen 3:21).

As the compiler of Gen 1:1 to Gen 11:27 (which probably once existed as an independent unit) had no other suitable information with which to link the expulsion from the Plain of Eden with the genealogy of Seth, and as he wished to depict the growth of sin, he used this narrative about Cain and Abel, which would have been especially preserved by the Cainite line because of the covenant. It was possibly the only one available to him which would enable him to emphasise the beginning of the new era, as well as to demonstrate how one sin leads to a worse one, until at last it results in murder. He has two strands in mind. The line of Adam’s descendants up to Noah, and the growth of human wickedness from rebellion to murder, to further murder, to engaging in the occult, which result in the Flood.

We shall now look at the record in more detail (see the e-Sword verse comments)

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The Story of Cain and Abel Gen 4:1-26 tells us of the story of how Cain slew Abel and of how God gave Adam and Eve another son named Seth to carry the seed of redemption to mankind.

Cain’s Punishment In Gen 4:9-16 we have the account of God’s punishment upon Cain for the murder of his brother Abel. Cain was sentenced by God to become a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth. In other words, he would no longer have a place of rest. As we study the three writings of Solomon, which are Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Songs, we find that they are each structured as a journey into rest. These books teach us how to find rest in this life as well as entering into Heaven, our eternal resting place. It is interesting to note that the next story that follows is that of Noah, whose name means, “rest”; for God was judging the world in order to restore it to a place of rest.

What seems unusual in this story is that it appears God did not implement the proper degree of punishment for premeditated murder; rather, God sends him away to another land to live, and marks him to protect his life from those who may take vengeance upon him. The reason God did this is because the law was not yet instituted upon earth, so that Cain did not violate the law (Rom 5:13). Therefore, the penalty of his sin was not required of him.

Rom 5:13, “(For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.”

In contrast, Andrew Wommack notes that under the Law of Moses, the first person who committed a sin punishable by death was picking up sticks on the Sabbath. Moses consulted the Lord and was told to stone him to death, which the children of Israel did (Num 15:32-36). [101] Thus, sin was judged differently in these two dispensations.

[101] Andrew Wommack, “The War is Over,” (Andrew Wommack Ministries, Colorado Springs, Colorado), on Trinity Broadcasting Network (Santa Ana, California), television program.

The Story of Lamech Gen 4:17-24 gives us Cain’s genealogy. The primary figure in this genealogy is a man called Lamech, who killed a man. Lamech reflects back on Cain’s murder of Abel to justify himself, so that this brief story reveals how Cain’s sin affected his descendants.

Gen 4:1  And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.

Gen 4:1 “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain” Word Study on “Cain” – Gesenius says the Hebrew word “Cain” ( ) (H7014) means, “possession, acquired.” Josephus ( Antiquities 1.2.1) and Philo of Alexandria ( Treatise o n the First-born Child of Man, Cain 15) [102] give the meaning as “a possession.” Easton says the name means “ a possession, a spear.” PTW translates his name with a similar word “acquired, a spear.” This definition matches the Hebrew verb ( ) (H7069) used in this verse, which means, “to get, acquire, possess.”

[102] Philo Judaes, A Treatise on the Cheribum; and On the Flaming Sword; and On the First-born Child of Man, Cain, in The Works of Philo Judaes, by C. D. Young, vol. 1 (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), 188.

Gen 4:1 “and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD” Word Study on “I have gotten” – BDB says the Hebrew word “I have gotten” ( ) (H7069) means, “to get, acquire, create, buy, possess.” The name “Cain” means, “acquired,” which is derived from this primitive root verb.

Comment – Note a similar statement in Psa 127:3, “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”

Gen 4:2  And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Gen 4:2 Word Study on “Abel” Gesenius says the Hebrew word “Abel” ( ) (H1893) means, “breath, breathing,” or “exhalation, vapour, mist, darkness.” BDB says it means “breath.” Easton says that the name means “vanity.” Josephus gives the meaning, “sorrow” ( Antiquities 1.2.1). Philo of Alexandria says that it means “referring to God” ( A Treatise on the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 1). [103]

[103] Philo Judaes, A Treatise on the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain, in The Works of Philo Judaes, by C. D. Young, vol. 1 (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), 207.

Gen 4:3  And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.

Gen 4:4  And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:

Gen 4:4 “And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering” Word Study on “respect” – Gesenius says the Hebrew word “respect” ( ) (H8159) means, “to regard.” BDB says this word is means, “to look at or to, regard, gaze at or about.” The Enhanced Strong says it is used 15 times in the Old Testament being translated in the KJV as “look 5, respect 3, dismay 2, turn 1, regard 1, spare 1, be dim 1, depart 1.” Holladay gives us the translation “to look with favor at.”

Comments – In the same way that God took notice of Abel’s offering, He also regards our prayers because of the sacrifice made. The offering was an important part of this event. We come to the throne of grace because of the sacrificial offering of the blood of Jesus Christ, of which the Lord has respect.

Gen 4:4 Comments – Where did Abel understand the importance of a blood sacrifice in the covering of sins? Perhaps it was because he was taught the story of how God slew an animal and covered the nakedness of Adam and Eve. There, it was necessary for an animal to be sacrificed and blood to be shed in order to cover the sin of Adam and Eve. The fig leaves that they choose to cover their sin were not sufficient in God’s eyes.

Gen 4:4 Comments – Several characteristics of Abel’s sacrifice were:

1) He shed blood (Heb 9:22) as covering for sin.

2) He brought firstlings Like first fruits or a tithe to God.

3) “the fat thereof” The best part of the animal was given to God.

Heb 9:22, “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.”

Gen 4:4 Comments – Just as the Mosaic Law required that the Israelites tithed a tenth, the best, to the Levites, and the Levites in turn offered a tenth of this tithe, their best, so also Abel offered the firstlings of the flock and the best of the firstling, which was the fat. We could say that they were tithing out of the tithe, so to speak, or giving the best of the best.

Gen 4:5  But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

Gen 4:3-5 Comments – Cain and Abel’s Sacrifice Gen 4:3-5 teaches us that Adam and Eve taught their sons to make sacrifices, which these patriarchs evidently practiced before and after the murder of Abel.

God Rejects Cain’s Sacrifice We read in Gen 4:3-5 that God rejected Cain’s sacrifice of the fruit of the ground. Perhaps Cain’s sacrifice was rejected because he did not shed blood, and perhaps also because Cain’s heart was not right. However, we see in the Mosaic Law that God did in fact accept offerings from the fruit of the ground, for some of the sacrifices that God commanded were grain offerings (Lev 17:11, Heb 9:22).

Lev 17:11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul .”

Heb 9:22, “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission .”

We can find examples of God coming down and consuming sacrifices as He did for Moses at the dedication of the Tabernacle (Lev 9:24), for Manoah, the father of Samson (Jdg 13:19-20), for King David at the threshing floor of Ornan (1Ch 21:26), for Solomon at the dedication of the Temple (2Ch 7:1) and for Elijah on Mount Carmel (1Ki 18:38) as a way of receiving their sacrifices. In addition, during the time of Moses, God consumed the children of Israel with fire as a form of judgment (Num 11:1-2; Num 16:35). In addition, Gen 15:17 tells us that a smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed through Abraham’s sacrifice.

Scripture References – Note similar verses:

Pro 21:27, “The sacrifice of the wicked is abomination: how much more, when he bringeth it with a wicked mind?”

Pro 15:8, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright is his delight.”

The book of Hebrews also refers to this story of Cain and Abel’s sacrifice (Heb 11:4).

Heb 11:4, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.”

Gen 4:6  And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?

Gen 4:7  If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

Gen 4:7 “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted” – Comments What God accepts is an act of faith demonstrating our devotion to Him. Cain did not demonstrate his faith and devotion to God through this sacrifice.

Gen 4:7 “and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door” Comments – The phrase “sin lieth at the door” is used here figuratively of sin attempting to enter our physical sense gates, primarily of our seeing and our hearing. Satan was attempting to gain entrance into Cain’s heart by placing evil thoughts into his mind. Satan must enter his mind through his ears and his eyes, which are the “doors” of our mind.

Gen 4:7 “unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him” – Comments – The RSV says, “its desire is for you, but you must master it.” God is telling Cain to resist sin’s temptation. He is not to give place to the devil, but rather, to overcome him (Eph 4:26-27).

Eph 4:26-27, “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil.”

Gen 4:7 Comments – Note how Paul describes this same struggle with sin in Rom 7:7-14.

Gen 4:6-7 Comments God’s Love Manifested in Dealing with Cain – In God’s love, He was trying to tell Cain how to correct his mistake and restore himself to a right standing with God. God never stopped loving Cain, even in his sin.

Gen 4:8  And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

Gen 4:8 Comments – Cain was serving Satan when he slew his brother. Cain did not master sin; instead he gave place to Satan (1Jn 3:12, Jud 1:11).

1Jn 3:12, “Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.”

Jud 1:11, “Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.”

Gen 4:8 Comments – One Jewish tradition says that Cain killed his brother Abel by crushing his head.

“Then Cain, the hard-hearted, and cruel murderer, took a large stone, and beat his brother’s head with it, until his brains oozed out, and he wallowed in his blood, before him.” ( The First Book of Adam and Eve 1.79) [104]

[104] The Book of Adam and Eve: Also Called The Conflict of Adam and Eve With Satan, trans. S. C. Malan (London: Williams and Norgate, 1882), 101.

Since Cain was moved by Satan to commit this wicked act, we see how Satan was trying to crush the head of the seed of woman. One Bible teacher suggests that Satan was trying to reverse the curse of Gen 3:15 that was placed upon him which says, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” In other words, Satan was trying to crush the head of the woman’s seed before he crushed his head.

Gen 4:8 Comments – F. F. Bruce tells us that the literal translation of Gen 4:8 in the Masoretic text reads, “And Cain said to Abel his brother.” [105] It does not go on to tell us what he said. In an attempt to smooth out this awkward phrase, the KJV reads, “And Cain talked with Abel his brother,” so that nothing needs to follow within this text. However, many ancient readings of this verse, such as the LXX, add a phrase telling us what Cain said to his brother. For example the LXX reads, “And Cain said to Abel his brother, Let us go out into the plain ; and it came to pass that when they were in the plain Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” ( Brenton) Therefore, some scholars believe that the LXX shows a more accurate translation of the original Hebrew text than does the Masoretic reading used by the KJV.

[105] F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1963), 157.

Gen 4:9  And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?

Gen 4:9 Comments – God certainly knew where Abel was at this time. Abel was the first person to go to Heaven, and for perhaps hundreds of years he was the only person in Heaven.

Gen 4:10  And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.

Gen 4:10 “the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground” Comments – Abel’s blood was crying out from the ground. What was it saying when it cried out? It was asking for justice, blood for blood. It was asking for a suitable sacrifice for the sin committed. Note:

“And in the first (year) of the third jubilee, Cain slew Abel because (God) accepted the sacrifice of Abel, and did not accept the offering of Cain. And he slew him in the field: and his blood cried from the ground to heaven, complaining because he had slain him .” ( The Book of Jubilees 4.2-4)

Gen 4:11  And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand;

Gen 4:11 Comments – Both the Serpent and Cain now have a curse placed upon them. When Adam and Eve fell in the Garden the Lord did not curse them directly because they acknowledged their sins, although it was a weak and immature confession. God did increase their sorrow in childbearing and in their daily chore of tilling the earth. But Cain would not acknowledge his sin and repent before the Lord. Therefore, the Lord punished Cain by placing a curse upon him. It was in this state of unrepentance that Cain “went out from the presence of the LORD” (Gen 4:16).

Gen 4:12  When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.

Gen 4:12 “a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth” Word Studies on “a fugitive” BDB says the Hebrew word “fugitive” ( ) (H5128) is word means, “to wave, quiver, vibrate, swing, stagger, tremble, be unstable, to totter, go tottering, a vagabond (participle), (Niphal) to be tossed about or around, (Hiphil), to toss about, to shake, cause to totter, to shake, disturb, to cause to wander.” The Enhanced Strong says it is used 42 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV as “shake 6, wander 6, move 6, promoted 3, fugitive 2, sift 2, stagger 2, wag 2, misc 13.”

Word Studies on “a vagabond” BDB says the Hebrew word “vagabond” ( ) (H5110) means, “to shake, waver, wander, move to and fro, flutter, show grief, have compassion on.” The Enhanced Strong says this word is used 24 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV as “bemoan 7, remove 5, vagabond 2, flee 1, get 1, mourn 1, move 1, pity 1, shaken 1, skippedst 1, sorry 1, wag 1, wandering 1.”

Comments – It is important to note that Cain will be banished to the land of Nod [Hebrew “nowd” ( ) (H5113)], which is a derivative of the same verb (H5110), used in Gen 4:12 and translated “vagabond.”

Gen 4:13  And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear.

Gen 4:14  Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.

Gen 4:15  And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

Gen 4:15 “the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him” Word Study on “a mark” BDB says the Hebrew word “mark” ( ) (H226) means, “sign, signal, a distinguishing mark, banner, remembrance, miraculous sign, omen, warning, token, ensign, standard, miracle, proof.” The Enhanced Strong says this word is used 79 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV as “sign(s) 60, token(s) 14, ensign(s) 2, miracles 2, Mark 1.”

Comments – The Lord once told Benny Hinn that He sets a mark upon those who are intercessors and that this mark gave intercessors divine protection. Benny Hinn found Eze 9:4 as Scriptural evidence to what the Lord told him. [106] This verse gives a description of what an intercessor does.

[106] Benny Hinn, This is Your Day (Irving, Texas), on Trinity Broadcasting Network (Santa Ana, California), television program.

Eze 9:4, “And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.”

Also note that the Lord set a mark upon Cain, so that no one would kill him. It is therefore logical to conclude that this mark may have not been apparent physically, but was a spiritual mark that gave angelic protection against demonic forces, just at with the intercessors mentioned in Eze 9:4.

Job understood the significance of this mark:

Job 7:20, “I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of men? why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself?”

Job 10:14, “If I sin, then thou markest me, and thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity.”

Jeremiah also makes a reference to a mark:

Lam 3:12, “He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.”

Also, in the book of Revelations, the Lord again sets a seal on the forehead of his saints in order to give them divine protection from angelic warfare:

Rev 7:3, “Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.”

Rev 9:4, “And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.”

In the book of Revelations, Satan tries to counterfeit this mark with the mark of the beast. However, it becomes a mark of destruction by God.

Rev 13:16, “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:”

However, we do find in The First Book of Adam and Eve that this mark that was placed upon Cain was the fact that he continually trembled and quaked. This mark was intended to bring Cain to repentance. Thus, from that point onward, Cain found no rest.

“Then God said unto Cain, Cursed be the earth that has drunk the blood of Abel thy brother; and thou, be thou trembling and shaking; and this will be a sign unto thee, that whosoever finds thee, shall kill theeAnd He said to him, ‘Where is thy brother?’; To which he answered and said, ‘I know not.’; Then the Creator said to him, ‘Be trembling and quaking.’ Then Cain trembled and became terrified; and through this sign did God make him an example before all the creation, as the murderer of his brother. Also did God bring trembling and terror upon him, that he might see the peace in which he was at first, and see also the trembling and terror he endured at the last; so that he might humble himself before God, and repent of his sin, and seek the peace he enjoyed at first.” ( The First Book of Adam and Eve 1:79) [107]

[107] The First Book of Adam and Eve: Also Called The Conflict of Adam and Eve With Satan, trans. S. C. Malan (London: Williams and Norgate, 1882), 102-3.

Gen 4:16  And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.

Gen 4:16 Word Study on “Nod” Gesenius says the Hebrew word “Nod” ( ) (H5113) means, “flight, exile.” Strong says it means, “vagrancy.” PTW says it means, “vagabond.” This proper name is used only one time in the Old Testament. Strong says it is a derivative of the primitive root (H5110), which means, “to wander, flee, disappear.” This root verb is used earlier in Gen 4:14 and is translated as “vagabond.” Scholars are not able to identify the location of the place called “Nod.”

Gen 4:17  And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.

Gen 4:17 “And Cain knew his wife” – Comments – One of the often-asked questions in Scriptures is, “Where did Cain get his wife?” The most obvious answer is that he married his sister. The Book of Jubilees (4.9) says, “And Cain took Awan his sister to be his wife and she bare him Enoch at the close of the fourth jubilee.” Thus, Jewish tradition says Cain took his sister to be his wife.

Gen 4:17 “and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch” Word Study on “Enoch” Gesenius and Strong say the Hebrew word “Enoch” ( ) (H2585) means, “initiated.” The Enhanced Strong says this word is used 16 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV as “Enoch 9, Hanoch 5, Henoch 2.” Although there were other individuals by the name of Enoch in the Scriptures, Enoch, the son of Cain, is only referred to in Gen 4:17-18 and nowhere else in the Scriptures.

Comments – I have observed a similar custom among the India community in Uganda of naming a business enterprise after one of their children The Indian man who opens a business often names it after his eldest daughter.

Gen 4:18  And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat Lamech.

Gen 4:18 Word Study on “Irad” Strong says the Hebrew name “Irad” ( ) (H5897) means, “fugitive.” PTW says the name means, “fleet.” This name is used two times in the Old Testament, being found only in Gen 4:18.

Gen 4:18 Word Study on “Mehujael” Strong says the Hebrew name “Mehujael” ( ) (H4232) means “smitten by God.” This name is used two times in the Old Testament, being found only in Gen 4:18.

Gen 4:18 Word Study on “Methusael” Strong says the Hebrew name “Methusael” ( ) (H4967) means, “who is of God.” This name is used two times in the Old Testament, being found only in Gen 4:18.

Gen 4:18 Word Study on “Lamech” BDB says the Hebrew name “Lamech” ( ) (H3929) means, “powerful.” PTW says the name means, “strong youth, overthrower.” Although the father of Noah was also named “Lamech,” this person named “Lamech” as the son of Methusael is only mentioned in this passage of Gen 4:18-24, being mentioned 5 times.

Gen 4:19  And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.

Gen 4:19 Word Study on “Adah” Strong says the Hebrew name “Adah” ( ) (H5711) means, “ornament.” PTW says her name means, “pleasure, beauty.” Adah was the first of Lamech’s two wives and the mother of Jabel and Jubal. Although we find the wife of Esau being called by the same name, this wife of Lamech is only mentioned in this passage in Gen 4:19-23, being mentioned nowhere else in Scripture.

Gen 4:19 Word Study on “Zillah” BDB says the Hebrew name “Zillah” ( ) (H6741) means, “shade.” PTW says the name means, “protection, screen.” This individual is mentioned only in this passage, being found nowhere else in Scripture.

Gen 4:19 Comments – Lamech, the son of Methusael, is known as the first polygamist. This act of polygamy is very possibly the underlying cause of his slaying a man, for the spirit of adultery and murder often work hand in hand. This observation is supported by looking at modern cultures that practice polygamy, such as those found in the Middle East and Africa.

Gen 4:20  And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle.

Gen 4:20 Word Study on “Jabal” BDB says the Hebrew name “Jabal” ( ) (H2989) means, “stream of water.” His name is mentioned only one time in the Scriptures.

Gen 4:20 Word Study on “tents” BDB says the Hebrew word “tent” ( ) (H168) means, “a tent, nomad’s tent, and thus symbolic of wilderness life, transience, dwelling, home, habitation, the sacred tent of Jehovah (the tabernacle).” The Enhanced Strong says it is used 345 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV as “tabernacle(s) 198, tent(s) 141, dwelling 2, place(s) 2, covering 1, home 1.”

Gen 4:20 Comments – Jabal appears to have been the individual who first domesticated cattle for man’s use. He probably invented the tent as a means of providing temporary shelter for his herdsmen. We know that Cain built a city, so we must assume that most people during this time lived in simple houses made of clay or stone or wood. Thus, the invention of a tent could have been a new idea.

Gen 4:21  And his brother’s name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.

Gen 4:21 Word Study on “Jubal” Strong says the Hebrew word “Jubal” ( ) (H3106) means, “stream.” His name is mentioned only one time in the Scriptures.

Gen 4:21 Comments- Jubal appears to have been the individual who first invented musical instruments.

Gen 4:22  And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain was Naamah.

Gen 4:22 Word Study on “Tubalcain” Strong says the Hebrew name “Tubalcain” ( ) (H8423) means, “offspring of Cain.” BDB says it means, “thou will be brought of Cain.” However, according to Gen 4:1 the name “Cain” means, “acquired” because she had acquired him from the Lord.

Gen 4:1, “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.”

Gen 4:22 Word Study on “Naamah” Strong says the Hebrew name “Naamah” Hebrew ( ) (H5279) means, “pleasantness.” BDB says it means, “lovliness.” This was the sister of Tubalcain.

Gen 4:23  And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.

Gen 4:23 “for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt” Word Study on “slain” Gesenius says the word “slain” ( ) (H2026) means, “to kill.” Strong says it means, “to smite with deadly intent.”

Word Study on “wounding” Gesenius and Strong say the Hebrew word “wounding” ( ) (H6482) means, “a wound.” The phrase “to my wounding”

Word Study on “hurt” Gesenius says the Hebrew word “hurt” ( ) (H2250) means, “a stripe or bruise, the mark of strokes on the skin.” Strong says it means, “bound (with stripes), i.e. a weal (or black-and-blue mark itself).”

Comments – The phrase “to my wounding” ( ) parallels “to my hurt” ( ). Such double statements are characteristic of Hebrew poetry.

Gen 4:24  If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.

Gen 4:24 Scripture References Note a similar reference to sevenfold judgment in Gen 4:15, “And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold . And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.”

Gen 4:23-24 Comments The Song of Lamech – Gen 4:23-24 contains the first poetry in the Scriptures, structured as three pairs of parallel Hebrew verses, also called three distitches, in which the second phrase repeats the first phrase.

Various Interpretations of the Passage – In his speech to his two wives, Lamech tell them that he slew a man. There are a number of interpretations of this passage of Scripture regarding what he communicates to his wives.

(1) Lamech Slays a Man in Self-Defense – One popular view interprets Lamech to have killed an individual in self-defense, giving the verb ( ) (H2026) a perfect tense, so that song reads, “I have slain a man,” and the phrases “to my wounding” and “to my hurt” are translated “for wounding me” and “for hurting me.” Lamech believes if Cain murdered Abel with intent, then Lamech’s accidental murder should invoke much more of God’s protective favour.

In his speech Lamech was concerned that someone, perhaps a relative of the slain individual, would seek to kill Lamech as an act of retribution. Thus, Gen 4:24 reveals that there were ancient laws of retribution long before The Code of Hammurabi (c. 2000 B.C.) or the Mosaic Law (c. 1500 B.C.).

Andrew Wommack says that Lamech attempts to use God’s leniency upon Cain to justify his own sinful act. Because the Law of Moses was not yet instituted, God did not bring judgment upon Cain. [108] Later generations would fall into moral depravity until destroyed by the Flood because God was not bringing immediate judgment. The story of Lamech testifies to man’s progressive depravity.

[108] Andrew Wommack, “The War is Over,” (Andrew Wommack Ministries, Colorado Springs, Colorado), on Trinity Broadcasting Network (Santa Ana, California), television program.

Lamech said, “For I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.” He may have meant that he killed a man accidentally and did not lay in wait as did Cain. If the laws of retribution were applied to Cain, how much more would they be applied to Lamech being innocent of any evil. However, The Book of Jubilees (4.31-32) gives a different account of Cain’s death by saying that his house of stones fell upon him so that he died.

(2) Lamech Boasts in His Strength Some scholars interpret Lamech’s speech as a prideful boast in his own strength, giving the verb ( ) (H2026) a future tense, so that the song says, “I will slay the man who wounds men, and the young man who hurts me.” [109]

[109] Milton S. Terry and Fales H. Newhall Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 1, ed. Daniel D. Whedon (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1889), in The Wesleyan Heritage Library Commentary (Wesleyan Heritage Publications, 2002), 126.

The Relationship of Polygamy and Murder – It is interesting to note the fact that Lamech, the first polygamist in the Scriptures (Gen 4:23), also committed an act of murder. We can also note that King David committed an act of murder because of his pursuit of polygamy. We can also note that the religion of Islam, which emphasizes polygamy as a part of hits religious tenets of faith is also characterized as a religion of war and terror and murder. We can note that the African nations are known for their polygamy as well as their internal wars. Thus, there seems to be a relationship between polygamy, or adultery, and the spirit of murder.

In the lineage of Cain we see the spirit of adultery and murder manifest in the life of Lamech, one of Cain’s descendants. These two spirits often work together. We can compare the story of Lamech to King David, who had many wives, committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, and murdered her husband.

It is interesting to compare David and Lamech’s lifestyle of polygamy and murder and with the testimony of Jack Hayford when he was a young minister. His testimony includes a temptation towards adultery followed by thoughts of murder. As a young minister working at the headquarters of the Four Square Church, he found himself becoming close friends with a female co-worker, even though he was married. After some time a mature co-worker noticed this unhealthy friendship. Hayford tells of his emotional experience, how he both loved his wife and yet, felt affections for this new lady. He tells how he entertained the thoughts of his wife dying. As he struggled with his heart and the Spirit of God, he felt tremendous conviction, but did not know what to do. He was feeling thoughts of adultery, followed by thoughts of leaving his wife, which was a spirit of murder. Because of the intercession of others and the work on the Holy Spirit, he came to himself, approached his supervisor and arranged for a separation between himself and this female co-worker. At that point he approached his wife and revealed this persona’ struggle with her. Years later, he began to share this testimony from the pulpit and found that it was a frequent struggle with many church leaders and laymen. [110] We find these same two spirits at work in the life of David and Lamech; for they both committed adultery, followed by murder.

[110] Jack Hayford, The Anatomy of Adultery (Ventura, California: Regal Books, 2004).

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

The Genealogy of the Heavens and the Earth The first genealogy of the book of Genesis after its introduction is called “The Generations of the Heavens and the Earth” (Gen 2:4 to Gen 4:26). In this passage, the Scriptures record the account of the creation of man (Gen 2:4-25), his fall (Gen 3:1-24), and the immediate progression of human depravity (Gen 4:1-26). Heb 11:4 reveals the central message in this genealogy that stirs our faith in God when it says, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.” While the divine commission of the Story of Creation is God’s charge for man as well as the plant and animal kingdoms to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:26-28), the divine charge for man in the Genealogy of the Heavens and the Earth (Gen 2:4 to Gen 4:26) is to tend the Garden and name the animal, which is how mankind was to begin taking dominion over the plant and animal life in fulfillment of his divine commission. Thus, the plants and animals would work in harmony with mankind as it multiplied across the earth. Therefore, the title “Genealogy of the Heavens and the Earth” shows us the original harmony of all of creation that existed prior to the Fall, and their subjection to vanity afterwards. The Heavens are included because they were to serve mankind as well, serving as light and as signs and seasons for mankind, and the Scriptures tell us that all of creation was subjected to vanity (Rom 8:20), which included the heavens as well as the earth.

Rom 8:20, “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,”

In addition to man’s charge to tend the Garden of Eden, he was to take time to rest and have fellowship with God, who walked with him in the cool of the day (Gen 3:8). This dual lifestyle is reflected in the Song of Solomon as the Shulamite bride learned to labour in the vineyard of the king while retreating to the garden of solitude and prayer. This genealogy concludes with the birth of Seth and the statement that a seed of man was born who did begin to call upon the name of the Lord after the Fall.

This genealogy (Gen 2:4 to Gen 4:26) reveals God’s original purpose and plan for creation, as well as showing us why it has been corrupted. This passage shows how corruption subjected all of Creation to vanity by emphasizing the two major sinful events that shaped the earliest history of the heavens and earth and brought sin and death upon the human race. This serves to explain why God’s creation has fallen out of its original order. It was these two events that also brought the rest of God’s creation into travail and vanity until the redemption of mankind as is discussed in Rom 8:18-23. Each of the subsequent genealogies making up the book of Genesis shows us how God is pursuing a seed of righteousness in order to fulfill His plan of redemption for mankind.

Outline Here is a proposed outline:

1. The Divine Commission of Adam and Eve Gen 2:4-25

2. The Entrance of Sin into God’s Creation Gen 3:1 to Gen 4:24

3. Conclusion Gen 4:25-26

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Ten Genealogies (Calling) – The Genealogies of Righteous Men and their Divine Callings (To Be Fruitful and Multiply) – The ten genealogies found within the book of Genesis are structured in a way that traces the seed of righteousness from Adam to Noah to Shem to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob and the seventy souls that followed him down into Egypt. The book of Genesis closes with the story of the preservation of these seventy souls, leading us into the book of Exodus where we see the creation of the nation of Israel while in Egyptian bondage, which nation of righteousness God will use to be a witness to all nations on earth in His plan of redemption. Thus, we see how the book of Genesis concludes with the origin of the nation of Israel while its first eleven chapters reveal that the God of Israel is in fact that God of all nations and all creation.

The genealogies of the six righteous men in Genesis (Adam, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) are the emphasis in this first book of the Old Testament, with each of their narrative stories opening with a divine commission from God to these men, and closing with the fulfillment of prophetic words concerning the divine commissions. This structure suggests that the author of the book of Genesis wrote under the office of the prophet in that a prophecy is given and fulfilled within each of the genealogies of these six primary patriarchs. Furthermore, all the books of the Old Testament were written by men of God who moved in the office of the prophet, which includes the book of Genesis. We find a reference to the fulfillment of these divine commissions by the patriarchs in Heb 11:1-40. The underlying theme of the Holy Scriptures is God’s plan of redemption for mankind. Thus, the book of Genesis places emphasis upon these men of righteousness because of the role that they play in this divine plan as they fulfilled their divine commissions. This explains why the genealogies of Ishmael (Gen 25:12-18) and of Esau (Gen 36:1-43) are relatively brief, because God does not discuss the destinies of these two men in the book of Genesis. These two men were not men of righteousness, for they missed their destinies because of sin. Ishmael persecuted Isaac and Esau sold his birthright. However, it helps us to understand that God has blessed Ishmael and Esau because of Abraham although the seed of the Messiah and our redemption does not pass through their lineage. Prophecies were given to Ishmael and Esau by their fathers, and their genealogies testify to the fulfillment of these prophecies. There were six righteous men did fulfill their destinies in order to preserve a righteous seed so that God could create a righteous nation from the fruit of their loins. Illustration As a young schoolchild learning to read, I would check out biographies of famous men from the library, take them home and read them as a part of class assignments. The lives of these men stirred me up and placed a desire within me to accomplish something great for mankind as did these men. In like manner, the patriarchs of the genealogies in Genesis are designed to stir up our faith in God and encourage us to walk in their footsteps in obedience to God.

The first five genealogies in the book of Genesis bring redemptive history to the place of identifying seventy nations listed in the Table of Nations. The next five genealogies focus upon the origin of the nation of Israel and its patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

There is much more history and events that took place surrounding these individuals emphasized in the book of Genesis, which can be found in other ancient Jewish writings, such as The Book of Jubilees. However, the Holy Scriptures and the book of Genesis focus upon the particular events that shaped God’s plan of redemption through the procreation of men of righteousness. Thus, it was unnecessary to include many of these historical events that were irrelevant to God’s plan of redemption.

In addition, if we see that the ten genealogies contained within the book of Genesis show to us the seed of righteousness that God has preserved in order to fulfill His promise that the “seed of woman” would bruise the serpent’s head in Gen 3:15, then we must understand that each of these men of righteousness had a particular calling, destiny, and purpose for their lives. We can find within each of these genealogies the destiny of each of these men of God, for each one of them fulfilled their destiny. These individual destinies are mentioned at the beginning of each of their genealogies.

It is important for us to search these passages of Scripture and learn how each of these men fulfilled their destiny in order that we can better understand that God has a destiny and a purpose for each of His children as He continues to work out His divine plan of redemption among the children of men. This means that He has a destiny for you and me. Thus, these stories will show us how other men fulfilled their destinies and help us learn how to fulfill our destiny. The fact that there are ten callings in the book of Genesis, and since the number “10” represents the concept of countless, many, or numerous, we should understand that God calls out men in each subsequent generation until God’s plan of redemption is complete.

We can even examine the meanings of each of their names in order to determine their destiny, which was determined for them from a child. Adam’s name means “ruddy, i.e. a human being” ( Strong), for it was his destiny to begin the human race. Noah’s name means, “rest” ( Strong). His destiny was to build the ark and save a remnant of mankind so that God could restore peace and rest to the fallen human race. God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, meaning, “father of a multitude” ( Strong), because his destiny was to live in the land of Canaan and believe God for a son of promise so that his seed would become fruitful and multiply and take dominion over the earth. Isaac’s name means, “laughter” ( Strong) because he was the child of promise. His destiny was to father two nations, believing that the elder would serve the younger. Isaac overcame the obstacles that hindered the possession of the land, such as barrenness and the threat of his enemies in order to father two nations, Israel and Esau. Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, which means “he will rule as God” ( Strong), because of his ability to prevail over his brother Esau and receive his father’s blessings, and because he prevailed over the angel in order to preserve his posterity, which was the procreation of twelve sons who later multiplied into the twelve tribes of Israel. Thus, his ability to prevail against all odds and father twelve righteous seeds earned him his name as one who prevailed with God’s plan of being fruitful and multiplying seeds of righteousness.

In order for God’s plan to be fulfilled in each of the lives of these patriarchs, they were commanded to be fruitful and multiply. It was God’s plan that the fruit of each man was to be a godly seed, a seed of righteousness. It was because of the Fall that unrighteous seed was produced. This ungodly offspring was not then nor is it today God’s plan for mankind.

Outline Here is a proposed outline:

1. The Generation of the Heavens and the Earth Gen 2:4 to Gen 4:26

a) The Creation of Man Gen 2:4-25

b) The Fall Gen 3:1-24

c) Cain and Abel Gen 4:1-26

2. The Generation of Adam Gen 5:1 to Gen 6:8

3. The Generation of Noah Gen 6:9 to Gen 9:29

4. The Generation of the Sons of Noah Gen 10:1 to Gen 11:9

5. The Generation of Shem Gen 11:10-26

6. The Generation of Terah (& Abraham) Gen 11:27 to Gen 25:11

7. The Generation Ishmael Gen 25:12-18

8. The Generation of Isaac Gen 25:19 to Gen 35:29

9. The Generation of Esau Gen 36:1-43

10. The Generation of Jacob Gen 37:1 to Gen 50:26

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

The Entrance of Sin into God’s Creation – Since God’s divine destiny for His creation would be fulfilled in the creation of mankind, emphasis is, therefore, given to their creation. However, two sinful events hindered God’s plan, which are the Fall in the Garden (Gen 3:1-24), and the murder of Abel by Cain his brother (Gen 4:1-24). The fall of Adam and Eve brought God’s creation into mortality and its subsequent vanity. Although Adam and Eve repented of their sins and produced a righteous offspring, they did bring all of creation into corruption and vanity. The murder of Abel caused sin to take root into humanity; for Cain was unrepentant of his sin and produced unrighteous offspring that sowed unrighteousness into the earth. Now we have two types of men living upon the earth, those who are righteous and those unrighteous before God.

Outline Here is a proposed outline:

1. The Fall of Adam & Eve Gen 3:1-24

2. Cain and Abel Gen 4:1-26

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

The Offerings of Cain and Abel

v. 1. And Adam knew Eve, his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. In the order of natural procreation, according to the blessing which the Lord had pronounced upon the man and his wife, Eve gave birth to a son, whom she named Cain (possession). The reason for giving her first-born son this name is shown in her joyful exclamation: I have gotten a man, Jehovah (which is the exact translation). The first Messianic prophecy had been given, and faith in this prophecy lived in the heart of Eve. Although she therefore made a mistake in the person when she believed this son of hers to be the promised Messiah, she showed that her desire was directed toward the man, toward the Seed of the woman, who was to crush the head of the serpent. July, Adam and Eve were the first sinners, but also the first believers, the beginning of the Church of God on earth. We walk in the footsteps of Eve’s faith.

v. 2. And she again bare his brother Abel. This was her second child, her second son, whose name Abel (vanity) indicates that she was feeling the vanity of this earthly life and hoped all the more eagerly for salvation. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. Thus the two brothers continued in the calling of their father, the younger son devoting himself to the keeping of the smaller domestic animals and the older to the tilling of the soil.

v. 3. And in process of time, at the end of many days, at the expiration of a long period, it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. This shows the manner in which the earliest worship of the Lord took place. Both Cain and Abel, having been instructed by Adam in the knowledge of the Lord, brought offerings, or sacrifices, Cain choosing some of the fruits of the field as his gift.

v. 4. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. In the very mention of the gift there is an indication of the difference in the attitude of the hearts; for whereas it is said of Cain only in general that he brought of the fruit of the soil, it is stated concerning Abel that he brought of the first-born of his flock, such as were in the best of condition, rich in fat. The gifts thus expressed the difference between Abel’s free and joyful faith and Cain’s legal, reluctant state of heart, Heb 11:4; 1Jn 3:12. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering;

v. 5. a. but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. The Lord searches the reins and the heart. He noted the humble faith of Abel, whose one thought was to give the Lord a proof of the sincere gratitude for all the goodness and mercy which had been vouchsafed him. But God saw also the hypocrisy of Cain’s heart, the fact that he was not interested in the worship which his hands were performing. He therefore indicated His pleasure in the one case and His displeasure in the other, either by some outward sign visible in the smoke of the offering, or by a subsequent rich blessing in the case of Abel, or through the mouth of Adam, as the priest of the family congregation. It is not the outward size of our gifts and offerings which makes them acceptable in the sight of the Lord, but the attitude of our hearts and minds toward God. He wants pure love flowing out of sound faith.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

Gen 4:1

Exiled from Eden, o’er, canopied by grace, animated by hope, assured of the Divine forgiveness, and filled with a sweet peace, the first pair enter on their life experience of labor and sorrow, and the human race begins its onward course of development in sight of the mystic cherubim and flaming sword. And Adam knew Eve, his wife. I.e. “recognized her nature and uses” (Alford; cf. Num 31:17). The act here mentioned is recorded not to indicate that paradise was “non nuptiis, sed virginitate destinatum” (Jerome), but to show that while Adam was formed from the soil, and Eve from a rib taken from his side, the other members of the race were to be produced “neque ex terra neque quovis alio mode, sed ex conjunctione maris et foeminse” (Rungius). And she conceived. The Divine blessing (Gen 1:28), which in its operation had been suspended during the period of innocence, while yet it was undetermined whether the race should develop as a holy or a fallen seed, now begins to take effect (cf. Gen 18:14; Rth 4:13; Heb 11:11). And bare Cain. Acquisition or Possession, from kanah, to acquire (Gesenius). Cf. Eve’s exclamation. Kalisch, connecting it with kun or kin, to strike, sees an allusion to his character and subsequent history as a murderer, and supposes it was not given to him at birth, but at a later period. Tayler Lewis falls back upon the primitive idea of the root, to create, to procreate, generate, of which he cites as examples Gen 14:19, Gen 14:22; Deu 32:6, and takes the derivative to signify the seed, explaining Eve’s exclamation kanithi kain as equivalent to , genui genitum or generationem. And said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. The popular interpretation, regarding kani-thi as the emphatic word in the sentence, understands Eve to say that her child was a thing achieved, an acquisition gained, either from the Lord (Onkelos, Calvin) or by means of, with the help of, the Lord (LXX; Vulgate, Jerome, Dathe, Keil), or for the Lord (Syriac). If, however, the emphatic term is Jehovah, then eth with Makkeph following will be the sign of the accusative, and the sense will be, “I have gotten a manJehovah” (Jonathon, Luther, Baumgarten, Lewis); to which, perhaps, the chief objections are

(1) that it appears to anticipate the development of the Messianic idea, and credits Eve with too mature Christological conceptions (Lange), though if Enoch in the seventh generation recognized Jehovah as the coming One, why might not Eve have done so in the first? (Bonar),

(2) that if the thoughts of Eve had been running so closely on the identity of the coming Deliverer with Jehovah, the child would have been called Jehovah, or at least some compound of Jehovah, such as Ishiah and or Coniah and (Murphy);

(3) si scivit Messiam esse debet Jovam, quomodo existimare potuit Cainam ease Messiam, quem sciebat esse ab Adamo genitum? (Dathe); and

(4) that, while it might not be difficult to account for the mistake of a joyful mother in supposing that the fruit of her womb was the promised seed, though, “if she did believe so, it is a caution to interpreters of prophecy” (Inglis), it is not so easy to explain her belief that the promised seed was to be Jehovah, since no such announcement was made in the Prot-evangel. But whichever view be adopted of the construction of the language, it is obvious that Eve’s utterance was the dictate of faith. In Cain’s birth she recognized the earnest and guarantee of the promised seed, and in token of her faith gave her child a name (cf. Gen 3:20), which may also explain her use of the Divine name Jehovah instead of Elohim, which she employed when conversing with the serpent. That Eve denominates her infant a man has been thought to indicate that she had previously borne daughters who had grown to womanhood, and that she expected her young and tender babe to reach maturity. Murphy thinks this opinion probable; but the impression conveyed, by the narrative is that Cain was the first-born of the human family.

Gen 4:2

And she again bare (literally, added to bear, a Hebraism adopted in the New Testament; vide Luk 20:11) his brother Abel. Habel (vanity), supposed to hint either that a mother’s eager hopes had already begun to be disappointed in her eider son, or that, having in her first child’s name given expression to her faith, in this she desired to preserve a monument of the miseries of human life, of which, perhaps, she had been forcibly reminded by her own maternal sorrows. Perhaps also, though unconsciously, a melancholy prophecy of his premature re-moral by the hand of fratricidal rage, to which it has been thought there is an outlook by the historian In the frequent (seven times repeated) and almost pathetic mention of the fact that Abel was Cain’s brother. The absence of the usual expression , as well as the peculiar phraseology et addidit parere has suggested that Abel was Cain’s twin brother (Calvin, Kimchi, Candlish), though this is not necessarily implied in the text. And Abel was a keeper of sheep ( , LXX.; the latter term includes goatsLe Gen 1:10), but Cain was a tiller of the ground. These occupations, indirectly suggested by God in the command to till the ground and the gift of the clothes of skin (Keil), were doubtless both practiced by the first man, who would teach them to his sons. It is neither justifiable nor necessary to trace a difference of moral character in the different callings which the young men selected, though probably their choices were determined by their talents and their tastes. Ainsworth sees in Abel a figure of Christ “in shepherd as in sacrificing and martyrdom.”

Gen 4:3

And in process of time. Literally, at the end of the days, i.e.

1. Of the year (Aben Ezra, Dathe, De Wette, Rosenmller, Bohlen), at which season the feast of the ingathering was afterwards keptExo 23:16 (Bush). Aristotle, ‘Ethics,’ 8.2, notes that anciently sacrifices were offered after the gathering of the fruits of the earth (Ainsworth).

2. Of the week (Candlish).

3. Of an indefinite time, years or days (Luther, Kalisch).

4. Of some set time, as the beginning of their occupations (Knobel). It came to pass (literally, it was) that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering. , LXX.; oblatio, Vulgate; speisopfer, Luther. The mincha of Hebrew worship was a bloodless sacrifice, consisting of flour and oil, or flour prepared with frankincense (Le Exo 2:1). All tree fruits and garden produce were excluded; it was limited to the productions of agriculture and vine growing. Here it includes both meat offerings and animal sacrifices (cf. Exo 23:4). Unto the Lord. Probably to the gate of the garden, where the cherubim and flaming sword were established as the visible monuments of the Divine presence.

Gen 4:4

And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock. Either the firstborn, which God afterwards demanded (Exo 13:12), or the choicest and best (Job 18:13; Jer 31:19; Heb 12:23). And the fat thereof. Literally, the fatness of them, i.e. the fattest of the firstlings, “the best he had, and the best of those best”; a proof that flesh was eaten before the Flood, since “it had been no praise to Abel to offer the fatlings if he used not to eat of them” (Willet), and “si anteposuit Abel utilitate” suae Deum, non dubium quid solitus sit ex labore suo utilitatem percipere” (Justin). And the Lord had respect. Literally, looked upon; , LXX. (cf. Num 16:15); probably consuming it by fire from heaven, or from the flaming sword (cf. Le Gen 9:24; 1Ch 21:26; 2Ch 7:1; 1Ki 18:38; Jerome, Chrysostom, Cyril). Theodotion renders , inflammant; and Heb 11:4, , is supposed to lend considerable weight to the opinion. Unto Abel and his offering. Accepting first his person and then his gift (cf. Pro 12:2; Pro 15:8; 2Co 8:12). “The sacrifice was accepted for the man, and not the man for the sacrifice” (Ainsworth); but still “without a doubt the words of Moses imply that the matter of Abel’s offering was more excellent and suitable than that of Cain’s,” and one can hardly entertain a doubt that this was the idea of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews”. Abel’s sacrifice was , fuller than Cain’s; it had more in it; it had faith, which was wanting in the other. It was also offered in obedience to Divine prescription. The universal prevalence of sacrifice rather points to Divine prescription than to man’s invention as its proper source. Had Divine worship been of purely human origin, it is almost certain that greater diversity would have prevailed in its forms. Besides, the fact that the mode of worship was not left to human ingenuity under the law, and that will-worship is specifically condemned under the Christian dispensation (Col 2:23), favors the presumption that it was Divinely appointed from the first.

Gen 4:5

But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. Because of the absence of those qualities which distinguished Abel and his offering; not because the heart of Cain was “no more pure,” but “imbued with a criminal propensity” (Kalisch), which it was not until his offering was rejected. The visible sign, whatever it was, being awanting in the case of Cain’s oblation, its absence left the offerer in no dubiety as to the Divine displeasure with both himself and his offering. In the rejection of Cain’s offering Bohlen sees the animus of a Levitical narrator, who looks down slightingly on offerings of the fruits and flowers of earth; but, as Havernick well remarks, the theocracy was essentially based on agriculture, while the Mosaic institute distinctly recognized the legality and value of bloodless offerings. And Cain was very wroth (literally, it burned with Cain exceedingly), and his countenance fell. In fierce resentment against his brother, possibly in disappointed rage against himself, almost certainly in anger against God (cf. Neh 6:16; Job 29:24; Jer 3:12, and contrast Job 11:15). There was apparently no sorrow for sin, “no spirit of inquiry, self-examination, prayer to God for light or pardon, clearly showing that Cain was far from a right state of mind” (Murphy). Yet the Lord does not forthwith abandon the contumacious and insensate transgressor, but patiently expostulates with and instructs him as to how he too might obtain the same blessing of acceptance which his younger brother enjoyed.

Gen 4:6, Gen 4:7

And the Lord (Jehovah) said unto Cain. Speaking either mediately by Adam (Luther), or more probably directly by his own voice from between the cherubim where the flaming sword, the visible symbol of the Divine presence, had been established (cf. Exo 20:24). Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? The ensuing verse is a veritable crux interpretum, concerning which the greatest diversity of sentiment exists. Passing by the manifest mistranslation of the LXX; “If thou hast offered rightly, but hast not divided rightly, hast thou not sinned? Rest quiet; toward thee is his (or its) resort, and thou shalt rule over him (or it),” which Augustine, Ambrose, and Chrysostom followed, at the same time “wearying themselves with many interpretations, and being divided among themselves as to how Cain divided not rightly” (Wilier), the different opinions that have been entertained as to the meaning of its several clauses, their connection, and precise import when united, may be thus exhibited. If thou doest well. Either

(1) if thou wert innocent and sinless (Candlish, Jamieson), or

(2) if thou, like Abel, presentest a right offering in a right spirit (Vulgate, Luther, Calvin), or

(3) if thou retrace thy steps and amend thine offering and intention (Willet, Murphy). Shalt thou not be accepted? Literally, Is there not lifting up? (sedth, from nasa, to raise up). Either

1. Of the countenance (Gesenius, Furst, Dathe, Rosenmller, Knobel, Lange, Delitzsch).

2. Of the sacrifice, viz; by acceptance of it (Calvin); akin to which are the interpretationsIs there not a lifting up of the burden of guilt? Is there not forgiveness? (Luther); Is there not acceptance with God. (Speaker’s Commentary); Is there not a bearing away of blessing? (Ainsworth). Vulgate, Shalt thou not receive (sc. the Divine favor). “Verum quamvis reccatum condonare significet, nusquam tamen veniam sonat” (Rosen.).

3. Of the person, i.e. by establishing Cain’s pre-eminency as the elder brother, to which reference is clearly made in the concluding clause of the verse (Bush). And if thou doest not well, sinchattath, from chard, to miss the mark like an archer, properly signifies a sin (Exo 28:9; Isa 6:1-13 :27; cf. Greek, ); also a sin offering (Le Gen 6:18, 23); also penalty (Zec 14:19), though this is doubtful.

Hence it has been taken to mean in this place

1. Sin (Dathe, Rosenmller, Keil, Kalisch, Wordsworth, Speaker’s Commentary, Murphy).

2. The punishment of sin (Onkelos, Grotius, Cornelius a Lapide, Ainsworth), the guilt of sin, the sense of unpardoned transgression; “interius conscientiae judicium, quod hominem convictum sui peccati undique obsessum premit” (Calvin).

3. A sin offering (Lightfoot, Poole, Magee, Candlish, Exell)lieth (literally, lying; robets, from rabats, to couch as a beast of prey; cf. Gen 29:2; Gen 49:9) at the door. Literally, at the opening = at the door of the conscience, expressive of the nearness and severity of the Divine retribution (Calvin); of the soul, indicating the close contiguity of the devouring monster sin to the evil-doer (Kalisch); of paradise (Bonar); of Abel‘s fold (Exell), suggesting the locality where a sacrificial victim might be obtained; of the house, conveying the ideas of publicity and certainty of detection for the transgressor whose sin, though lying asleep, was only sleeping at the door, i.e. “in a place where it will surely be disturbed; and, therefore, it is impossible but that it must be awoke and roused up, when as a furious beast it will lay hold on thee ‘ (Luther); i.e. “statim se prodet, peccatum tuum non magis,celari potest, quam id quod pro foribus jacet ‘ (Rosenmller). And unto thee shall be hisi.e.

(1) Abel’s (LXX. (?), Chrysostom, Ambrose, Grotius, Calvin, Ainsworth, Bush, Speaker’s, Bonar, Exell); or

(2) sin’s (Vulgate (?), Luther, Rosenmller, Yon Bohlen, Kalisch, Keil, Delitzsch, Murphy); or

(3) the sin offering’s (Faber, Candlish)desire (vide Gen 3:16),

and thou shalt rule over him. I.e; according to the interpretation adopted of the preceding words

(1) thou shalt maintain thy rights of primogeniture over Abel, who, as younger son, shall be obsequious and deferential towards thee; or,

(2) “the entire submission and service of sin will be yielded to thee, and thou shalt make thyself master of it,” sc. by yielding to it and being hurried on to greater wickednessa warning against the downward course of sin (Murphy); or, while sin lurks for thee like a beast of prey, and “the demon of allurement” thirsts for thee to gratify thy passion, thou shalt rule over it, sc. by giving up thy wrath and restraining thine evil propensitiesa word of hopeful encouragement to draw the sinner back to holy paths (Keil); or, “peccatum tanquam muller impudica sistitur, quae hominem ad libidinem suam explendam tentet, cut igitur resistere debeat” (Rosenmller); or,

(3) the sacrificial victim is not far to seek, it is already courting thine acceptance, and thou mayst at once avail thyself of it (Candlish). Of the various solutions of this “difiicillimus locus,” all of which are plausible, and none of which are entirely destitute of support, that appears the most entitled to acceptance which, excluding any reference either to Abel or to a sin offering, regards the language as warning Cain against the dangers of yielding to sin.

Gen 4:8

And Cain talked with (literally, said to) his brother. (LXX.); egrediamur foras (Vulgate). The Samaritan and Syriac versions interpolate to the same effect. The Jerusalem Targum explains”Cainum cure Abele contendisse de vita aetcrna, de extremo judicio, et providentia divina,” inserting a long conversation commencing, “Veni, egrediamur ad superficiem agri;” but the obvious supplement is to be found in the subject matter of the previous verse (Hieronynms, Aben Ezra, Gesenius). It is not against this that it arums too much moral goodness in Cain to suppose that he would tell his younger brother of Jehovah’s admonition (Knobel); and it certainly relieves us from the necessity of adding to the moral turpitude of the unhappy fratricide by depicting him as deliberately planning his favored brother’s murder, carrying the fell purpose within his guilty bosom, watching his opportunity (Bottcher and Knobel, who substitute he watched, for , he said), and at last accomplishing his unhallowed purpose by means of treachery. Beyond all question the historian designs to describe not an act of culpable homicide, but a deed of red-handed murder; yet the impression which his language conveys is that of a crime rather suddenly conceived and hurriedly performed than deliberately planned and treacherously executed. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

Gen 4:9

And the Lord said unto Cain. “Probably soon after the event, at the next time of sacrifice, and at the usual place of offering” (Bonar). Where is Abel thy brother? “A question fitted to go straight to the murderer’s conscience, and no less fitted to rouse his wrathful jealousy, as showing how truly Abel was the beloved one” (ibid). Whether spoken by Adam (Luther), or whispered within his breast by the still small voice of conscience, or, as is most probable, uttered from between the cherubim, Cain felt that he was being examined by a Divine voice (Calvin). And (in reply) he said (adding falsehood, effrontery, and even profanity to murder), I know not: am I my brother’s keeper? The inquiry neither of ignorance nor of innocence, but the desperate resort of one who felt himself closely tracked by avenging justice and about to be convicted of his crime. “He showeth himself a lyer in saying, ‘I know not; wicked and profane in thinking he could hide his sin from God; unjust in denying himself to be his brother’s keeper; obstinate and desperate in not confessing his sin” (Willet; cf. Psa 10:1-18.).

Gen 4:10

Satisfied that the guilty fratricide is resolved to make no acknowledgment of his deed, the omniscient Judge proceeds to charge him with his sin. And hei.e. Jehovahsaid, What hast thou done? Thus intimating his perfect cognizance of the fact which his prisoner was attempting to deny. What a revelation it must have been to the inwardly trembling culprit of the impossibility of eluding the besetting God! (Psa 139:5). The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me. A common Scriptural expression concerning murder and other crimes (Gen 18:20, Gen 18:21; Gen 19:13; Exo 3:9; Heb 12:24; Jas 5:4). The blood crying is a symbol of the soul crying for its right to live (Lange). In this instance the cry was a demand for the punishment of the murderer; and that cry has reverberated through all lands and down through all ages, proclaiming vengeance against the shedder of innocent blood (cf. Gen 9:5). “Hence the prayer that the earth may net drink in the blood shed upon it, in order that it may not thereby become invisible and inaudible” (Knobel). Cf. Job 16:18; Isa 26:21; Eze 24:7; also Eschylus, ‘Chaephorae,’ 310, 398 (quoted by T. Lewis in Lange). From the ground. Into which it had disappeared, but not, as the murderer hoped, to become for. gotten.

Gen 4:11, Gen 4:12

Convicted, if not humbled, the culprit is speechless, and can only listen in consternation to the threefold judgment which pronounced him “cursed in his soul, vagabond in his body, and unprosperous in his labors” (Willet). And noweither at this time, already (cf. Jos 14:11; Hos 2:10), or for this cause, because thou hast done this (Gen 3:14; cf. Gen 19:9; Exo 18:19)art thou cursed. The first curse pronounced against a human being. Adam and Eve were not cursed, though the serpent and the devil were. If we may not conclude that Cain was thereby for ever excluded from the hope of salvation if he should repent, still less must we explain the Divine judgment down to a simple sentence of banishment from Eden. The fratricide was henceforth to bear the displeasure and indignation of his Maker, whose image in Abel he had slain; of which indignation and displeasure his expatriation was to be a symbol. Different explanations have been offered of the clause, from the earth, or ground, Adhamah, which, however, cannot mean more than the ground, which already had been cursed (Gen 3:17; Lunge), since “the curse of the soil and the misery of man cannot well be compared with each other” (Kalisch); or simply away from the district, the scene of his crime (Kalisch, Speaker’s, Rosenmller, Tuch, Gerlach, Delitzsch), as if all that the sentence implied was banishment from Eden; but must involve in addition the idea that the curse was to leap upon him from the earth, or ground, in general (Aben Ezra, Kimchi, Knobel, Alford, Murphy). Which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand. The terrible significance of this curse is further opened in the words which follow. The earth was to be against him

1. In refusing him its substance. When thou tillest (literally, shalt till) the ground, it shall not henceforth yield (literally, add to give) unto thee her strength. Neither a double curse upon the entire earth for man’s sake (Alford), nor a doom of sterility inflicted only on the district of Eden (Kalisch); but a judgment on Cain and his descendants with respect to their labors. Their tillage of the ground was not to prosper, which ultimately, Bonar thinks, drove the Cainites to city-building and mechanical invention.

2. In denying him a home. A fugitive and a vagabondliterally, moving and wandering; “groaning and trembling” (LXX; erroneously), “banished and homeless” (Keil)shalt thou be in the earth. “As robbers are wont to be who have no quiet and secure resting-place” (Calvin); driven on by the agonizing tortures of a remorseful and alarmed conscience, and not simply by “the earth denying to him the expected fruits of his labor” (Delitzsch). The ban of wandering, which David pronounced upon his enemies (Psa 59:12; Psa 109:10), in later years fell upon the Jews, who “for shedding the blood of Christ, the most innocent Lamb of God, are vagabonds to this day over the face of the earth” (Willet). Thus the earth was made the minister of God’s curse, not a partaker of it, as some have strangely imagined, as if by drinking up the blood of Abel it had become a participant of Cain’s crime (Delitzsch).

Gen 4:13, Gen 4:14

And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment (or my sin) is greater than I can bear. Or, than can be borne away. Interpreted in either way, this is scarcely the language of confession, “sufficiens confessio, sod intempestiva” (Chrysostom); but, as the majority of interpreters are agreed, of desperation (Calvin). According to the first rendering Cain is understood as deploring not the enormity of his sin, but the severity of his punishment, under which he reels and staggers as one amazed (Aben Ezra, Kimchi, Calvin, Keil, Delitzsch, Murphy, Alford, Speakers, Kalisch). According to the second, from the terrific nature of the blow which had descended on him Cain awakens to the conviction that his sin was too heinous to be forgiven. The first of these is favored by the remaining portion of his address, which shows that that which had paralyzed his guilty spirit was not the wickedness of his deed, but the overwhelming retribution which had leapt so unexpectedly from its bosom. The real cause of his despair was the sentence which had gone forth against him, and the articles of which he now recapitulates. Behold, thou hast driven me this day“Out of the sentence of his own conscience Cain makes a clear, positive, Divine decree of banishment” (Lange)from the face of the earth. Literally, the ground, i.e. the land of Eden. “Adam’s sin brought expulsion from the inner circle, Cain’s from the outer” (Bonar). And from thy face shall I be hid. Either

(1) from the place where the Divine presence was specially manifested, i.e. at the gate of Eden, which does not contradict (Kalisch) the great Biblical truth of the Divine omnipresence (cf. Exo 20:24); or,

(2) more generally, from the enjoyment of the Divine favor (cf. Deu 31:18). “To be hidden from the face of God is to be not regarded by God, or not protected by his guardian care” (Calvin). And I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond. “A vagabond and a runagate” (Tyndale, Coverdale, ‘Bishops’ Bible’). Vagus et profugus. In the earth. The contemplation of his miserable doom, acting on his guilty conscience, inspired him with a fearful apprehension, to which in closing he gives expression in the hearing of his Judge. And it shall come to pass, that every onenot beast (Josephus, Kimchi, Michaelis), but personthat findeth me shall slay me. “Amongst the ancient Romans a man cursed for any wickedness might be freely killed (Dionysius Halicarnass; 1. 2). Amongst the Gauls the excommunicated were deprived of any benefit of law (Caesar. ‘de Bello Gallico,’ 50:6; cf. also Sophocles, ‘(Edip. Tyrannus’)” (Ainsworth). The apprehension which Cain cherished has been explained as an oversight on the part of the narrator (Schumann and Tuch); as a mistake on the part of Cain, who had no reason to know that the world was not populated (T. Lewis); as referring to the blood avengers of the future who might arise from his father’s family (Rosenmller, Delitzsch); and also, and perhaps with as much probability, as indicating that already, in the 130 years that had gone, Adam’s descendants were not limited to the two brothers and their wives (Havernick).

Gen 4:15

The condemned fratricide’s apprehensions were allayed by a special act of grace. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore (the LXX; Symm; Theodotion, Vulgate, Syriac, Dathius, translate Not so , nequaquam, reading instead of ) whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. I.e. fully, sevenfold vengeancecomplete vengeance (cf. Le Gen 26:28). In the case of Cain’s murderer there was to be no such mitigation of the penalty as in the case of Cain himself; on the contrary, he would be visited more severely than Cain, as being guilty not alone of homicide, but of transgressing the Divine commandment which said that Cain was to live (Willet). As to why this special privilege was granted to Cain, it was not because “the early death of the pious Abel was in reality no punishment, but the highest boon (Kalisch), nor because banishment from God’s presence was the greatest possible punishment, “having in itself the significance of a social human death” (Lange), nor because it was needful to spare life for the increase of posterity (Rosenmller); but perhaps

1. To show that “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

2. To prove the riches of the Divine clemency to sinful men.

3. To serve as a warning against the crime of murder. To this probably there is a reference in the concluding clause. And the Lord set a mark upongave a sign to (LXX.)Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. Commentators are divided as to whether this was a visible sign to repress avengers (the Rabbis, Luther, Calvin, Piscator, &c.), or an inward assurance to Cain himself that he should not be destroyed (Aben Ezra, Dathe, Rosenmller, Gesemus, Tuch, Kalisch, Delitzsch). In support of the former it is urged that an external badge would be more likely to repel assailants; while in favor of the latter it is pleaded that of seventy-six times in which oth occurs in the Old Testament, in seventy-five it is translated sign. If there was a visible mark upon the fugitive, it is impossible to say what it was; that it was a shaking (LXX.), or a continual fleeing from place to place (Lyra), or a horn in the head (Rabbis), a peculiar kind of dress (Clericus), are mere conceits. But, whatever it was, it was not a sign of Cain’s forgiveness (Josephus), only a pledge of God’s protection; Cf. the Divine prophetic sentence against the Jewish Cain (Psa 59:11).

Gen 4:16

And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. Not simply ended his interview and prepared to emigrate from the abode of his youth (Kalisch); but, more especially, withdrew from the neighborhood of the cherubim (vide on Gen 4:14). And dwelt in the land of Nod. The geographical situation of Nod (Knobel, China?) cannot be determined further than that it was on the east of Eden, and its name, Nod, or wandering (cf. Gen 4:12, Gen 4:14; Psa 56:8), was clearly derived from Cain’s fugitive and vagabond life, “which showeth, as Josephus well conjectureth, that Cain was not amended by his punishment, but waxed worse and worse, giving himself to rapine, robbery, oppression, deceit” (Willet).

HOMILETICS

Gen 4:1-15

The first brothers.

I. THE BROTHERS AT HOME.

1. The first home. Of Divine appointment, and among the choicest blessings that have survived the fall, homes are designed for

(1) The increase of the human family. Of all animals, the offspring of man is least fitted to provide for itself in infancy. Without the shelter of a home man would be born only to die.

(2) The happiness of the race. Considering man’s weakness and wants, miseries and dangers, as a fallen being existing in a sin-cursed world, the family constitution, which secures the interdependence of individuals, largely enhances his comfort. Whether the same amount of happiness would have been attainable had the race been created, like the angelic, as a multitude of separate individuals may be difficult to determine.

(3) The training of children. Being God’s gift, they should be highly prized, tenderly cherished, carefully nurtured, intelligently counseled by the father, anxiously cared for by the mother, lovingly, perseveringly, prayerfully reared by both; educated not for themselves, or the world, or even for their parents, but for God; trained to work, as indolence is a sin, and to worship, as piety is a duty.

2. A pious home. Its locality, though outside the garden, was still in Eden, which was a mercy, and probably not far from the cherubim, Adam’s gate of heaven, which was hopeful. When man founds a home it should never be far removed from God, heaven, or the Church. Its structure, mayhap, was humble,another garden likely, but this time man-made, and not so fair as that which God had planted,but its precincts were hallowed by the rites of religion. It is one mark of a pious home when God has an altar in it (Psa 118:15). Its inmates were fallen creatures, but still pardoned sinners, who, having believed the Divine promise, had become partakers of the Divine mercy. There is no true piety where there is no humble faith in the gospel.

3. A happy home. At least it had all the elements that were needful to surround them with earthly felicity: the only true foundation on Which a happy home can restreligion (Psa 112:1; Pro 15:25; Pro 24:3); the best blessing a home can receivethe Divine favor (Pro 3:33); the best ornaments a home can possesschildren (Psa 128:3).

II. THE BROTHERS AT WORK. These works were

1. Necessary. God’s commands, man’s powers and needs, the earth’s condition, render toil indispensable. No one is born to sloth. Every one should have a calling. Those whom God’s bounty relieves from the necessity of toiling for daily bread should still labor in some specific occupation for God’s glory and man’s good.

2. Various. The first instance of division of labor. Diversity of employments, rendered necessary by individual capacities and tastes, promotes excellence of workmanship, facility of production, and rapidity of distribution; contributes to the unity and stability of the social fabric by teaching the interdependence of its several parts; multiplies the comforts, stimulates the energies, and generally advances the civilization of mankind.

3. Useful. Most trades and professions are useful; but some more so than others. Parents should, select for their children, and young persons for themselves, occupations that contribute to the good of man rather than those which enhance their own profit. A calling that flourishes on the world’s luxuries is less remunerative, besides being less honorable, than one which supplies men’s necessities.

4. Healthful. These brothers both worked in the open air. Out-of-door employment more conducive to physical vigor and mental activity than toiling in mines, factories, warehouses, and shops. Men should study health in their secular pursuits.

III. THE BROTHERS AT WORSHIP. Born in the same homes educated by the same parents, trained to the same duty of devotion, the first brothers became worshippers of the same God, at the same time, and in the same place, at the same altar, and in the same way, viz. by the presentation of oblations, yet their service was essentially diverse.

1. Their offerings. These were not the same

(1) In matter. Cain brought of the fruit of the ground; Abel of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. The one was bloodless, the other bloody. Each one’s offering was connected with, perhaps suggested by, his daily calling. So the trades, temperaments, abilities of men determine the kinds of their religious service and devotion. This diversity in men’s oblations is naturals appropriate, beautiful, right. God requires the consecration to himself of the first-fruits of men’s powers and callings (Pro 3:9).

(2) In measure. Abel offered unto God a more excellent (literally, a greater) sacrifice than Cain (Heb 11:4). Cain brought of the fruit, not fruits, of the earthoffering with a penurious hand, as many of God’s worshippers do still. Abel brought of the fattest and the best of his flocks; so should all God’s worshippers reserve for him the first-fruits of their years, powers, labors, increase.

(3) In meaning. The elder brother’s offering was an acknowledgment of dependence upon God, an expression, probably (?), of gratitude to God, possibly also a recognition of God’s claim to be worshipped; the younger son’s declared consciousness of sin, faith in atoning blood, hope in Divine mercy.

2. Their worship. The state of the heart is the essential thing in worship. If the offering of the hand he the husk, the devotion of the soul is the kernel of true religion. Not only was Abel’s offering better than Cain’s; it was offered in a better way.

(1) In faith, trusting in the promise, having an outlook towards the woman’s seed (Heb 11:4). Without faith in the Lamb of God who died for sin no worship can be accepted.

(2) In obedience. Abel’s worship was offered in the way prescribed. God does not leave men to invent forms of religion. Christianity condemns will-worship (Col 2:18). The most costly offerings will not suffice for obedience to Divine prescription (1Sa 15:22).

(3) In sincerity. Cain was a formalist; Abel a worshipper of God in spirit and in truth. Only such can worship God (Joh 4:24). Hypocrisy and formalism, though accompanied with splendid ritual, God rejects (Pro 21:27; Isa 1:13-15; Mat 6:5).

3. Their receptions. These were

(1) Diametrically opposite. Abel was accepted by God, received into Divine favor, regarded as righteous, considered as a justified person. Cain was not accepted; not because the fruits of the earth were in themselves unworthy of God’s acceptance, but because, in presenting them, he virtually proclaimed his disbelief in God’s promise and repudiation of God’s way of salvation.

(2) Visibly proclaimed. By some outward sign God expressed in the one case his approbation, and in the other his displeasure. By the gospel he now solemnly declares his reception of the true and rejection of the false worshipper (Joh 3:36). More reliable are the announcements which God now makes through his word than those which he then delivered through the medium of signs.

(3) Distinctly understood. Neither Cain nor Abel was in any dubiety as to his position. The mind of God had been explicitly revealed. The one was assured that he was righteous; the other knew that he was reprobate. So may every one ascertain his standing in God’s sight who listens to the inspired declarations of the Divine word (Joh 3:18; Rom 3:20; Rom 4:5).

IV. THE BROTHERS AT VARIANCE. Divided in dally toils, religious worship, Divine acceptance, they were now also divided in fraternal regards. This estrangement was

(1) Unseemly in its character, existing, as it did, between brothers. Where, if not within the hallowed circle of home, should mutual love prevail? Who, if not brothers, should preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace? (Psa 133:1). Brothers were meant for friendship and helpfulness, not for envy and destruction. Let us thank God there is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother (Pro 18:24).

(2) Unjustifiable in its cause. It sprang from religion. Alas, that which was heralded as the bringer of peace on earth and good-will among men has often been the cause of strife and contention, separation and estrangement, as Christ foretold (Mat 10:34 36). What a signal proof of the corruption of the human heart! It was occasioned through envy. Cain was wroth because his brother was accepted. Unbelievers often take offence at believers because of blessings they affect to despise.

(3) Wrathful in its manifestation. Because his brother’s person and service were approved Cain grew enraged; because himself and his offerings were refused he was angry with God. Hypocrites and sinners are always displeased with those who are better than themselves.

(4) Murderous in its termination. Envy, wrath, murderthe beginning, middle, end of a wicked man’s life. The last act lies enfolded in the second, and the second in the first, as the fruit in the tree, and the tree in the seed. Hence wrath is murder in the thought (1Jn 3:15); and “who is able to stand before envy?” (Pro 27:4). Therefore obsta principiis. Cultivate fraternal affection. Let brotherly love continue. Follow younger brothers in their piety rather than hate them for their prayers.

V. THE BROTHERS AT THE JUDGMENT BAR.

1. Both went there. The spirit of the first martyr ascended to God, and God came to arraign the red-handed murderer. So must we all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ.

2. Both were judged there. The righteous Abel’s character and conduct were approved; for God espoused his cause, and heard the cry of his innocent blood. The guilty Cain was condemned. So will all before the great white throne be judged according to their works; of every one of which God is now a witness, as he was of the fratricidal act of Cain.

3. Both were sentenced there. Abel was received into glory, and his blood avenged; Cain banished from God’s presence, transformed into a wandering fugitive, in mercy spared from immediate destruction, but in reality, with his scarred brow, doomed to a lifetime of woefit emblem of the doom of the ungodly; as the award of righteous Abel was of the honor of the righteous (Mat 25:46).

Lessons:

1. Value the Divine gift of home.

2. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.

3. Serve the Lord with gladness. Present your bodies a living sacrifice. Come into his courts, and bring an offering with you.

4. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.

5. Live in anticipation of, and preparation for, the judgment-day.

6. Learn that nothing will keep a man right in life and safe in death except faith in atoning blood. Cain had pious parents, a good home, an honorable calling, a religious profession, and yet was lost. Abel had a short life and a sad death, but he was safe. Faith in Christ (the woman’s seed) made the difference.

Gen 4:9

Am I my brother’s keeper?

I. The world says, No!

1. Every man’s brother ought to keep himself.

2. If a men’s brother cannot keep himself, he deserves to perish.

3. No man’s brother will be at the trouble to keep him.

4. Every man has enough to do to keep himself. Such is the gospel of selfishness proclaimed and practiced by the world.

II. God says, YES!

1. Because he is your brother. Affection should prompt you.

2. Because he may get lost without your keeping, Humanity should incline you.

3. Because I expect you. Religion commands you. Such is the gospel of love which God preaches and charges us to practice.

HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD

Gen 4:1-8

The kingdom of God.

Another “genesis” is now described, that of sinful society, which prepares the way for the description of the rising kingdom of God.

I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORAL EVIL IS CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH HUMAN SOCIETY.

We must still bear in mind that the aim of the narrative is not scientific, but religious and didactic. The sketch of the first family in Gen 4:1 and Gen 4:2 is plainly an outline to be filled in. The keeper of sheep and the tiller of the ground are out in the broad world. We are not told that there were no other human beings when they were grown up. Probably from their employment it is meant to be inferred that the human family had already grown into something like a community, when there could be a division of labor. The production of animal and vegetable food in quantities can only be explained on the presupposition that man had increased on the earth. Then, in Gen 4:3, we are led on still further by “the process of time.”

II. THE COMMUNITY OF MEN, THUS EARLY, HAS SOME PROVISION FOR RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. The two men, Cain and Abel, “brought” their offerings apparently to one place. The difference was not the mere difference of their occupations. Abel brought not only “the firstlings of the flock,” but “the fat thereof,” an evident allusion to the appointment of some sacrificial rites. The Lord’s respect to Abel’s offering was not merely a recognition of Abel’s state of mind, though that is implied in the reference to the person, as distinct from the offering, but it was approval of Abel’s obedience to the religious prescription which is in the background. The Lord remonstrates with Cain when his countenance fell and he was wroth. “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door” (croucheth like a beast of prey ready to be upon thee). This may be taken either

(1) retrospectively or

(2) prospectively

sin as guilt, or sin as temptation; in either case it is at the doornot necessarily a welcome guest, but ready to take possession. Sin forgiven, temptation resisted, are placed in apposition to acceptance. “Unto thee shall be his desire,”i.e. Abel’s, as the younger,”and thou shalt rule over him,” i.e. the natural order shall be preserved. Notice50. Divine love providing acceptance in the Divine order, in which religion is preserved, and natural life, with its appointments.

2. Divine mercy rescuing a fallen creature from the results of his own blind disobedience.

3. The righteousness of God maintained in the disorder and passion which spring out of human error and corruption. Sin is at the door; judgment close upon it. Yet God is justified though man is condemned. There is no great sin committed but it has been seen at the door first.

4. Doing not well precedes the direct presumptuous sin. “Cleanse thou me from secret faults.” Cain was warned by God himself before his fallen countenance darkened his heart with crime and stained his hand with a brother’s blood. What a picture of the gradual degradation of the conscience. Notice

(1) The disobedience of a Divine commandment in some minor point.

(2) Sense of estrangement from Godloss of his “respect unto us.”

(3) Sullen, brooding enmity against God and man.

(4) All these culminating in the violent outbreak of self-assertion, his own works evil, his brother’s righteous, therefore he bated him. Gen 4:8 is again an epitome. The talk of the two men with one another may represent a long period of angry debate. “It came to pass,” on some occasion, in the field, the angry thoughts found their vent in angry words. “Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” The first blood shed had a religious occasion for its origin. The proto-martyr was slain as a testimony to the truth. Mark the significant omen for the subsequent human history. Marvel not if the world hate those to whom God shows special respect. The type is here of all religious wars. The Cain spirit is not mere bloody-mindedness, but all defiance of God, and self-assertion, as against his will and word. Infidelity has been as bloody as superstition. Both meet in the same perverted worship of self.R.

HOMILIES BY J.F. MONTGOMERY

Gen 4:9

Care for our brethren.

How terrible this question to the murderer! He thought, perhaps, his act was hidden, and strove to put it out of mind. Perhaps did not anticipate effect of his stroke; but now brought face to face with his sin. “Where is Abel?” He knew not. He knew where the body lay; but that was not Abel. Had sent him whence he could not call him back. “Where is thy brother?” is God’s word to each of us. It expresses the great law that we are responsible for each other’s welfare. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” some would ask. Assuredly yes. God has knit men together so that all our life through we require each other’s help; and we cannot avoid influencing each other. And has created a bond of brotherhood (cf. Act 17:26), which follows from our calling him “Father.” What doing for good of mankind? Not to do good is to do harm; not to save is to kill. Love of Christ works (Rom 10:1; 2Co 5:14).

I. WE ARE CALLED TO CARE FOR THOSE AFAR OFF. “Who is my neighbor?” We might answer, Who is not thy neighbor? Everywhere our brethren. Thousands passing away daily. Abel, a vapor, the character of human life (Psa 103:15). Whither are they going? And we know the way of salvation. Light is given to no one for himself only (Mat 5:13, Mat 5:14). We are to hold it forth; to be as lights in the world (Php 2:15). It is God’s will thus to spread his kingdom. Are we answering the call? Test yourselves (cf. 1Jn 3:17). Deliver us from blood-guiltiness, O God. Thank God, the question speaks to us of living men. There are fields still to be reaped. The heathen, our brethren, claim a brother’s help. How many varieties of Cain’s answer:You cannot reclaim savages; you just make them hypocrites; we must look at home first. And the lost masses at home are our brethren. Oh, it is in vain to help them; they will drink; they hate religion; they only think what they can get from those who visit them. Test these objections. Single out in thought one soul; compare his case with yours. You have instruction, ordinances, influences; and he the darkness of heathenism, or surroundings of vice. Yet Christ died for that soul. Can you let it depart without some effort, or even earnest prayer?

II. WE ARE CALLED TO CARE FOR THOSE AROUND US. For their sake, watchfulness and self-restraint (cf. Rom 14:15). We teach more by what we do than by what we say. The loving life teaches love; the selfish, ungodliness. Inconsistencies of Christians hinder Christ’s cause. What art thou at home? Is thy life pointing heavenward? “None of us liveth to himself.” “Where is thy brother?”M.

HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD

Gen 4:9-15

The condemnation and judgment of the first murderer.

Notice

I. The Divine APPEAL TO CONSCIENCE, affording opportunity to repentance and confession, and therefore to the exercise of mercy.

II. THE BLINDING EFFECT OF A GREAT SIN. The man who Anew that God knew all persisting in a lie, and insulting the Divine majesty at the very throne of judgment, i.e. defying God by the monstrous extravagance of self-assertion, which is the effect of indulged sin, not only hardening the heart, but filling it with a mad desperation. So we find great criminals still, to the very last, adding sin to sin, as though they had come to think that the deeper they sunk into it the more chance they had of escaping its punishment, or by daring the whole extremity might the sooner know the worst.

III. There is great significance in the INTIMATE CONNECTION SET FORTH BETWEEN THE CRIME AND PUNISHMENT OF CAIN AND THE EARTH AND THE GROUND. The blood speaks from the ground, crying to God. Cain is cursed from the ground. The ground opened her mouth to receive the brother’s blood. The ground refuses to serve the murderer. On the earth he shall be a fugitive and vagabond. From the face of the earth he is driven. His punishment is greater than he can bear. Surely all that is intended to place in vivid contrast the righteousness of God and the unrighteousness of man; the one witnessed by the steadfast earth, with its unbroken laws, its pure, unfallen, peaceful state, with its communities of creatures innocent of all sin; the other witnessed by the cursed, wandering, suffering, hunger-pinched, miserable man, flying from his neighbor, flying from himself.

IV. As in the expulsion of man from Eden, so in the expulsion of Cain from society, there is MERCY MINGLED WITH JUDGMENT. The mark set upon Cain by the Lord was at once the mark of rejection and the mark of protection; it threatened sevenfold vengeance on the murderer of the murderer; it was an excommunication for the sake of the sinner as well as for the sake of the community. We must not expect to find in these primeval records more than a dim intimation of the Divine mind. But here, at the outset of the human race, there is the germ of that distinction and separation among mankind on the moral and spiritual ground which really is the essential fact of the kingdom of God. “The blood of sprinkling speaketh better things than that of Abel.” Yet it is a good thing that God should say to us, in however fearful a manner, that that which is destructive of human society, which rises up against a brother’s life, which hates and works out its hatred in cruel act, shall be, can be, separated from the world into which it has come, and cast out. We must look at the whole narrative from the side of the Abel element, not from the side of the Cain element; and the blessed truth contained in it is that God purges society of its evil men and evil principles, and makes its very martyrs’ blood to be a consecration of the earth to proclaim his righteousness. We have not to answer the question, How about Cain? He is protected from violence. He is permitted to repent and return, though for a time an outcast. Out of the conflict of the two worlds will come forth the purpose of Godevil separated, good eternally triumphant.R.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Gen 4:1. And Adam knew his wife, &c. All the speculations respecting this passage might have been spared, if the words had been rendered, Adam HAD known his wife Eve, a translation which the original perfectly well bears. Moses, it is evident, gives only the most concise account of things, regardless of smaller matters. He was to give a general history of the creation of the world, and of man; of the fall, and expulsion from Paradise; of the effects of that fall, and of the promised seed more especially, to which alone he seems peculiarly heedful, neglecting all the line of Adam, save that by which this seed was deduced from Seth, to Noah, Abraham, &c.

Bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord The reason of the names in the Old Testament is generally given at the same time with the names themselves; as here Cain cain, is so called by his mother, because she had gotten, or acquired, caniti, a man; for Cain signifies gain or acquisition. There is something peculiar in the Hebrew here, I have gotten a man, eth-Jehovah, THE LORD. “Eve imagined,” says Calmet, “that she had gotten the Saviour, son liberateur, her deliverer, the bruiser of the serpent’s head, in her son Cain.” Jonathan, the son of Uzziel, renders it, I have brought forth this man who is the angel of the Lord, that is, the Messiah, whom the Jews called by the name of the Angel, or Messenger, of the Lord. Mal 3:1; Mal 3:18. The reader must observe, upon this interpretation, how consistent the whole scheme of scripture is, and especially how the events properly connect in these chapters; as the promise of the seed; the name of Eve; the reason of the coats of skins; the placing of the Shechinah at the gate of Paradise; the triumph of Eve upon the birth of Cain; and, may we not add, the sacrifices and religious services of Cain and Abel, mentioned in the subsequent verses?But for those who do not acquiesce in this interpretation, they must suppose eth to be used for meeth , and must consider it as a mere female exultation in Eve on the birth of her firstborn son.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

SECOND SECTION

Cain and Abel.The Cainites.The ungodly Worldliness of the First Civilization.

Gen 4:1-26

1And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, and bare1 Cain [the gotten, or possession], and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord [from, or with the God of the future, or 2 Jehovah]. And again2 she bare his brother Abel [Habel, the perishable; , vanishing breath of life]. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought [offered] from the fruit of the ground an offering [] unto the Lord. 4And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect3 [looked in mercy] unto Abel and to his offering. 5But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. 6And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? 7If thou doest well shalt thou not be accepted?4 [Lange translates more correctly, lifting up of the countenance.] and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door [like a ravenous beast for prey]. And unto thee shall be his desire 8[sins desiresin personified], and thou shalt rule [but thou shalt rule] over him. And Cain talked5 with Abel his brother [repeating Gods words hypocritically or mockingly to him. This is adapted to Langes translation, Cain told it to his brother. See Exegetical notes]: And it came to pass that when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother, and slew him. 9And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not; am I my brothers keeper? 10And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy 11brothers blood6 [properly, blood-drops, plural] crieth unto me from the ground. And now thou art cursed from the earth [which had before been cursed, Gen 3:17; Bunsen: away from this ground], which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brothers blood from thy hand. 12When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield to thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond [ , frightened and driven on, shunned and abhorred] shalt thou be in the earth. 13And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment [Lange renders it guilt, which is certainly nearer the 14Hebrew ] is greater than I can bear. Behold thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth [from the open, cleared, inhabited district of the earth]; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass that every one that findeth me shall slay me. 15And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him seven-fold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. 16And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod [exile] on the east of Eden. 17And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived, and bare Enoch [Hanoch, the devoted, initiated], and he builded a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch. 18And unto Enoch was born Irad [city, , townsman, or, with elision of one , prince of a city]: and Irad begat Mehujael [Frst and Gesenius: , smitten of God; questionable whether it is not rather, purified, formed by God]: and Mahujael [Hebrew, Mahujiel] begat Methusael [man of God, great man of God, , for , and ]: and Methusael begat Lamech [strong young man; Gesenius]. 19And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah [ornament, decoration, elegant], and the name of the other was Zillah [Gesenius: shadow; Fuerst: sounding, song, from ; or player]. 20And Adah bare Jabal [Fuerst: rambler, wanderer, nomade, from ]: he was the father of such as dwell in tents and of such as have cattle. 21And his brothers name was Jubal [Fuerst: one triumphing, harper, from ]. He was the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ. 22And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-Cain [Gesenius: smith, mason, or lance-maker; literally, brass of kain, that is, brass weapons], an instructor of every artificer7 [Lange more correctly: hammerer or polisher of all cutting instruments] in brass and iron; and the sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah [loveliness, the lovely]. 23And Lamech said unto his wives:

Adah and Zillah hear my voice,
Ye wives of Lamech hearken unto my speech;
For I have slain a man to my wounding;
And a young man, to my hurt.

24If Cain shall be avenged seven-fold,

Truly Lamech seventy and seven-fold [Bunsen: seven times seventy].

25And Adam knew his wife again, and she bare a son, and called his name Seth [fixed, compensation, settled], for God (Elohim), said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel whom Cain slew. 26And to Seth also was there born a son, and he called his name Enos [man, weak man, son of man]. Then began men to call upon [call out, proclaim] the name of the Lord8 [the name Jehovah, in distinction from Elohim, though not according to the full conception of the name. See Exodus 6.].

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. The propagation of the human race through the formation of the family, is, in its beginning, laid outside of Paradise, not because it was in contradiction with the paradisaical destiny, but because it had, from the beginning, an unparadisaical character (that is, not in harmony with the first life as led in Paradise.T. L.). Immediately, however, even in the first Adamic generation, the human race presents itself in the contrast of a godless and a pious line, in proof that the sinful tendency propagates itself along with the sin, whilst it shows at the same time that not as an absolute corruption, or fatalistic necessity, does it lay its burden upon the race. This contrast, which seems broken up by the fratricide of Cain, is restored again at the close of our chapter, by the birth and destination of Seth. In regard to its chief content, however, the section before us is a characterizing of the line of Cain. It is marked by a very rapid unfolding of primitive culture, but throughout in a direction worldly and ungodly, just as we find it afterwards among the Hamites. The ideality of art, to which the Cainites in their formative tendency have already advanced, appears as a substitute for the reality of a religious-ideal course of life, and becomes ministerial to sin and to a malignant pride. Not without ground are the decorative dress (the name Adah), the musical skill (the name Zillah) and beauty of the daughters of Cain brought into view. For after the contrast presented in chapter 5 between the Sethites, who advance in the pure direction of a godly life, and the Cainites, who are ever sinking lower and lower in an ungodly existence, there is shown, chapter 6, how an intercourse arises between them, and how the Sethites, infatuated by the charms of the Cainitish women, introduce a mingling of both lines, and, thereby, a universal corruption. According to Knobel the chapter must be regarded as the genealogical register of Adam, though this does not agree, he says, with the genealogical register of the Elohist (Genesis 5), which names Seth as the first-born (!) of Adam. The ethnological table (Genesis 10), he tells us, can only embrace the Caucasian race, whilst the Cainites can only be a legendary representation of the East Asian tribes (p. 53), the author of which thereby places himself in opposition to the later account, that represents all the descendants of Cain as perishing in the flood. The traits of the Cainitic race, as presented by Knobel, belong not alone to the East Asiatic people. They are ground-forms of primitive worldliness in the human race. In respect to the genealogical table of Genesis 4, 5, Knobel remarks that the Cainitic table agrees tolerably well with the Sethic (p. 54). For the similarities and differences of both tables, comp. Keil, p. 71. These relations will be more distinctly shown in the interpretation of the names. Concerning the Jehovistic peculiarities of language in this section, see Knobel, p. 56.

2. Gen 4:1-2. Men are yet in Eden, but no longer in the garden of Eden. Delitzsch. Procreation a knowing. The moral character of sexual intercourse. Love a personal knowing. The love of marriage, in its consummation, a spiritual corporeal knowing. The expression is euphemistic. In the Pentateuch only, in the supplementary corrections of the original writing. The like in other ancient languages. The name Cain is explained directly from , the gotten.9 The word may mean, to create, to bring out, also to gain, to attain, which we prefer.I have gotten a man from the Lord.The interpretation of Luther and others, including Philippi, namely, the man, the Lord, not only anticipates the unfolding of the Messianic idea, but goes beyond it; for the Messiah is not Jehovah absolutely. And yet the explanation: with the help of Jehovah (with his helpful presence, Knobel), is too weak. So too the Vulgate is incorrect: per Deum, or the interpretation of Clericus: , from Jehovah, that is, in association, in connection with Jehovah, I have gotten a man. In this it remains remarkable, that in the name itself, the more particular denotation is wanting. We may be allowed, therefore, to read: a man with Jehovah, that is, one who stands in connection with Jehovah; yet it may be that the mode of gaining: gotten with Jehovah, characterizes the name itself. The choice of the name Jehovah denotes here the God of the covenant. In the blessed confidence of female hope, she would seem, with evident eagerness, to greet, in the new-born, the promised womans seed (Gen 3:15), according to her understanding of the word. Lamech, too, although on better grounds, expected something immensely great from his son Noah. We must observe here that the mother is indicated as the name-giver. In the case of the second name, Abel (Habel), which denotes a swiftly-disappearing breath of life, or vanity, or nothingness, nothing of the kind is said. Yet in place of the great and hasty joy of hope, there seems to have come a fearful motherly presentiment (Delitzsch, p. 199). That they were twins, as Kimchi holds, is a sense the text does not favor. Abel as shepherd, especially of the smaller cattle (), is the type of the Israelitish patriarchs. Cain, as the first-born, takes the agricultural occupation to which his father was first appointed. The oldest ground-forms, therefore, of the human calling, which Adam united in himself, are divided between his two sons in a normal way (Cain was, in a certain sense, the heir by birth, and the ground-proprietor). It must be remarked, too, that agriculture, as the older form, does not appear as the younger in its relation to cattle-breeding. Both modes of living belong to the earliest times of humanity, and, according to Varro and Dicarchus in Porphyry, follow directly after the times when men lived upon the self-growing fruits of the earth. Knobel. In the choice of different callings by the two brothers, we seek in vain for any indication of a difference in moral disposition. So Keil maintains, against Hofmann, that agriculture was a consequence of the cursing of the ground. Delitzsch, however, together with Hofmann, is inclined to the opinion that in the brothers choice of different callings there was already expressed the different directions of their minds,that Abels calling was directed to the covering of the sinful nakedness by the skins of beasts (Hofmann), and therefore Abel was a shepherd (!). Delitzsch, too, would have it that Abel took the small domestic cattle, only for the sake of their skins, and, to some extent, for their milk, though this was a kind of food which had not been used in Paradise. It would follow, then, that if Abel slew the beasts for the sake of their skins, and, moreover, offered to God in sacrifice only the fat parts of the firstlings, it must have been that he suffered the flesh in general of the slaughtered animals to become offensive and go to corruption. It would follow, too, that the human sacerdotal partaking of the sacrificial offering, which later became the custom in most cases, had not yet taken place; not to say that the supposition of the enjoyment of animal food having been first granted, Gen 9:3, is wholly incorrect.

3. Gen 4:3-8. The first offerings. The difference between the offering pleasing to God, and that to which he has not respect. The envy of a brother, the divine warning, and the brothers murder. The fratricide in its connection with the offering, a type of all religious wars. The expression denotes the passing of a definite and considerable time (Knobel: after the beginning of their respective occupations), and indicates also a harvest-season; yet to take it for the end of the year, as is done by De Wette, Van Bohlen, and others, is giving it too definite a sense.It came to pass that Cain brought of the fruits of the ground, (from ; Arabic: to make a present, the most general name of the offering, as also . Delitzsch). Fruits belonged to the oldest offerings. Though no altar is mentioned, as also in Gen 8:20, it is nevertheless to be supposed. In the offering of Abel it is prominently stated that he brought of the firstborn of his herds (), but it is not said of Cain that his offerings were first fruits. There is added, moreover, in respect to Abel, the word: (and of the fat thereof). Knobel explains this as meaning, from their fat; Keil, on the contrary, understands it of the fat pieces, that is, of the fattest of the firstlings. The ground taken by some, that it was because no sacrificial feasts had been instituted, or because men had not yet eaten of flesh, is pure hypothesis. It shows rather that we must not think here of the animal offerings of Leviticus. Here arise two questions: 1. By what was it made known that God looked to the offering of Abel,that is, with gracious complacency? Many commentators say that Jehovah set on fire the offering of Abel by fire from heaven, according to Lev 9:24; Jdg 6:21 (Theodotion, Hieronymus, &c.). Delitzsch: the look of Jehovah was a fire-glance that set on fire the offering. Keil, however, reminds us how it is said, that to Abel himself, as well as to his offering, the look of Jehovah was directed. Knobel assumes, with Schumann, that it suits better to think of a personal appearance of Jehovah at the time of the offering, with which, too, corresponds better the dealing with Cain that follows. The safest way is to stand by the fact simply, that God graciously accepted the offering of Abel; but as in later times the acceptance was outwardly actualized by the miraculous sacrificial flame, so here, it suits best to think on some such mode of acceptance, though not on the fiery glance alone. 2. Wherein lay the ground of this distinction? Knobel: The gift of Abel was of more value than the small offering of Cain. In all sacrificial laws the offerings of animals have the chief place. So also the Emperor Julian, according to Cyril of Alexandria (Delitzsch, p. 200). According to Hofmann (Scripture Proof, i. p. 584), Cain, when he brought his offering of the fruits of his agriculture, thanked God only for the prolongation of this present life, for the support of which he had been so laboriously striving: whereas Abel in offering the best animals of his herd, thanked God for the forgiveness of his sins, of which the continued sign was the clothing that had been given of God. For this too advanced symbolic of the clothing skins, there is no Scripture ground, and rightly says Delitzsch: the thought of expiation connects itself not with the skins, but with the blood (see also Keils Polemic,against Hofmann, p. 66). Yet Delitzsch contradicts himself when he says, with Gregory the Great: omne quod datur Deo ex dantis mente pensatur, and then adds: the unbloody offering of Cain, as such, was only the expression of a grateful present, or, taken in its deepest significance, a consecrated offering of self; but man needs, before all things, the expiation of his death-deserving sins, and for this the blood obtained through the slaying of the victims serves as a symbol. It is, however, just as much anticipating to identify the blood-offering with the specific expiation offering, as it is to give directly to the living faith in Gods pure promise the identical character of faith in the specific mode of atonement. The Epistle to the Hebrews lays the whole weight of the satisfaction expressed in Abels offering upon his faith (Gen 11:4). Abel appears here as the proper mediator of the institution of the faith-offering for the world. As the doctrine of creation is introduced to the world through the faith of the primitive humanity, so in a similar manner did Abel bring into the world the belief in the symbolical propitiatory offering in its universal form; as after him Enoch was the occasion of introducing the belief of the immortal life, and so on. Keil, too, contends against the view that through the slaying of an animal Abel already made known the avowal that his sins deserved death. And yet it is a fact that a difference in the state of heart of the two brothers is indicated in the appearance of their offerings. Keil finds, as a sign of this difference, that Abels thanks come from the depths of his heart, whilst Cains offering is only to make terms with God in the choice of his gifts. Delitzsch regards it as emphatic that Abel offered the firstlings of his herds, and, moreover, the fattest parts of them, whilst Cains offering was no offering of first fruits. This difference appears to be indicated, in fact, as a difference in relation to the earliness, the joyfulness, and freshness of the offerings. After the course of some time, it means, Cain offered something from the fruits of the ground. But immediately afterwards it is said expressly: Abel had offered (, preterite, ); and farther it is made prominent that he brought of the firstlings, the fattest and best. These outward differences in regard to the time of the offerings, and the offerings themselves, have indeed no significance in themselves considered, but only as expressing the difference between a free and joyful faith in the offering, and a legal, reluctant state of heart. It has too the look as though Cain had brought his offering in a self-willed way, and for himself alone,that is, he brought it to his own altar, separated, in an unbrotherly spirit, from that of Abel.And Cain was very wroth.Literally, he was greatly incensed (inflamed). ( denotes the distended nostril.T. L.). The wrath was a fire in his soul (Jer 15:14; Jer 17:4).And his countenance fell.Cain hung down his head, and looked upon the earth. This is the posture of one darkly brooding (Jer 3:12; Job 29:24), and prevails to this day in the East as a sign of evil plottings (Burkhardt, Arabian Proverbs, p. 248).And the Lord said unto Cain.This presupposes a certain measure of susceptibility for divine revelation; as does also his previous offering, though done in his own way. Jehovah, in a warning manner, calls his attention to the symptom of his wicked thoughts,his brooding posture.If thou doest well, &c.The explanation of Arnheim and Bunsen: Whether thou bringest fair gifts or not, sin lurks at the door, &c., does not take the word in its nearest connection, namely, in contrast with the falling of the countenance, as the lifting it up in freedom and serenity. Should we take for the lifting up (the acceptance) of the offering, still would its better and nearer sense lie in the idea that good behavior is the right offering. And yet on account of the contrast, the lifting up of the countenance would seem to be the meaning most obviously suggested. We need not to be reminded that along with good behavior there is also meant an inward state, yet the expression tells us that that inward state will also actualize itself in the right way.

Gen 4:8. And Cain talked with Abel.Knobel represents these words as a crux interpretum. Rosenmller and others interpret it: he talked with Abel, that is, he had a paroxysm or fit of goodness and spoke again peaceably with his brother. It is against this that the use of for cannot be authenticated by sure examples. Therefore Hieronymus, Aben Ezra, and others, interpret it: he told it (namely, what Jehovah had said to him) to his brother. On the contrary, Knobel remarks: it does not seem exactly consistent that the still envious Cain should thus relate his own admonition. Here, however, the question arises whether we are required to take in that manner. The sense of this may be that Cain simply preached to his brother in a mocking manner the added apothegm, sin lieth at the door. In a similar manner, to say the least, did Ahab preach to Elias, Caiaphas to our Lord Christ, Cajetan to Luther, &c. The Samaritan text has the addition: (let us go into the field). It has been acknowledged by the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and certain individual critics. But even ancient testimonies show it to have been an interpolation.10 Knobel, together with Bttcher, has recourse to a conjecture that the reading should be (he watched), instead of . Delitzsch, again, supposes that the narration hastens beyond the oratio directa, or the direct address, and gives immediately its carrying out in place of the thing said, that is, he regards the invitation, let us go into the field, as implied or understood in the act. In a similar way, Keil. We turn back to the above interpretation with the remark that the narrator had no need to state precisely that Cain preserved the penal words of God as solely for himself, if he meant to tell us that out of this warning admonition Cain had made a hypocritical address to his brother.Cain rose up against Abel his brother.The words his brother, how many times repeated! The sin of the fall has advanced quickly to that of fratricide. The divinely charged envy in the sin of Eve, wherein there is reflected an analogue of the envy of man against God, is here again advanced from envy of a brother to hatred, then from hatred to a vile obduracy against the warning words of God, and so on, even to fratricide. Therein, too, it is evident that the tempter of man is a murderer of man. Yet still this is not in the sense as though Joh 8:44 had reference only to this fact. In the sense of this latter passage, Satan was the murderer of Cain,a thing, however, which manifests itself in the murder of Abel. The fact here narrated will form a connected unity with that of Genesis 3. The working of Satan in Genesis 3 comes fully out in the fact narrated in Genesis 4 Cain is the first man who lets sin rule over him; he is (of the evil one), 1Jn 3:12. Delitzsch.

4. Gen 4:9-16 The Judgment of Cain. Where is Abel thy brother?The divine arraignment analogous to the arraignment of Adam and Eve. But Cain evades every acknowledgment. He lies, and denies in an impudent manner; then comes boldly out with the scornful expression: Am I my brothers keeper? What a fearful advance from the resort and exculpation of our first parents after the fall, so full of shame and anguish, to this shameless lying; this brutality, so void of love and feeling! Delitzsch. Irreligiousness, together with an inhuman want of feeling, stand out in continually increasing, reciprocal action. Upon this impudent denial follows the accusation and the judgment. The streams of his brothers blood are represented as his accusers, and the earth itself must bear witness against him.What hast thou done?So we read, since we take the sense of that which follows to be: A voice hast thou made, etc. The deed belongs to those crimes that cry to Heaven (Gen 18:20; Gen 19:13; Exo 3:9). Therefore does Abels blood cry up to Heaven that God, the lord and judge, may punish the murderer. All blood shed unrighteously must be avenged (Gen 9:5); according to the ancient view it cries to God continually, until vengeance takes place. Hence the prayer, that the earth may not drink in the blood shed upon it, in order that it may not thereby be made invisible and inaudible (Isa 26:21; Eze 24:7; Job 16:18). Knobel. Compare Psa 116:15; Heb 11:4; Rev 6:9 Calvin: Ostendit Deus, se de factis hominum cognoscere utcunque nullus queratur vel accuset; deinde sibi magis caram esse hominum vitam, quam ut sanguinem innoxium impune effundi sinat; tertio, curam sibi piorum esse non solum quamdiu vivunt, sed etiam post mortem. The blood as the living flow of the life, and the phenomenal basis of the soul (primarily as basis of the nerve-life) has a voice which is as the living echo of the blood-clad soul itself. It is the symbol of the soul crying for its right (to live), and in this way affects immediately the human feeling.11And now art thou cursed, etc.The words following ( ) are explained in different ways: 1. My curse shall smite thee from this land; that is, here shall be its execution (Aben Ezra, Kimchi, and others; Knobel, Keil, more or less definitely). 2. Cursed away from the district; that is, driven forth by the curse (Rosenmller, Tuch, Gerlach, Delitzsch). 3. As in the history of the first judgment there appear two cursings, it is proper to look back to them. There is the serpent cursed directly as Cain is here. But the earth, too, is cursed for Adams sake. Since now here, in the curse of Cain, the earth is again mentioned, the obvious interpretation becomes: thou thyself shalt be cursed in a much severer degree than the earth. The earth, which through Adams natural sin has become to a certain extent partaker of his guilt, shall appear innocent in presence of thine unnatural crime; yea, it becomes thy judge.Which hath opened her mouth.This is the moving reason for the form of the preceding penal sentence. So Delitzsch interprets: the ground has drunk innocent blood, and so is made a participant in the sin of murder (Isa 26:21; Num 35:31). Keil disputes this, and on good grounds. It is because the earth has been compelled to drink the innocent blood which has been shed that, therefore, it opposes itself to the murderer, and refuses to yield its strength ( its fruits or crops, Job 31:40) to his cultivation; so that it returns him no produce, just as the land of Canaan is said to have spit out the Canaanites, on account of the abominable crimes with which they had utterly defiled it (Lev 18:28). It is clear that in this case there is transferred to the earth a ministration of punishment against Cain. Since Cain has done violence to nature itself, even to the ground, in that it has been compelled to drink his brothers blood, therefore must it take vengeance on him in refusing to him its strength. The curse proper, however, of Cain must be, that through the power of his guilt-consciousness he must become a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth. , a paronomasia, as in Gen 1:2. The first word (participle from ) denotes the inward quaking, trembling, and unrest, the second (from ) the outward fleeing, roving, restlessness. The interpretation, therefore, of Delitzsch is incorrect, that the earth in denying to Cain the expected fruits of his labor, drives him ever on from one land to another. The proper middle point of his curse is his inner restlessness. More correctly says Delitzsch: ban of banning, wandering of exile, is the history of Cains curse; how directly opposite to that which is proclaimed by the blood of the other Abel, the Holy and Righteous one (Act 3:14). Knobel, according to the view above noticed, interprets the words fugitive and vagabond, as indicating in the author a knowledge of the roaming races of the East.My punishment is greater than I can bear [Lange renders it my guilt, ].The question arises whether this expression means my sin, or my punishment. The old interpretations (Septuagint, Vulgate) render it my sin, and accordingly give the sense of forgiveness. My sin is too great to be ever forgiven. This expression of despair into which his earlier confidence sinks down, has been interpreted by some as denoting Cains repentance, which, analogous to the repentance of Judas, fails of salvation through self-will and want of faith, or rather, bears him on more fully to destruction. But since may denote also the punishment of sin (Gen 19:15; Isa 5:18), and since Cain further on laments the greatness of his punishment, Delitzsch, Keil, and others, with Aben Ezra, Kimchi, Calvin, etc., take the sense to be: my punishment is too great, that is, greater than I can bear. But now the question arises, whether there is not here in view a double sense, as indicated by the very choice of the expression; and this the more, since, in fact, there lies also in Cains repentance a similar double sense. The sin is evidently acknowledged, but only in the reflex view of the punishment, and because of the punishment (attritio in contrast with contritio). The self-accusation, therefore, that the sin is held unpardonable, is, at the same time, an accusation of the judge for having laid upon him an unendurable burden. The reservation of the heart still unbroken in its selfishness and pride, makes the self-accusation, in this kind of repentance, an accusation of the doom itself; it is the sorrow of the world that worketh death. It is, however, the lies bound up with the pride that gives the impassioned utterance its curiously varied coloring.Behold thou hast driven me out.Out of the sentence of his own conscience, through which God lets him become a fugitive and a vagabond, Cain makes a clear, positive, divine decree of banishment. Thereby does it appear to him a heavier doom that he must go forth from the presence of the adamah in Eden, than his departure from the presence of God (though before he had put the latter first); and, finally, they are both to him the harder punishment, since now every one that finds shall slay him. It is the full, unbroken, selfish fear of death, that falls upon him like a giant, rather than the wish that he may be slain by the avenger of blood, whoever he may be. But therein does his outer understanding of it give notice of the sentence: thou shalt be a fugitive and a vagabond. It has changed, for him, into the threatening: avengers of blood will everywhere hunt and slay thee (Pro 28:1).Behold thou drivest me forth this day from the face of the Adamah, that is, out of Eden. In Eden dwelt Jehovah, whose presence guaranteed protection and security. Knobel. But would Cain take comfort in the idea of the divine protection? It is suffering and punishment, in itself, that, as he says, he is directly driven forth () from that home still so rich and charming, where, moreover, through his tilling of the ground he meant to become a permanent possessor.And from thy face shall I be hid.Knobel: Outside of Eden, withdrawn from thy look. In a similar manner Jonah believed that by his withdrawal from Canaan, the land of Jehovahs habitation, he should escape from his territorial jurisdiction. On the contrary, Delitzsch and Keil: from the place where Jehovah revealed his presence. It must be observed that he mentions this suffering as of second moment. It sounds partly as a complaint, and partly as a threatening; for it is the specific expression of the morose self-consciousness that it flees from the presence of God, whilst it maintains, in order to have some plea of right, that it has been forced to do so. When I lose the face of my home, then also am I compelled to flee from the face of God. Though in every place he would fain hide from the face of God, yet the obvious sense here is neither the unbiblical thought that God dwelt only in Eden (or in Canaan), nor the loss of the beholding of the cherubim. The idea that man can hide himself from God the Scripture everywhere treats as a mere false representation of the evil conscience. It is clearly growling despair that will no more seek the presence of Jehovah through prayer and sacrifice, under the pretence that it is no more allowed to do so. Cain, however, has still religious insight enough to know, that the further from God, the deeper does he fall into the danger of death.Every one that findeth me.How could Cain fear lest the blood avenger should slay him, when the earth was uninhabited? Josephus, Kimchi, Michaelis, have referred the declaration to the ravenous beasts. Clericus, Dathe, Delitzsch, Keil, and others, have referred it to the family of Adam. Schumann and Tuch find in it an oversight of the narrator.12 Knobel takes it as embracing the representation of their having been primitive inhabitants of Eastern Asia (Chinese immigrants, perhaps) with whom Cain had fought. Delitzsch says: It is clear that the blood avengers whom Cain feared, must be those who should exist in the future, when his fathers family had become enlarged and spread abroad; for that the murderer should be punished with death (we might even say that the taking vengeance for blood is the fountain of regulated law and right respecting murder) is a righteous sentence written in any mans breast; and that Cain already sees the earth full of avengers, is just the way of the murderer who sees himself on all sides surrounded by avenging spirits (), and feels himself subjected to their tormentings. Keil adds: Though Adam, at that time, had not many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren, yet, according to Gen 4:17, Gen 5:4, he must, at that time, doubtless, have had already other children, who might multiply, and, earlier or later, avenge Abels death. In aid of this supposition we must take the representation that would give to Cain an immensely long life. Cains complaint was an indirect prayer for the mitigation of the punishment. Jehovah consents to the prayer in his sense, that is, he knows that the fear of Cain is, in great part, a reflection from his evil conscience, and, consequently, the destiny which is appointed to him appears to serve more for the silencing (not giving rest to) his frantic excitement, than as designed to protect him outwardly from any danger. For not absolutely shall he know himself protected, but only through the threatening of a seven-fold blood-vengeance against his pursuer, whoever he might be, and through the warning of the same as given by a sign. There appears to Knobel a difficulty in the question, Who then would undertake the blood-vengeance on behalf of Cain, seeing he had no companions? Seven-fold shall he be punished, or shall he (Cain) become avenged.Set a mark upon Cain.According to the traditional interpretation, God put a sign on Cain himself, which would make him known; and hence the proverbial expression: the mark of Cain. On the contrary, the literal language has the preposition (to or for). Another old interpretation (Aben Ezra, Baumgarten, Delitzsch) will have it that God gave him a token for his security, in order that he might not be slain. The language, however, does not denote a sign of security for Cain that would make him absolutely safe, but only a sign of warning, and threatening, for some possible pursuer, and which might possibly remain unnoticed, though serving to Cain himself as a conscious sign for the quieting of his fears. According to Knobel, the author had in mind, perhaps, some celestial phenomenon, which should every time make its appearance and warn away the assailant. Such a divine intervention, however, would be a placing the murderer in absolute security, and besides a thing simply inconceivable. The warning sign for the pursuer of Lamech, whoever he might be, was the newly invented weapons of his son Tubal-Cain. The warning sign that should serve for the protection of Cain, must disclose to the pursuers the threatening prospect of a seven-fold blood-vengeance. Such a sign, although for Cain, may be, notwithstanding, represented as on Cain in some kind of threatening defence, perhaps, or in the attendance of his wife; it is enough that the history is silent, or simply means to tell us that God already, immediately after the first deed of murder, had established a modification of the natural, impulsive, and impassioned, taking of vengeance for blood;a warning sign, in fact, that the carrying out of the blood-vengeance would have for its consequence the extirpation of the whole human race. But why this exemption of Cain? To this question every kind of answer has been given (comp. Delitzsch and Keil). The chief thing was, that this banishment had in itself the significance of a social human death. It was a member cut off from the human community, as in the New Testament history of Judas. Besides, the unfolding of the Cainitish existence was to reveal an unfolding of death in a higher degree, and, at the same time, to do service to human culture in the dissemination of the Cainitish talent. Finally, there comes into consideration, in relation to Cain, what is said by Delitzsch: He was gracious to him in the prolongation of his time of grace, because he recognized the sin as sin. But at the same time, God himself gives here the first example for the significance of the law of pardon in the later society. To demand the death of Cain was properly the right only of Abels parents. But these were also Cains parents. The right of pardoning is the right of modifying or mitigating the punishment in view of special mitigating circumstances.And Cain went out.The name denotes a land of escape and banishment, and is therefore the contrast to the happy land of Eden, where Jehovah walks and communes with men. Keil. The land lay eastward of Eden. In other respects it cannot be definitely determined; for Cain carried everywhere the land of Nod with him in his heart. Knobel thinks here again of China.

5. Gen 4:17-23. Cain and the Cainites.And Cain knew his wife.Here comes in the supposition that Adam must have already had daughters too. Cains wife could only have been a daughter of Adam, consequently his sister, and Abels sister. She still adheres, nevertheless, to the fearful man, and follows him in his misery, which is also a testimony to a humane side in his life. The marriage of sisters was, in the beginning, a condition for the propagation of the human race. At the commencement of the race, the contrasts in the members of the family must have been so strongly regarded, that thereby the conditions for a true marriage could be present in the same family; whilst the most significant motive for the later prohibition of sister marriages, such as the establishment of a new band of love, and the consequent separation of the sisterly and marriage relations, could not yet have become effectual. Keil, moreover, remarks that the sons and daughters of Adam represent not merely the family, but the race; this is indeed the case, even in single families, though on a reduced scale. Some have thought it strange that Cain should have built a city for his son. But in this objection it is overlooked that the main conception of a primitive city is simply that of a walled fortification. The city must have been a very small one. Cain might have built it for an entire patriarchal race. Moreover, it reads, as Keil calls attention to it, , he was building. It was the thought and the work of his life, in proof that immediately after the protection offered to him by God, he longed for something to fortify himself against the fear of his conscience, and had need to fix for himself an outward station, in opposition to his inner unsettled condition. Even if we do not, with Delitzsch, regard this city as the foundation-stone of the worldly rule in which the spirit of the beast predominates, yet we must not misapprehend therein the effort to remove the curse of banishment, and to create for his race a point of unity as a compensation for the lost unity in society with God; neither must we lose sight of the continual tendency of the Cainitish life to the earthly. The mighty development of the world-feeling, and of ungodliness, among the Cainites, becomes conspicuous with Lamech in the sixth generation. Keil. This comes to be, indeed, the ground idea of the Cainite development, that in the symbolic ideality of culture, it seeks an offset to the real ideality of the living cultus (or worship), even as this is generally the character of the secularized worldliness; that is, it makes a development of culture, in itself legitimate, to be its one and all. If after this we take into view the names of the Cainitish line, it will serve for a confirmation of what has been said.

1. Henoch, initiation, the initiated and his city.
2. Irad, townsman, citizen, urbanus, civilis.

3. Mahujael, or Mahijael, the purified, or the formed of God ().

4. Methusael, the (strengthened) man of God.
5.Lamech, strong youth. His two wives: Adah, the decorated, Zillah, the musical player (according to Schrder, the dark brunette). [Schrder is all wrong.T. L.]
6.The sons of Lamech, by Adah: Jabal, the traveller (nomade), and Jubal, the jubilant, the musician. By Zillah: Tubal Cain, worker in brass or iron (according to the Persian, Thubal; Gesenius), the lance-forger (according to the Shemetic, mason)if not more probably: brass (or iron) of Cain, that is, the forger of the weapons in which the Cainites trusted. His sister Naamah, the lovely.
Cain and Adam included, this is eight generations; whereas the line of Seth that follows (Genesis 5) embraces ten generations. On account of the like names, Henoch and Lamech, Irad and Jared, Kain and Kenan, Mahujael and Mahalael, Methusael and Methuselah, Knobel supposes a mingling of both genealogies, or one common primitive legend in two forms; Keil contends against this by laying emphasis on the difference of the names that appear to be similar, and the different position of those that are alike. For the sake of comparison we let the line of Seth immediately follow: 1. Adam (earth-man). 2. Seth (compensation, or the established). 3. Enoch (weak man). 4. Cainan (profit, a mere like-sounding of Cain). 5. Mahalaleel, praise of God (only an echo of Mahujael). 6. Jared, descending, the descender (only a resemblance in sound to Irad). 7. Enoch or Henoch, the consecrated. Here the devoted, or consecrated, follows the descending; in the Cainitish line he follows Cain. The one was the occupier of a city in the world, the other was translated to God; both consecrations, or devotions, stand, therefore, in full contrast. 8. Methuselah. According to the usual interpretation: man of the arrow, of the weapons of war. As he forms a chronological parallel with the Cainitic Lamech, so may we regard this name as indicating that he introduced these newly invented weapons of the Cainites into the line of Seth, in order to be a defence against the hostile insolence of the Cainites. It consists with this interpretation, that with him there came into the line of Seth a tendency to the worldly, after which it goes down with it, and with the age. Even the imposing upon his son the name Lamech, the strong youth, may be regarded as a warlike demonstration against the Cainitic Lamech. Therefore, 9. Lemech or Lamech. 10. Noah, the rest, the quieter, or peacemaker. With Lamech, who greeted in his son the future pacificator, there appears to be indicated, in the line of Seth, a direction, peaceful, yet troubled with toil and strife. It was just such an age, however, as might have for its consequence the alliances and minglings with the Cainites that are now introduced, and which have so often followed the exigencies of war. This Sethian Lamech, however, forms a significant contrast with the Cainitic. The one consoles himself with the newly invented weapons of his son Tubal Cain, as his security against the fearful blood-vengeance. The other comforts himself with the hope that with his son there shall come a season of holy rest from the labor and pains that are burdened with the curse of God. In regard to both lines in common, the following is to be remarked: 1. The names in the Cainitic line are, for the most part, expressive of pride, those of the Sethic, of humility. 2. The Cainitic line is carried no farther than to the point of its open corruption in polygamy, quarrelsomeness, and consecration of art to the service of sin. The Sethic line forms in its tenth period the full running out of a temporal world-development, in which Enoch, the seventh, properly appears as the highest point. 3. Against the mention of the Cainitic wives, their charms, and their art, appears in the Sethic line only the mention of sons and daughters. It serves for an introduction to the sixth chapter.

Concerning the repeated appearance of like names, compare what is said by Keil, p. 71. Zillah can just as well mean the shadowy as the sounding, yet the latter interpretation is commended by the context. By the invention of Jubal a distinction is made between stringed and wind instruments. In its relation to Tubal Cain the word must be taken as neuter; since otherwise Tubal Cain would appear as the smith that forged the smiths. The song of Lamech is the first decidedly poetic form in the Scriptures, more distinct than Gen 1:27 and Gen 2:23, as is shown by the marked parallelism of the members. It is the consecration of poetry to the glorification of a Titanic insolence, and, sung as it was in the ears of both his wives, stands as a proof that lust and murder are near akin to each other. Rightly may we suppose (with Hamann and Herder), that the invention of his son Tubal Cain, that is, the invention of weapons, made him so excessively haughty, whilst the invention of his son Jubal put him in a position to sing to his wives his song of hate and vengeance. This indicates, at the same time, an immeasurable pride in his talented sons. He promises himself the taking of a blood-vengeance, vastly enhanced in degree, but shows, at the same time, by the citation of the case of his ancestor Cain, that the dark history of that bad man had become transformed into a proud remembrance for his race. The meaning of the song, however, is not, I have slain a man (Septuagint, Vulgate, &c.). He supposes the case that he were now wounded, or now slain; that is, it looks to the future (Aben Ezra, Calvin, &c). We may take the with which the song begins as an expression of assurance, and the preterite of the verb as denoting the certainty of the declaration (see Delitzsch, p. 214). We think it better, however, to take it hypothetically, as Ngelsbach and others have done, and this too as corresponding to the sense as well as to the grammatical expression. In respect to the inventions of the Chinese, and the discovery of music as coming out of the shepherd-life, compare Knobel, p. 65. In regard to the conjectures concerning these genealogies, see the Catalogue of Literature, p. 56. Thus, for example, Jubal is connected with Apollo, and Tubal Cain with Vulcan. The similarity of particular forms in popular traditions cannot justify us in confounding them. Knobel refers here, in the view he takes, to the bloodthirsty cruelty of the Mongolian tribes. Ewald finds in the three sons of Lamech (Noah?) the representatives of three principal states according to the Judan conceptions (see Delitzsch, p. 212; also similar interpretations of Ewald, p. 211).

6. Gen 4:24-26. Seth.And called his name Seth.Seth may denote compensation for Abel (Knobel, Keil),one who comes in the place of Abel who has been slain and taken away; and in this way he is said to be fixed, established. Eve called the giver Elohim, according to Knobel, because the Sethites were elohists; according to Keil it was because the divine power had compensated her for what human wickedness had taken away. The fact that the name Jehovah, as mentioned further on, came to be adopted in connection with Enoch (weak man), may lead to the thought, indeed, of a lowering of hopes, and yet there lies an expression of hope in this, that she regards Seth as a permanent compensation for Abel.And to Seth,to him also was born a son.Enoch,a designation of weakness, frailty; probably a sorrowful remembrance of Abel (Psa 8:5; Psa 90:3).Then began men to call. , primarily, to call on the name of Jehovah, and then to proclaim him, to announce. Men had before this prayed and called upon God, but now they begin to reverence God as Jehovah. But why not before, in the time of Seth? God as Jehovah is the covenant God of a pious race, of a future full of promise. First with Enoch does there appear the sure prospect of a new line of promise, after the line of Cain had lost it. With a new divine race, and a new believing generation, there ever presents itself the name Jehovah, and ever with a higher glory. Now it is for the first time after Eves first theocratic jubilee-cry of hope. Delitzsch is inclined to think that men now called upon Jehovah in the direction of the East (where the Cainites made their settlement). Moreover, it must be that here is narrated the beginning of a formal divine worship. In respect to this, as also in respect to the two pillars of Seths descendants of which Josephus speaks, compare Delitzsch, p. 218. The language undoubtedly refers to a general honoring of the name Jehovah among the pious Sethites. Concerning the name of God, compare the Bibelwerk, Matt., p. 125 (Am. ed.). In relation to Jehovah is the name of special significance, because Jehovah is the God of the covenant, or of the revelation of salvation, and because the name of God, whilst on the one side it denotes his revelation, does, on the other, present the reflex of his revelation in the human religious recognition, that is, in religion itself. In respect to the supposition that the primitive religion was the true religion, as we find it in Rom 1:19-21, Knobel gives an account in its historical relation (p. 67). According to a Hebrew interpretation of the word , as though from the word , to profane, and which Hieronymus mentions, though he rejects it, there must have begun, in the days of Enoch, a species of image-worship, as a profanation of the name of Jehovah (see Rahmer, The Hebrew Traditions in the Works of Hieronymus, p. 20). It is a Rabbinical figment, resting upon the misinterpretation of a word, and of the whole text.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The propagation of the human race is outside of Paradise, not because it is first occasioned by sin, but rather because it supposes a distinct development of mankind, and is tainted with its sin.
2. The human pairing is not an act of natural necessity, but a free ethical love, a knowing, as its fruit is a begetting, a witnessing.
3. The first mothers-joy after the first mothers-anguish, is a spirit of high enthusiasm, and, therefore, an expression of believing hope in the coming salvation. It takes the form of womanly precipitancy, and may mean that now she has borne the serpent-crusher (gotten him, or brought him forth). This is the first misreckoning in respect to the times and hours of God, and the person who is to bring salvation, but the believing hope itself is not a vain thing. Upon this high soaring, as it appears in the mothers naming of Cain (, see Joh 1:42), there follows, after the human fashion, a great lowering of hope, as shown in the naming of the second son, wherein there appears to be indicated a fearful motherly foreboding, which may have been already occasioned by the conduct of the young Cain.

4. The formation of the family: the fundamental law of human relations (next to the conjugal the parental, the sisterly and brotherly, the general relation of kindred, Delitzsch) and of all human ordinances. Church and state, with their binding cement, the school, all in the embryo form. The offering. The sentence upon Cain for his brothers murder. The first moral lesson, an admonition or warning to Cain.
5. In the bosom of the first family there appears the first contrast between the two ground-forms of the human calling,between worldly power and a divine endurance, between an ungodly and a godly direction, between one who was godless and one who was pious, between one who was loaded in life with the curse of God and one who was slain for his piety, yet whose death, blood, and right, had still an abiding value in the eyes of God.

6. The religious offering is indicated and introduced as early as humanity in the state of sin, Gen 3:21. It has its origin in thankfulness for Gods gifts, and the acknowledgment that all belongs to him and must be presented or consecrated to him. It is, moreover, an expression of the feeling that the failure to present a real and perfect obedience of the heart and will, and of a perfectly holy life with prayer, is attested by the symbolical offering, which, as such, denotes a longing for, and a craving need of restoration to, that perfect condition wherein life and offering unite in one. Concerning the offering, see Exodus and Leviticus.

7. Gods pleasure in the one offering, his displeasure at the other. See the Exegetical notes.

8. Gods warning to Cain. Sin evidently appears in Cain in an advanced stage of progress, and this indicates hereditary sinfulness. The divine warning, moreover, characterizes this hereditary tendency to sin, in its most peculiar being, not as a fatalistic force, but as a seducing inclination to evil, as a tempting power which already, like a ravenous wild beast, was crouching at his door, and ready to spring upon him. Therefore does God ascribe to him a capacity to rule over sin by the aid of the warning word of God standing as security to him for such assistance. It does not depend upon his choice whether he shall be tempted or not, but it does belong to his choice, whether he will let sin have its will in him, or whether he himself shall rule over it. Sin (though feminine) is presented in the figure of a male beast, or of a masculine nature,as a lion, dragon, or serpent. On account of a supposed strangeness in the expression: rule over him (or it), Ewald takes it as a question: Wilt thou be able to rule over it? And Delitzsch holds that it does not mean the ruling over the sin that is lurking for him, but only over the inward temptation. But this inward temptation, in so far as it is temptation only, is just the sin that is crouching at the door; for the door denotes the entrance to his inclination, or to his will. Keil corrects Delitzsch by saying: it is not the holding down of the inner temptibility which is commanded, but the withstanding of that power of evil which invades man from without,a view which here gives no proper sense. The personification of sin, and what is said about its desire and its craving after men (as though to devour them), appears not without significance, yet still the remembrance of 1Pe 5:8 should not lead us to find here, as Delitzsch does, a conscious intimation of Satan. More rightly does the Book of Wisdom make a distinction between mens being raised out of the fall, on the one hand, or their permitting sin to charm them, increase in strength, and so give power to the hereditary sinful tendency, on the other (Wisd. of Solomon, Gen 1:13-16; Gen 2:24; Gen 10:1). What is said Rom 5:12 : Death has passed upon all men, bears alike upon all; but what follows: , allows an endless diversity of individual character, and within the ratios of its gradations, forms that contrast between the pious and the godless, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, which the Scripture everywhere sets forth.

9. The Fratricide. Thus sin attains to its dominion, and in the outward act reveals its inhuman, beastly, diabolical nature. Devilish hate, brutal savageness; it is in these two together that murder has its origin. At the same time there comes out openly here, for the first time, the conflict of the two seeds in the relations of man to man. It is the serpent-nature of Cain under whose stab in the heel Abel fallsthe first example of martyrdom; in appearance a defeat, but in truth a victory. From the innocent murdered man, there goes on, even to the case of Zachariah the son of Jehoiada, one great stream of blood throughout the whole history of the Old Testament (Mat 23:35). At the very head of the New Testament history does the bloody deed of Cain against his brother Abel again repeat itself in its counterpart, the bloody act of the Jewish people as committed against Gods most holy child Jesus, their brother in the flesh. Thenceforth flows on the stream of martyr-blood through the whole history of the Church. Death and murder proceeding from him who was (a murderer from the beginning, Joh 8:44), become indigenous in the history of man, and of the world, and rule in a thousand forms. Delitzsch.

10. The death of Abel; the second powerful proof of the prophetic significance of his bloody offering. Abel appears as the special prophet and mediator of the peculiar idea of the Old Testament revelation, or as the one who introduces into the world the typical sacrificethat is, the symbolical representation of a yielding up of the individual will and life to God through death, in order to the taking away the separation between God and man; and which representation (as it unfolds) must over become more and more the type of the real propitiation as set forth in the New Testament. Therefore would Abel be justified by his act of faith, even as Abraham was (Heb 11:4); and to such an extent must the offering of Abel be referred back to a divine occasioning, or some divine institution.

11. The first murder of a brother proceeded from a strife concerning religion. It appears to be presupposed that Cain, in his sacrificial worship, had wilfully separated himself from Abel. This would be the first separation. The second is that his offering, whilst it appeared in a stinted form, remained throughout an unbloody sacrifice. Communion in the offering would have made it of richer value. The mark of servility, legality, joylessness, and an envious jealousy of his brothers altar, appears quite prominent. Therefore it is, too, that he fails of the blessing, and the seal of the divine acceptance. The effect, however, is not repentance, but envy, fanaticism, hate, obduracy against Gods word, and, finally, the murder of his brother. The first war was a religious war. From thence have all the wars in the worlds history had their motive and their coloring. Even with the most modern wars religion has more to do than is commonly thought. The altar, the centre as it is of all holy sacrificial acts, is the centre also of all that is horrible in the history of the world; since it is the religious idea, in some form, that is the moving power of human history.

12. Already has the first-born lost his birthright, through a proud confidence in its prerogative, out of which is developed envy of his brothers preference, and from this, again, in the course of its progress, scorn and hate. In this form goes the story through the history of the world, through the history of religion, of the church, and of the state. Thus, many a time does the prerogative of birth, which in itself and normally is a blessing, become transformed into a prerogative of hereditary sin and guilt (Mat 3:9).

13. As chapter 3d presents to us the archetype of the genesis of sin, even to the evil act, so does chapter 4th give us the form of the genesis, and of the unfolding of obduracy. The commencing point is irreligiosity, that is, an offering worthless and hypocritical in its idea (Rom 1:21). The consequences that immediately follow are unfriendliness, envy, brotherly hate, rage, grudging, and moroseness. To this succeeds an impenitent demeanor towards the divine voice of warning, as shown in a wicked silence. Then comes the consummation of his evil behavior towards his brother. The first example of this was probably a mocking perversion of what God had said, into a presumptuous retort upon his brother; then the bold throwing off the mask in the murder itself, as it took place in the field, upon the boundaries of their respective callings. Now again, on Gods arraignment, his impudent, diabolical lying, and Titanic presumption, but which becomes, after the imposition of the penalty, a howling despair. Thus it is that while in his presumption, and in his despondency, he becomes an enemy of God, so is he also a foe of man; seeing that his disordered imagination peoples the world with human beings who stand to him on a footing of deadly hostility. When in this spirit he goes forth as a fugitive and a vagabond from the land of Eden to a land of solitary exile, and there builds a city, the main significance of it lies in its walls. It is a fortress to defend himself against any of Adams future children who may not belong to the Cainite race.

14. The judgment on Cain, a parallel to the first judgment, Genesis 3, just as the behavior of Cain is a counterpart, and a parallel, to the behavior of his parents. As a parallel it reminds us of the behavior of the serpent. Clamitat ad clum vox sanguinis, etc.; it is like the old saying of the four heaven-crying sins. When the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that by means of his faith, Abel, though dead, yet speaketh (), it must mean that the cry of his blood, regarded as still heard, is a proof that even after death he is still an object of the divine care,13 one still unforgotten, not loststill living. Delitzsch. At the same time is the cry of this martyr-blood the first signal of that voice, whether of the blood or of the spirit, which ever calls for Gods judgment, first upon Jerusalem (Mat 23:15; comp. Gen 2:18), and finally upon the whole world (Rev 6:10). Only the call of the blood of Christ it is that transforms this judgment into a judgment of deliverance for all who shall receive salvation (Heb 12:24).

15. The chief points in the sentence against Cain. He is cursed from the ground. The very nature of the ground, so to speak, becomes an angel (or minister) of penal vengeance against the unnatural transgressor. He hath aroused it against him in its innermost nature, in forcing it to drink his brothers blood. Henceforth will earth deny to him its fruits. Where the murderer perpetrated the murder, the grass grows no more. The fratricide makes the ground the place of judgment. The war desolates the land. The curse proper, however, lies on the conscience itself. His heavy consciousness of guilt, incapable of being healed, and in its deceit, its presumption, and its despondency, driven to despair, must make him a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth. He is banished beyond any protecting enclosure, from every place of rest; and though he may surround himself with walls as high as heaven, he is still a banished Azazel (Lev 16:22)the prince of exiles. There lies in the passage before us a germ of the churchs excommunication and of the civic outlawry. The banishment into immeasurable space appears as a warning prelude to the endless exile of damnation. We may ask: Why was not the punishment of death imposed on Cain, as is demanded by the later law, Gen 9:6, instead of exile? It is not a sufficient answer to say, that the parents of Cain could not execute such a sentence; the cherubim might have crushed him. But it becomes evident, already, that the religious social death of absolute banishment from human society, constitutes the peculiar essence of the death penalty (see Lange, Die Gesetzlich-Catholische Kirche als Sinnbild, p. 71).

16. In respect to the repentance of Cain and Judas, see the Exegetical annotations to v. 13.
17. The Cainitic race. Development of the earliest worldculture in its reciprocity with the advancing Cainitic corruption. Delitzsch finds it significant that Cain gave the same name, Henoch, to his son and to the city which he built for him, and that he must have had regard in both to the fundamental beginnings of a peculiar and special historical development. He cites the words of Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Gen 14:28 : Fecerunt igitur civitates duas amores duo, terrenam scilicet amor sui usque ad contemptum dei, clestem vero amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui; illa in se ipsa, hc in Domino gloriatur. Yet still even Delitzsch makes prominent the value of each Cainitic advance in culture. In writings which set forth the origin of all things, there could not fail to be something in relation to the origin of trades and arts. At a later time would these inventions come into the possession of Gods people. Still the Cainitic race has the honor of every important advance in worldly culture; because this race of the promise has suffered in the ruin of the world, whilst the race of the curse falls naturally into it, or make it their home. We can only say, however, that the one-sided, worldly tendency, favored a precocious development of every power of culture among the Cainitesor that the children of this world are wiser in their way than the children of light. It is not the inventions themselves, but their morbidly active development, and their abuse, that have on them the mark of the curse. Again, it is in the direction of the dualistic, theosophic assumption of a deeper, or hidden sense, when we read (Delitzsch, p. 213): Even to this day the arts cannot disown the root of the curse, out of which they spring. There is, moreover, remaining in all music, not only an unspiritualized ground of material naturalness merely, but a Cainitic element of impure sensuality (p. 213). Nevertheless, through the subjectivity of the artist shall that fundamental being of art which in itself is sinless attain that to which it is morally destined, p. 215. Further on Delitzsch well says: With a deed of murder began, and with a song of murder closes, the history of the Cainites. In the seventh generation all is forgottenimmersed in music, revelry, luxury, decoration and outward show, etc. Again he says: This is the genesis of the most spiritual art, such as poetry, music, etc. (p. 216). More happily, at least in respect to its outer consequences, did there precede all this that pious song of jubilee at the creation of the first man (p. 123). Thus much is true, that as art, and especially poetry, points out the distance between the real and the ideal on the side of culture, so does the sacrificial offering do the same on the side of cultus, or religion.

18. Concerning the worship of Jehovah as beginning among the Sethites, see the Exegetical explanations.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See Doctrinal and Ethical.Adams Family. His guilt, his suffering, his salvation, and his hope.The first family picture in the Bible.The tragic sorrow in every family (indicated in the baptism of children).The family the root of every human ordinanceboth of church and state.The first form of education as it makes its appearance in the first sacrifice, and in the varied callings of Cain and Abel. What education can do, and what it cannot.Unlike children of like parents.Pious parents may have wicked children (CainAbel).Eves precipitancy even in the utterance of her faith.Eves maternal joy, in its divine trust, and in its human mistakings: 1. The divine truthfulness in her hope of salvation; 2. the mournful disappointment in her expectations of Cain; 3. the happy disappointment in respect to Abel (not a vanishing vapor: Abel yet speaketh).The two ground-forms of the human vocation.The acceptable and the rejected offering.The contrast between Cain and his brothers in its significance: 1. Cain lives, Abel dies; 2. Cains race perishes, the race of Seth continues (through Noah), even to the end of the world.Cain the first natural first born (like Ishmael, Esau, Reuben, the brothers of David, etc.), Abel the first spiritual first-born.Cain and his pride in the carnal birthright and prerogative, a world-historical type: 1. For the religious history, 2. for the political.Cain and Abel, or the godless and the pious direction inside the common peccability.Cain and Abel, or the history of the first sacrificial offering, a prefiguration of the most glorious light-side, or of the darkest and most fearful aspect in the world-history.Cain and Abel: the separated altars, or the first religious war, or the divinely kindled flame of belief and the wrath-enkindled flame of fanaticism.Cain, or the world-history of envy. Abel, or the world-history of martyrdom.The brothers murder.The brothers blood.The first slain.And death with sin.The first appearing of deathWar.The obduracy of Cain, or Cain warned by God in vain.Cains freedom and bondage.Cains sentence.The curse of Cain.Cains repentance (first presumption, then despair).The evil conscience in the history of Adam and in the history of Cain. Comparison.The banishment of Cain.The sign of Cain.Cain and his race, or worthlessness as regards religion and worldly spiritual power, a reflected image of the satanic kingdom.The progress of corruption in the Cainitic race.It was not the worldly cultivation of Cain that was evil, or from the evil one, but its worldliness.The first city.Lamech, or the misuse of weapons, or the misuse of art, or of all culture.Polygamy.Seth, or the one remaining, established, compensation for Abel.The Sethites, or the first beginning of a new and better time indicated in this, that men begin to proclaim the name Jehovah, the God of the covenant.Enosh, denoting frail humanity, a name of humility.When God becomes great at any time, or in any race, then man becomes small,Does man first become small, then God becomes to him great. At the birth of Cain, Eve was hasty in her joy; at the birth of Abel, hasty in her despondency; at the birth, of Seth, quiet and confiding.Seth, or the established people of God; And the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.

Starke: Gen 4:3. God himself instituted the offerings, as we see from Heb 11:4, that as the belief of Abel in his offering had for its necessary ground the divine command, promise, and revelation, so the offerings themselves must be types of Christ.

Gen 4:4. We cannot doubt that from the very beginning God reserved to himself the firstlings or first-born. Such a command He repeated, Exo 13:2; Num 3:13. It was for a type of Christ the first-born before all creations.

Gen 4:5. Cain ever oppresses and murders Abel. What else is it than the strife between the flesh and the spirit, the enmity between the seed of the woman, and the seed of the serpent? Arndts Christianity.Tb. Bible: Wouldst thou that thy service be acceptable to God, perform it with unfeigned belief, and a pure heart (Mat 5:23-24; Mat 9:13; 1Ti 1:15).Cramer: When God builds a church, then does the devil build a chapel close to it (Psa 26:5).How beautiful and lovely is it when brothers dwell together in harmony (Psa 133:1)? but how rare?Envy and jealousy have their origin from the devil, and are the root of all evil deeds.When the godless ought to be allured to reformation by the example of the pious, they often become thereby only the more embittered (Act 7:54).

Gen 4:8. According to the Jews, Cain maintained that there was no judge, no judgment, no reward of the good, no punishment of the wicked, no eternity, all which Abel contradicted; wherefore Cain became so embittered that he slew his brother. There is no ground for the pretence of the Masorites that there are wanting here twenty-eight verses, which contain the speech of Cain with Abel.Abel prefigures Christ. As Abel was a shepherd, so also was Christ.Freiberg Bible: Cain is an exact type of Antichrist.Osiander: The preaching of repentance avails not with all men; especially is this the case with those who are given up to a reprobate mind (Act 7:49, etc.).Cramer: Sin grows rapidly, and after a small beginning takes wide steps (Wisdom of Sir 28:13-14).Where there is an evil heart, there is an evil eye, and where both these are, there is also an evil hand.The Wrtemb. Bible: It is a very ancient stab in the heel by the malicious devil, that the false church hates the true, and persecutes it even unto blood.Hedinger: How early the date of martyrdom in the world! The first man that dies dies for the sake of religion. He whose offering is acceptable to God, becomes now himself the victim.

Gen 4:10. When Cain thought that he had won, that he was now alone the beloved child, that Abel was wholly forgotten, then did the latter still live, stronger and mightier than before. Then does the Majesty on high assume his cause; He cannot bear it, He cannot keep silence when His own are oppressed. And though they are crushed for a little while, they only rise to a more glorious and stronger state; for they still live.Cramer: There is nothing secret that shall not be made manifest (Mat 10:26; Exo 2:12; Exo 2:14; Jos 7:22; 2Sa 12:9).

Gen 4:13. When man should humble himself, he goes rather into despair, and rejects the means of grace. He falls, therefore, into a bitter enmity towards God, and into an ever-deepening unbelief, since he refuses to acknowledge the grace of God, and the service of Christ, or to let them avail for his salvation.It is in this way that Satan plays his game; he sets the sins before the conscience in their most frightful form, whilst he takes from the eyes the grace of God.Mark the steps of sin, how imperceptibly they advance! 1. Cain was arrogant; by reason of his birthright he thought himself better than he was; 2. he thereupon falls from arrogance into mocking hypocrisy, and secret presumption; 3. thinking that there is nothing like him, he becomes envious; 4, from the foregoing sins he falls into murder, even the slaying of a brother; 5. then he falls into lies, wherewith he thinks to palliate or excuse his brothers murder; 6. finally he falls into utter despair.

Gen 4:14. Surely in the anguish of his conscience must Cain be afraid of everything, of angels, of men, of wild beasts even; yea, even inanimate things cause him distress and terror.

Gen 4:15. Cramer: No sins are too great to be forgiven (Isa 1:18).No man shall arbitrarily take from Him the infliction of vengeance upon evil doers (Rom 12:19).Tb. Bible: All godless men bear in their souls a mark of the curse, which numbers them among the goats. God marks all evil-doers with a brand in the conscience (1Ti 4:2).

Gen 4:16. Wrt. Bible: It is the mind of all the children of the world, their trade and business; they ask not after the true church; gladly are they separated from it; they rejoice if it only goes well with the body (Psa 49:10).

Gen 4:24. Confident men willingly delude themselves with the example of others, and thus did Lamech comfort himself with a falsehood.

Gen 4:21. (O ye musicians, bethink yourselves that ye are descended from a godless and murderous race; cease to abuse your art, otherwise will your end be like theirs!) Handicrafts, arts, and inventions are gifts of the Holy Spirit, and come from God, who bestows them upon both the believing and unbelieving; blessed is he who uses everything for the honor of God! (Dan 1:17; Sir 38:6; Exo 35:31-35).

Gen 4:26. Cramer: God can wonderfully console Christian parents in affliction; has he taken from them an Abel, he can give them back a Seth.We can do no more precious work on earth than to help in propagating and spreading the true and right service of God (Sir 49:4).Ye teachers in schools and churches, follow the blessed example of these holy forefathers, and let it be your chief business to proclaim and make known the name of the Lord to old and young (Gen 18:19; Deu 6:6, etc.).

Schrder: The first revelation of the divine holiness is renewed in the second; and in the same proportion is the advancing progress of the curse.

Gen 4:1-5. After the character of the parents has become fixed in the probation, then must the mention be of their children; they must be born that others may be born from them. In her song of joy, she forgets what lay right before her eyes; with her glance of hope into the future she calls the infant a man. She looks at the child of her womb, and thinks it the seed to whom God has promised the victory. This common reference to the divine promise in Gen 3:15 is ever held as truth in the interpretations of our fathers.Luther: But the poor woman is deceived; she does not yet see her sorrow aright, nor understand that from flesh can nothing else than flesh be born, and that by flesh and blood sin and death can never be vanquished; she knows not, moreover, the day nor the hour. Eves joy and Marys song of praise, Luk 1:46, how different! (Yet Mary too knew not yet that at a later time a sword must pierce her own soul). The one birth from Eve is followed by a second,the first is the Patriarch of the false, the other of the true church. The name of the one forms an exact contrast to the name of the other. In Cain does the mother of the living repose all her longing and her hope; Abel, on the contrary, the second-born, must serve as the foil of her hearts pain and sorrow. The best description of this name Abel (nothingness or vanity) we read in Ecclesiastes (or the Preaching of Solomon), Gen 1:2. That whole book, indeed, may be regarded as a diffuse commentary on the name Abel. According to the opinion of some of the fathers, Abel was never married.Luther: Adam and Eve are not simply parents to nourish and instruct their children: they bear towards them also a priestly office (in that they lead the children to the sacrifice). The sacrifice is as old as religion (that is, as the religion of fallen men).Luther: All the histories of the Old Testament show that God, in his superabundant grace, hath ever given and maintained in close connection with his word an outward and visible sign of grace, that men, as reminded by such sacramental sign, might the more confidently believe. Therefore it is that after the flood the rainbow appears. And so to Abraham was given the sign of circumcision. In respect to the supposed sign of God: let one think on the blessing of God upon Abels cattle-keeping in the year that followed, whilst Cains agriculture miscarried, or on the symbolic upward-mounting, earthward-steaming, sacrificial smoke. For other biblical analogies, in strictest accordance with this, we may think of a glance of light for Abel, and which would become for his offering a consuming flame of fire (Exo 14:24, &c.). In Mat 23:35, Christ makes Abel the beginning of the church of those that fear God, which will remain to the end of the world, whereas Cain is the beginning of the church of the malignant and the murderous, which will also continue to the end of the world. Abel is not slain on any worldly or domestic account, but only on account of the service of God. The good and the evil conscience are described here as though they were visible to our eyes; the one only lifts its face on high, the other casts itself despairing down.

Gen 4:6-7. [On this field (of the murder), so runs the story, was Damascus afterwards built, whose name hints at the bloody deed].He who according to his mothers hope was to have been the slayer of the serpent, becomes the murderer of his brother the son of his own mother.Herder: What a dramatic spectacle! the first slain upon the earth.Krummacher: Here is the first brothers murder on the very threshold of Eden,the first war.

Gen 4:9-10. Herder: Who shall take vengeance, when God does not take vengeance? The father?Luther: Cain intends, by this, his exculpation; but when he uses the name of brother, what else is it but an acknowledgment that he ought to be his brothers keeper. It is not for slaughtered sheep and cattle slain that God asks; it is for a slain man that he inquires. It follows that men have the hope of a resurrection, the hope in a God who out of the bodily death can bear them up to everlasting life, and who asks after their blood as a very dear and precious thing (Psa 116:15). What can be that still small voice which comes from the earth, and which God hears high up in heaven? Abel had, heretofore, whilst yet in life, endured violence with gentleness and silence; how is it that now when he is dead, and rudely buried in the earth, he is impatient at the wrong? How is it that he who before spake not one word against his brother, now cries out so complainingly, and, by his cry, moves God to action? Oppression and silence are no hindrance to God in judging the cause which the world so mistakenly fancies to be buried.

Gen 4:11-12. As Adams sin develops itself in Cains deed of murder, so does the first curse of God reveal itself in the second. Cursed be thou; that is, thou art not the one from whom the blessed seed is to be hoped. By this word is Cain excommunicated, cut off like a twig from the branch, so that he can have no more hope of the honor which he coveted. That which with Abel had a figurative or prfigurative power, becomes in Jesus the most perfect realization; and the earth did quake (Mat 27:52). Adam had already become a stranger in the earth; Cain is now a fugitive.Calvin: Not to bodily exile alone is Cain condemned, but subjected to a much severer punishment; there is not a spot of earth that he can find where he shall not be confounded and mazed in soul; for as a good conscience is rightly called a wall of iron, so neither a hundred walls, nor as many fortresses, can protect the godless from their unrest.

Gen 4:13-16. In this way, although not excusing his sin, does Cain complain nevertheless of the fearful severity of that judicial sentence which deprives him of every refuge. So too the devil.He must hide from God (Psa 5:5), and yet he cannot (Psa 139:7). Gods face or countenance means his presence as revealed in guiding care, or in forgiving mercy (Exo 33:15).And this his misery be imputes, not to his sin, but to the account of God. Cain considers not merely that he is stripped of Gods protection, but also that every creature in the world is now armed with weapons to take vengeance upon him. According to an ancient legend it was the destiny of Cain to be slain from the house in which he dwelt. The Jewish tradition makes him perish with his race in the flood.In respect to the mark of Cain: some have conjectured that God placed upon his brow one of the letters of the name Jehovah; others say that it was a dog that continually ran before him; others that it was a horn which grew out of his forehead, and others; finally, maintain that it was a particular robe which God commanded him to wear, that every one might know him. Then follow the views respecting this mark that were held by Luther and the author (Calvin), that it was something that lay in his appearance, especially in his look.

Gen 4:17-21. Luther: In this case the affliction of the parents is the greater in that they must have lost three children at once (Abel, Cain, and his wife who went into exile with him).Even in his city, too, did Cain remain a fugitive and a vagabond.Zillah, shadow, either meaning the dark, the brunette, or the one shaded by a rich head of hair.Calvin: We have here the origin of polygamy in a perverse and degenerate race, as we also find its first author to be a man ferocious and alien to all human kindliness.Naama: Jewish tradition ascribes to her the first poetry and gift of song; others make her the inventress of the arts of spinning and weaving.Baumgarten: True it is that originally all, as created by God, was very good: but since the entrance of sin, the whole outward world of nature is loaded with the curse of death. And yet is this testimony of Holy Scripture against the pomp of the world far removed from the monastic rigor; as is shown by the subsequent course of the Scripture history. It is true that Cain builds the first earthly city, but afterwards comes a city of God. [In support of this, there follows mention of the beauty of the mother of Israel, the rich tents and herds of Abraham, the harp of David, the watchword of Gideon (the sword of the Lord and of Gideon, in contrast with that of Tubal Cain),and then legends concerning Cains old age and Lamechs death, p. 99.] Men are very fond of boasting before their wives. The first poet in the world was an old man rejuvenated, a hero in words, a praiser of himself. His song is without doubt a song of triumph on the invention of the sword. The Arabians have a whole book full of names and praises of the sword.Ziegler: The sin of Cain becomes fearful in the sword-intoxicated Lamech.

Gen 4:25-26. We see that culture and science are as old as humanity itself. Barbarism and brutality follow after a corrupt civilization. Immediately after the ever-stronger manifestations of a Cainitic world-spirit, we find the strong revelations of the covenant Jehovah.Luther: There are traditions of Adams daughters Salmana and Deborah, but I know not of any ground for believing in them. Eve had slighted Abel, whilst she thought much of Cain as the one who should inherit and possess the promise; now (on the birth of Seth) she holds the contrary, and seems to say: in Abel was all my hope, for he was righteous, but him the godless Cain hath slain; therefore has there been given to me another seed in place of Abel. She does not adhere to him in the motherly way, and after the motherly heart. She does not excuse or palliate the sin of her son. The Sethites: They unite together in a community; but there arise not therefrom cities full of lust and luxury; no, no, but places of holy meditation and devotion. And so there emerge the first delicate outlines of a church and community of life among the pious. Adam and Eve, we may believe, assembled their children and descendants for the maintaining of a solemn divine service. In contrast to the self-congregating of the wicked were the good gathered into a church by God himself.

Gerlach: The gross deeds of individual sin, as well as the original sin of Adam, had their primary seat, not in the temptations of the sense, nor in any momentary outward occasions, but in the disposition of the heart towards God. This is manifest here on the occasion of the first outward divine worship through the sacrificial offering, in which man, separated indeed from God, yet outwardly feeling his need of him, might hope to merit the divine acceptance in such religious service; whereas, with God, such a work has worth and significance only as the outer manifestation of the inner yielding of the heart to him.

Gen 4:3. The use of the earliest domestic animals, and the cultivation of grain, were derived to man out of their primitive condition. The sheep cannot live without the human care and protection; the grain is nowhere found wild upon the earth, and it degenerates without human cultivation.

Gen 4:4. When man joins in covenant with this divine will, nothing. can ever overcome him, for he has omnipotence on his side.

Gen 4:10. Here comes in now the division of works and occupations.

Lisco: The offerings. As offered in faith, which ever rests on the word of God, they are to be regarded as divinely instituted. Abel is Gods friend; his cause is, therefore, Gods cause, and God is his avenger.

Gen 4:13. First presumption, then despair; both are contrary to Holy Scripture. Unbelief in Gods righteousness before the evil deed, tends, after the act, to unbelief in the greatness and power of the divine mercy;to a repentance that is full of despair.A tortured conscience fears everything: the murderer fears murder, the treacherous fears perfidy.

Calver Handbook: How many vain offerings and gifts in the heathen world!Where faith is, there is the willing mind, and there can God make demands of men.Instead of a crusher of the serpent, Cain is one of the serpents seed.Bunsen: The land of Nod, that is, the land of flight, of wandering, of banishment, the strange land (the interpretation that refers it to Turan in opposition to Iran).

Michow: The first evil fruit of the evil seed. He cites the saying of Schiller:

The evil deeds avenging curse it is,
That evil evermore it shall beget.

Taube: 1. As thou standest in relation to the God of mercy, so art thou,either believing or unbelieving. 2. Remainest thou unbelieving, then, in spite of all attempts to obtain deliverance from God, thy course is onward from sin to sin until it lands thee in despair.W. Hofmann: The seed of the woman: 1. In its first manifestation; 2. in its remote future; 3. in its prefigurative significance.

Delitzsch: Whilst the race of the Cainites developed itself in outward show, and on the ground of a corrupt nature, the community of the Sethites built itself up through the common calling upon the name Jehovah,that is, of a God revealing himself on the ground of mercy.

Footnotes:

[1][Gen 4:1.For remarks on and , see the Exegetical, and marginal note.T. L.]

[2][Gen 4:2. can only mean a second bearing, and not the birth of a twin.T. L.]

[3][Gen 4:4. would have been better rendered looked at, with ; with or , it has just the contrary sense, looked away from, Job 7:19 et al.T. L.]

[4][Gen 4:7.; the context and the contrast will hardly allow any other sense to this than that of acceptance, as denoted by the lifting up the countenance; see the Exegetical. Vulgate, recipies. must refer to sin personified as masculine by the participle . Comp. Gen 3:16, where the same word denotes subordination, that which is ruled over; only there it is applied to persons, whilst here it means the appetite or passion, represented as a wild beast, in subjection to the righteous will.T. L.]

[5][Gen 4:8.. See the Exegetical. The best interpretation is that of Delitzsch and of some Jewish commentators, which makes the elliptical subject (or thing said) the very action that follows, and which the LXX. and Vulgate have supplied in words. It is not at all probable that they read any different text.T. L.]

[6][Gen 4:10., plural intensive; comp. Psa 5:7, , man of bloods, very bloody man, Psa 26:9; Psa 55:24. agrees grammatically with , and not with , voice, as would seem from our English Version. The most literal, and, at the same time, the most impressive, rendering, would be obtained by taking as the nominative independent, or exclamatory: The voice of thy brothers bloods! they cry; or, Hark! it is the voice of thy brothers blood-drops,they are crying unto me. The separation of the participle from the remoter subject gives it such a force, and makes this, though seemingly free, the most truly literal or emotional sense. Rashi and Aben Ezra say the word is plural because it denotes all Abels possible posterity, thus murdered with him. Other Jewish writers have drawn a still more singular inference. Thus it is said in the Talmud, Sanhedrin fol. Genesis 37 : The plural here is to teach us that every one who destroys a single life from Israel, there is a writing against him as though he had destroyed a world full of lives. Another Jewish interpretation (see Rashi) says that the plural form represents the many wounds that Cain had given him, because he did not know from what part of the body the soul or life (the blood) would go out; all these bloody mouths crying out to God, a tongue in every one. Comp. Shakespeare, Antonys speech over the dead body of Csar. See also the Exegetical, and marginal note.T. L.]

[7][Gen 4:22. means the smith himself; but this cannot make sense unless we adopt a different pointing from the Masoretic, when it may read: a sharpener of everything (), a smith, or worker of brass, etc.T. L.]

[8][Gen 4:26.; see the Exegetical. They first began, or there was then a beginning of the invocation or formula , beshemychowah. Comp. it with the Arabic invocation or formula (bismillah). A corresponding abbreviation in Hebrew would have been (with elided ), bishmeloah, or with the other divine name, bishmeyahveh. It evidently refers to some solemn form of address, which perhaps came to be denoted by a single abbreviated word, like this and other similar forms in the ancient sister language.T. L.]

[9][Gen 4:1. . The sense of bearing (pariens), pro-creating, begetting, seems to be older in this word than that of getting, or possessing, and if so, it should guide us in interpreting the language of this very ancient document. It is a case in which, if ever, words would be used in their archaic significance. It is, moreover, much more easy to see how the latter senses came from the former than to trace them in the opposite direction. There is the same order in the Latin pario, Greek , , , birth, offspring, gain (primum parit mater filiumpeperit divitias). For decided examples of the elder generative sense in the Hebrew word, see Deu 32:6, , thy father that begat thee, where it is used in parallelism with and , and in precisely the same connection as and in Gen 4:18 of the same chapter. Compare also Gen 14:19; Gen 14:22, where it is used both by Melchizedek and by Abraham, as an antique designation of the Creator, more solemn and impressive than , El Elion, God most high, , Generator (Creator, ancient founder) of the heavens and the earth. The LXX. there renders it , and the Vulgate creavit; so interpreted also by Rashi and Maimonides. In Psa 139:13, (rendered, thou hast possessed my reins), the context shows that it must have this older and deeper sense; since the reins denote the most interior or fundamental being, and the words following express, as far as language can, the supernatural creative action, exclusively divine, and that supervenes in every human quickening; , thou didst overshadow me, ; compare Luk 1:35. This is also the best sense Pro 8:22, , rendered, the Lord possessed me,rather, begat me, as the , Col 1:15. To these passages we are justified in adding the one before us, Gen 4:1. The idea of possession or acquisition, as outward gain or property, does not suit. Eve had her mind upon the seed of the woman, Gen 3:15, and nothing could be more natural than that she should have used this kind of language. She cries out in her joy, , Kanithi Kain, , or , genui genitum, or generationem, I have borne the seed, a man, the Lord. She calls him a man, ; for the child as a distinctive name was as yet unknown, and she saw only the image of the humanity without regard to size or growth. Nothing could be more subjectively truthful. It was a new man, and she connects with it, as with her own being, a creative or generative process. So Rashi, regarding as equivalent to , paraphrases the words: When God created me and my man () he created us alone, or by himself, , but in this we are sharers with him; that is, we are pro-creators, and so she says . The new offspring carries the , the image or species which had been created in the beginning; and so Aben Ezra says that Adam, when he saw that he must die, felt the need of keeping alive the , and therefore Eve uses this language. Maimonides, without denying this, somewhat modifies it by rendering , as Onkelos does, by , before the Lord: for when we die he shall stand in our place to worship his creator, , regarding Cains birth as a creation, though, in a qualified sense. If , then, is , genuit, peperit, is , , genitus, partus. The derivation which Gesenius seems to favor (, lancea, 2Sa 21:16), is utterly absurd. What would make Eve think of lances, or weapons of war, before there had been a human birth on earth! besides, as thus used, it is evidently a much later word, from whatever source it may have come. Gesenius himself regards as cognate with ,; hence there is no difficulty in connecting it, not only with the Arabic , but also the Greek and Latin , gen. If so, then Kain (Kin, Ken), is equal to etymologically as well as lexically. The particle is generally taken by the Jewish grammarians as a preposition = with (), or as denoting the closest union between the verb and its object, and in certain cases its subject; though sometimes they say it is equivalent to , substance. This is the view of Gesenius. It has the force of a reflex pronoun expressing ipseity, or selfhood, as individuality, , the very heavens themselves. A close examination always shows some kind of emphasis, or some contrast, stronger or weaker. Or at least it may be said it calls attention to a thing in some way. The cases where it seems to be used as a preposition, or where it is used to make the separate objective pronouns, can be easily explained from this. it is placed here before both in precisely the same way. This makes it harsh and difficult to give it the rendering with in the latter case, and seems to shut us up to the rendering: I have borne a man, the very Jehovah, or, I have borne a man, the very God, the very Jehovah. The supposition would not be extravagant that in this earliest use of the name (earliest as spoken) there is an emphasis in its future form, or (yah-yeh or yah-vah), the one who shall be, as in Exo 3:14; except that in the latter passage it is in the first person, . The greatness of Eves mistake in applying the expression to one who was the type of Antichrist rather than of the Redeemer, should not so shock us as to affect the interpretation of the passage, now that the covenant God is revealed to us as a being so transcendingly different. The limitation of Eves knowledge, and perhaps her want of due distinction between the divine and the human, only sets in a stronger light the intensity of her hope, and the subjective truthfulness of her language. Had her reported words, at such a time, contained no reference to the promised seed of the woman, the rationalist would doubtless have used it as a proof that she could have known nothing of any such prediction, and that, therefore, Gen 3:15 and Gen 4:1 must have been written by different authors, ignoring or contradicting each other.T. L.]

[10][It is not in the Syriac, which closely follows the Hebrew, and there is no reference to it in the Targums. It looks more like something added (supposed to be necessary to explain ) than like something left out. The fact of its being in the Samaritan Pentateuch, therefore, Instead of showing the superior antiquity and correctness of that as compared with the Hebrew letter, only proves its later date as copying the interpolations of the Septuagint. See the conclusive argument of Gesenius as against the claims of this Samaritan Pentateuch.T. L.]

[11] [Crying for its right to live. The feeling here earliest manifested, and the idea of demanded retribution that grows out of it, pervades antiquity; but as exhibited in the Greek tragic poetry it becomes almost terrific. Compare numerous passages in the Eumenides of schylus; also the Chphor, Genesis 398:

.

.

There is a law that blood once poured on earth
By murderous hands demands that other blood
Be shed in retribution. From the slain
Erynnys calls aloud for vengeance still,

Till death in justice meet be paid for death.
In another passage there is a similar reference to a very ancient law, or mythus, which the poet styles , from its exceeding antiquity. Ib. Genesis 310:

.

For blood must blood be shed. A law by age

Thrice holy on the murderers guilty head

This righteous doom demands.
Here again, as has been before remarked, it is not difficult to decide which is the original and which is the copy. schylus drew from the primitive feeling and the primitive idea, but how greatly had it become deformed. How pure, how holy, how merciful even, is this scriptural presentation of the first murderer and his doom, as compared with the fierce revenge (as distinguished from vengeance, or pure retribution) together with the fatalism that appears in the Grecian Drama, and in the still harsher pictures of other mythologies.

The allusion to the blood of Abel, Heb 12:24, has been supposed to intimate the blood of Abels sacrifice (see Jacobus, p. 138), but the more direct parallelism is with the voice here spoken of as crying from the earth. The words (Heb 12:24) are best rendered speaketh stronger, louder, taking adverbially with its primary sense of strength, superiority (from ); and this is confirmed by the Hebraism in , for , or comparative. The blood of Christ cries louder for mercy than Abels did for vengeance.

The Scripture calls the blood the life, and so it comes to he used for or . Had it meant (as it is no extravagance to suppose it did mean) that Abels soul was crying, this would have been the most ancient mode of saying it; as there is no evidence that in that earliest experience of mankind, death, though an awfully strange and fearful event, was regarded as a cessation or discontinuance of being. They could not have had anything like our modern notion of death either in its hyper-spiritualism or in its materialism. There was still a personality, a self hood, in the body and in the blood. Abel was not wholly gone; he still lived in his blood, lived, at least, unto God, who is not the God of the dead but of the living (Mat 22:32).

The use of the blood for the life or soul (as life) may help us to understand better Rev 6:9, as having some connection with this passage. John saw under the altar () the souls ( ) of those that had been slain (); and they were crying out for retribution: How long, O Lord, holy and true! It is difficult to take in this vision as denoting spirits redeemed who have entered into rest. If, however, it is something more than a personification, that is, if we are to regard the here as real personal beings then it is not irrational to take the same view of the blood, life, of Abel, as a true personal existence for whom God still cared, and to suppose that such was the view taken by the ancient author. A mere personification is inconsistent with the simplicity of this earliest thinking and feeling, however this kind of language may fall to that in a later time, when poetry (if we will call it poetry) becomes predominantly rhetorical. If such an idea is forbidden in the Apocalyptic picture, much more is it alien to the first; and there can hardly be a doubt that the two passages are connected and mutually suggestive. Was Abels soul among those that were under the altar? The idea is seen in the imagery that follows: there were given unto them white robes. This white robe is in striking contrast to the red garment of blood, and its being made white in the blood of the Lamb (Rev 7:14) adds to the vividness of the idea.T. L.]

[12] [If there is a difficulty here, it is one that the writers of the account must have seen as clearly as the most acute of modern critics. The narrative excludes the idea of any other historic human race than that derived from Adam. If there had been before this any other creation, or creatures bearing a resemblance to man. either physical or psychological, or if there were any such in other and remote parts of the earth, they had no generic connection with the species homo, or that Adamic family, afterwards represented by the three sons of Noah, and from which has come all whom history has recognized, and now recognizes, as properly man, , Sons of Adam, according to the Scriptural designation, or Sons of Man. But what reason have we to suppose that Cain knew all this? The inconsistency of some commentators here is very striking. They hold as absurd that notion of some of the older theologians, according to which Adam was a being of surpassing knowledge, and yet here, in order to make an objection to the Scriptures, they ascribe to Cain a knowledge he could only have had from some transcendent experience or some direct divine revelation. To establish such a contradiction, they suppose him to have known, or that he ought to have known, that there were no other beings like himself anywhere in existence.

Now, as far as the account goes, nothing of this kind had ever been revealed to him, and he had no means of learning it. There is nothing to show that even Adam himself had any such knowledge of his own earthly solitariness. Beyond his own Eden he knew nothing of the earths vast extent or of what God may have done in other parts of it. We are carrying into the narrative our own definite knowledge of the figure, geography, and history of our globe, and this some would call interpreting rationally. We may, indeed, have a high view of Adams position in its moral aspect and in its spiritual grandeur, but this does not demand for him a past knowledge, which could only have been supernaturally acquired, and of which the account gives not the slightest intimation. Awaking to a human consciousness under the divine inspiration that first made him man, he finds himself the object of a tender care and a guiding law, proceeding from a being higher than himself. His next experience is that of a companion mysteriously introduced to him as one derived from himself. He is conscious of a serene happiness and a blissful home. Then comes his later knowledge. He remembers the beautiful Eden, his sad transgression, his fall from that blessed state, and his banishment into the wide wilderness world. He carries with him the thought of some dark malignant power from whom he had received deadly injury, and is consoled by the promise that one of his descendants shall finally triumph over him; but beyond this, nature and history are all unknown. The vast waste may have other inhabitants. Nothing to the contrary has as yet been revealed to him or to his children. His geography is limited to the lost Eden and the adamah that lies around it; his ethnology takes in only himself, his companion the mother of life, and the children that have been born to him. To Adam himself there may have been the thought that he was alone with God upon the earth, but it would not be experience or revelation,only an inference from the care and government of which he found himself the object. To the lawless, vindictive Cain, on the other hand, nothing would be more natural than the thought that, somewhere in the unknown waste, there might be beings like himself, and who might be as malignant to himself as he had been to his slain brother. Thus regarded, Cains language, instead of involving a contradiction, or an oversight on the part of the narrator, presents one of those inimitable features of truthfulness that characterize the account the moment we get in the right position for viewing it. Had not the author been writing artlessly and truthfully (that is, in his subjective consciousness, whether coming from inspiration or otherwise), he would have provided against the cavil; for he could not have failed to see the difficulty if his stand-point had been the same with that of the modem objector. Had it been a mere fancy, he would have supplied the required Knowledge, as Milton has done by the conversation of the angel.
We may say, too, as Lange intimates, that Cains awful guilt gave a preternatural power to his imagination, and peopled the world with avengers. This is perfectly credible and in accordance with human experience. The supposition, too, that by , whosoever or whatsoever finds me, he may have had in mind imagined demonic beings, is not to be rashly rejected. To say nothing now of any outward demonic realm, such as the Bible elsewhere clearly reveals, a subjective world of devils is created by the guilty human conscience, which must find an avenger, an , somewhere; and we thus regard Cain as the first human medium of this awful revelation, just as other doctrines of a different kind have been brought out, first as emotional consciousness and afterwards as expressed dogma, through the action of the human soul itself in its holy experience. This has been the method of their inspiration, or the germ of their first introduction to the minds of men. Thus the doctrine of a hell originated in the human soul itself, just as the hope of some final rest, in holy souls like Enoch, or of some city that had foundations, as in the longings of the pilgrim patriarchs (Heb 11:10), became Gods morning star of revelation to the whole doctrine of a future life, growing brighter and brighter until, in the New Testament, it reaches the perfect day.

When, in the Eumenides of schylus, Orestes sees the everywhere pursuing him, we recognize it as dramatically true to nature. It is indeed a strange aspect of the human soul that the poet presents, but it has its ground in its deeper consciousness, and we cannot help feeling that there must be something objective corresponding to it. If we acknowledge this fitness in the representations of the Greek tragedian, founded, doubtless, on some past tradition, why may we not regard it as a truthful interpretation of the same human conscience in this account of the first murderer?T. L.]

[13] [Crieth unto me, Gen 4:10, clamat ad me, complains unto me. This is one of the texts which the blind Sadducee had often read, but with the veil upon his heart. He had seen nothing in it. It was no proof to him of anything vital and personal in man after death. But what a flood of light is poured upon this, and similar language in the Old Testament, by the divine interpreter: He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, Mat 22:32. It must be life that cries unto God, and that he hears. Abel yet lived; he yet spake; , in the present, he speaketh still. To Christ, in whom the veil is taken away, it was no figure merely, or rhetorical usus loquendi, as it was to the Sadducee, and as it has become, in a great measure, to the modern interpreter who carries back the deadness and frigidity of worn-out modern speech to chill the warmth and vitality of ancient language. In such primitive forms there is nothing unmeaning, or merely rhetorical. To the spiritual mind of Christ it was all made real by that intimation of a divine interest which guaranties a real personal being in those for whom it is expressed. The soul of Abel, of which the blood was the nearest material garment, was , under the altar of the Divine Justice, , in the secret place of the Most High; it was lodging, tarrying Psa 91:1), under the shadow of the Almighty. It was not for Cains sake that this is said, for his reformation, or for his punishment merely, or for any preventive benefit of a police kind in the checking of future murders among a race all of whom, if only the worldly aspect is regarded, were soon to perish in some way and be no more. It was not this, solely or mainly, that made that voice effectual in its call. It was for Abels sake, as a pious son of God,the still living Abel, in whom the image of God had been assailed (see Gen 9:6; Psa 116:15).

And so we may say of other expressions in the Old Testament, now become mere metaphors, or dead forms of speech, but anciently full of life and reality, representing souls, especially the souls of the pious, as yet having some kind of being, known at least to God to whom they live, as our Saviour adds, Luk 20:38. They are gathered to their people; they have gone to their fathers; they yield up the ghost, not as a thing that perishes, but as a most precious deposit to be kept (laid up, or treasured in Sheol, Job 14:13), until the set time when God shall call and they shall answer; for he will have a regard ( Job 14:15-16, will have a longing desire) to the work of his hands. They call themselves pilgrims and sojourners upon eartha phrase that has no meaning except as connected with the idea of another state of being, a homeland, a rest. This is the salvation, as one of these pilgrims says at the very close of his earthly life, when all thought of a mere worldly deliverance is necessarily excluded, and there can remain only the hope of something beyond: I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord. See how it breaks from the dying Jacob in the very midst of his prophetic contemplation of the future worldly destiny of his sons, Gen 49:18. What could they mean? There are here no imagined bounds of space and time, no localities; it is all pure subjectiveness, it may be said; but such a hope, indefinite as it may seem, has far more of moral power than any Elysian or Hesperidean fancies. It was security, it was blessedness, and with this they were content. It was the idea of protection, a covering of wings, being under the shadow of the Almighty. It was all that was contained in that most mysterious expression , the secret of thy presence, Psa 31:20, the hiding () in Gods pavilion, where they have that unimaginable being which Christ calls living unto God, , Luk 20:38. Some may see in such expressions merely the hope of temporal deliverance, and yet even the most unspiritual interpreters can hardly avoid the feeling that this lower idea, however it may be partially accommodated to a seeming secular context, does not satisfy the holy earnestness of the language, or fill out that idea of blessedness and protection so far beyond what could be afforded by any earthly tabernacle, or in any temple made by hands: O how great is Thy goodness which Thou hast laid up ( comp. Job 14:13) for those that fear thee! Thou wilt hide them in the secret of thy presence, thou wilt treasure them in thy pavilion, away from all the strife and censure of this present life, Psa 31:20-21. We cannot be wrong when we have our Saviour to guide us in the interpretation of such language, as proving a belief in immortality, or a continuous being, from the expression of the divine care and protection for the pious living and the pious dead. Identity, continuity, personality, are inseparable from the idea of such an interest, and we must suppose that the thought was vividly present to the minds of those in early times who so passionately expressed it. One thing is certain, that Sadduceeism or materialism would never have given rise to such modes of speech, although they may be satisfied with them after they have divested them of all meaning. We may say, too, that after such an exposition as Christ has given us, the denial of there being any idea of a future life in the Old Testament is downright, infidelity, however it may be presented by professed Christian theologians, or even by learned bishops in the Church.T. L.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

This chapter begins that subject, which all succeeding history hath been manifesting, of the distinction between the church and the world. Abel and Cain form the great head of each, and their generations preserve the evidence of the original stock, to mark the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between, him that serveth God, and him, that serveth Him not. We see, in this chapter, the truth of that awful sentence, of the enmity, which the seed of the Serpent bears, in all ages, to the Seed of the Woman. The sacred historian carries on the account, in this chapter, of the different branches of Adam’s family, down to Enos, the son of Seth.

Gen 4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.

If, by this expression, Eve meant to say that this was the God-man which was promised to bruise the Serpent’s head, how sad the mistake!

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Gen 4

‘Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, or it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.’

George Eliot, Middlemarch.

Cain and Abel

Gen 4:3-5

We perceive that both these brothers recognized the duty and obligation of religious worship, but when their offerings were brought God did not receive them both alike.

I. From the nature of Abel’s offering, through faith, he presented a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. There is every reason to believe that the offering up of animals in sacrifice to God (which was the ancient way of worship) was no idea of man’s; man would never, probably, have thought of such a thing had he not been taught to do so by Divine instruction. Adam, after his fall, was probably instructed in this, for the animals from whose skins they were clothed must have been slain, and as God did not then permit the eating of animal food, these animals will doubtless have been slain in sacrifice; the slaughtered animals being types of a crucified Saviour, the skins types of Christ’s righteousness, in which every saved sinner must be clothed.

II. Still the reason why Abel was preferred to Cain was not merely the nature of his offering, but the spirit, the frame of mind in which he offered it. He had faith or belief in man’s fallen condition, he believed in the entrance of sin, he believed in death, he believed in that Saviour in whose blood he himself and all others who would be accepted by God must alone be cleansed. On the other hand, Cain by his offering shows that he had no faith in the promise of a Saviour, that he did not believe in the fall no faith in the entrance of sin, no faith in the promise of a Saviour, that he did not believe in the cleansing blood of Christ.

E. J. Brewster, Scripture Characters, p. 1.

Reference. IV. 3-16. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Genesis, p. 14.

Abel the Undeveloped

Gen 4:4

Abel personified something which did not pertain to any special age, something which was cosmopolitan and therefore everlasting. By that cosmopolitan quality Abel was kept alive alive amid the changing environment, alive amid the traces of the dead; he has a present voice he yet speaketh.

I. What is this quality of which Abel is the inaugurator, and by whose inauguration he lives? He is the representative of all the great who die young. The Picture is meant to declare that no really great work is ever interrupted.

II. Its simple features show that Cain is a child of the dust! Abel is a product of the Divine breath. Both the brothers are religious, so far as the form of worship is concerned, both offer a sacrifice. The difference between the dust and the divinity does not lie in the diversity of these men’s gifts, but in the diversity of their spirit.

III. The offerings are made, and each brother retires to his home. Time passes; and by and by there happens a strange thing. These brothers meet with opposite destinies. Abel has a splendid year. For Cain the wheel of fortune has turned the opposite way, and he is filled with indignation. His is the anger of a man defrauded. To him the aggravation is not so much his failure as the fact that he has failed where his brother has succeeded. Cain has begun with covetousness and has developed into envy. The sin of the garden has become procreative. Adam had been content to say, ‘All these things shall be mine’; Cain has reached the darker thought, ‘They at least shall not be my brother’s’.

IV. In the view of the early spectator, Abel has not finished his work of sacrifice. It is only a germ-cell that has appeared when he is called away. His was a protest in favour of the higher over the lower life; a protest against utilitarian worship, against buying and selling in the temple of God. But it was his own higher life that he vindicated.

G. Matheson, The Representative Men of the Bible, p. 45.

References. IV. 4. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 376. IV. 5-7. J. Oates, The Sorrow of God, p. 81.

Jealousy

Gen 4:5

This cannot be considered too weak a motive to carry so enormous a crime. Even in a highly civilized age we find an English statesman saying: ‘Pique is one of the strongest motives in the human mind. Fear is strong but transient. Interest is more lasting, perhaps, and steady, but weaker; I will ever back pique against them both. It is the spur the devil rides the noblest tempers with, and will do more work with them in a week than with other poor jades in a twelvemonth.’

Marcus Dods.

Cain Worship

Gen 4:6-7

Sin came into the world with Adam and Eve; then its fatal seed was planted in human nature.

I. Cain’s sin was not only the sin of murder, but it began as all sin does, in disobedience to God. All sin is against God because it is breaking God’s law.

II. Ever since the time of Cain there have been two ways in which people have worshipped God either according to God’s revealed commands or according to their own private opinion. There are a great many people who will tell you that it does not matter how you worship God, so long as you are sincere, but the Bible shows us again and again from the time of Cain right through its whole history that God will not accept worship which is founded on self-will and disobedience.

A. G. Mortimer, Stories from Genesis, p. 44

Reference. IV. 6., 7. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No. 1929.

Gen 4:7

‘Amongst the proverbial sayings of the Welsh, which are chiefly preserved in the form of triads, is the following one: “Three things come unawares upon a man, sleep, sin, and old age”. This saying holds sometimes good with respect to sleep and old age, but never with respect to sin. Sin does not come unawares upon a man: God is just, and would never punish a man, as He always does, for being overcome by sin, if sin were able to take him unawares; and neither sleep nor old age always come unawares upon a man.’

From Borrow’s Wild Wales, ch. lviii.

References. IV. 7. A. W. Momerie, The Origin of Evil, p. 101. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Genesis, p. 22.

The Crime of Cain

Gen 4:8-16

‘In a famous picture in the Louvre, the painter shows us amidst wan lights pale crime fleeing, pursued by Truth and Justice. They hover as avengers overhead, armed with the torch and the sword. The criminal does not see them, perhaps, but the restless anxiety on his forehead tells us that he feels their threatenings I might almost say that their breath burns him. Human punishments are not always certain, for God reserves His hour; but the sinner, even if he does not always lose health, fortune, life, honour, feels none the less at his heels the pursuers who threaten to plunge him into the abyss where all is lost and broken. That fugitive, if we like, is Cain, the eternal image of the sinner even the sinner who is unknown to men the image of all those unknown Cains who have trembled, who tremble, or will some day tremble, at the mighty voice of God…. It was no fiction which Victor Hugo invented in his poem on “Conscience”. It is the Bible he is transposing, it is the history of the sinner he is symbolizing when he represents him to us in his verses as “dishevelled, pale in the midst of tempests Cain, who is fleeing before Jehovah!” While his weary family are asleep, he can take no rest. He is haunted with the vision of the look of God, of conscience, which penetrates the thickest darkness.

Au fond des cieux funbres

Il vit un ceil tout grand ouvert dans les tnbres

Et qui le regardait dans l’ombre fixment.

Vainly does he pursue his sinister flight. Even if he went to the world’s end, he would find there the same gaze and the same terror. Neither the canvas of tents nor the precincts of towers neither solitude nor the whirlwind of pleasure can tear the sinner away from himself; neither life nor the grave can tear him away from God. Against God, against remorse, we cannot wall up either the gate of cities or the gate of hearts. That ancestral criminal, that first homicide, the murderer of Abel, symbolizes all the others, not alone those who have shed blood, but those who have soiled their souls with more wicked murders or have dragged into evil the souls of others, their innocent brothers. For them as for him, under some dark vault, some lurking-place beneath the earth:

L’ceil tait dans la tombe et regardait Cain!’

Jules Pacheu, Psychologie des Mystiques Chretiens, pp. 47-49.

Reference. IV. 8. A. Phelps, The Old Testament, p. 137.

The Evangelization of the World

Gen 4:9

I. Your brothers! where are they? Ask Jesus Christ. Did He not say, ‘When I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all men unto Me’? They are everywhere: they are not merely those who love and respect you, but those who despise and hate you, friends and enemies alike.

II. You are the guardians of your brothers. Their interests are your interests, their welfare yours. This general truth presents itself under two aspects. Man is twofold by nature. He has a body and a soul. He suffers in both. Hence arises a double mission, at once to relieve temporal miseries and to save souls.

( a ) You ought to compassionate and alleviate the temporal distresses of your neighbours.

( b ) If, however, you comprehend the true dignity of the soul, the spiritual life and its immortal destiny and bliss, will you not desire to awaken others to the higher realities and possibilities of this being?

III. The love of souls! All the time the Church has lived the life of the Master it has more than felt this love; it has been penetrated by it. This is why there is in the new age and in modern life a fact unknown to antiquity, a fact peculiar to Christianity, to wit, missions. Christianity alone could give birth to them. You may be disposed to disparage them, but have you ever seriously reflected what civilized Europe would have given to pagan populations if Christian missionaries had not been there? Rifles and other fire-arms wherewith to destroy each other: brandy and opium, to brutalize and to degrade!

IV. But souls to save are not only in the far distant plains of earth. They are in your family, in your dwelling, at your hearth. They are in your streets and fields and workshops. They ply your Christian calling. Whilst therefore you endeavour to cherish a love which would embrace the whole earth, let those whom God has given to you be yet the first recipients of that love.

J. Miller, from the French of E. Bersier’s Sermons Literary and Scientific, p. 202.

Home Missions

Gen 4:9

God’s question! Man’s answer! It is not God’s first question, for He had already addressed to Adam as to the representative of the human race that personal inquiry which the Holy Spirit still brings home to every heart convicted of sin, to every man when he first realizes that he is naked before God and longs to hide himself from Him: ‘Where art thou?’ No! this is God’s second question, ‘Where is thy brother?’ And just as the first question was addressed to man upon his first conviction of sin, so this second question is addressed to man after his first struggle with his fellow-man. It is asked of the victor concerning the vanquished in the cruel competition of life, ‘Where is thy brother?’ Cain’s answer, ‘I know not,’ was a lie, as most selfish answers are; but the important point occurs in the latter part of his reply, wherein he embodied, in the form of a counter-question, the great principle which God had so far only implied. In doing so he sent ringing down the ages a question, the answer to which must, to the latest chapter of earth’s history, divide men into two classes.

I. This Question is of the very Essence of the Gospel Principle. It is at the very centre, and not at the circumference of spiritual things in the system of Christ. It is absolutely fundamental in the new or Christian covenant: for whereas the Law asked a man the question ‘Where art thou?’ the Gospel passed on at once to the more far-reaching question, ‘Where is thy brother?’ It made a man essentially his brother’s keeper, and the principles of spiritual citizenship were enunciated by our Lord with the express purpose of bringing home to each one of us, His followers, this responsibility, and enabling each one of us to discharge it.

II. What is the very First Principle of Heavenly Citizenship as laid down by Christ Jesus our Lord upon the mount? ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ And what did He mean by it? Surely that the first condition of heavenly possession is the absolute renunciation by the human spirit of all claim to personal ownership of any earthly possession, whether it be property or time, or talent or opportunity, with which it may have been entrusted by God. And what said He next? ‘Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.’ What did our Lord mean by this but that the second great principle of His kingdom is this: that it is an impossibility for His true follower to be really happy as long as some one else is sad; that even the enjoyment of the Gospel is to be considered imperfect as long as there be those who know not of it, or have not accepted it; that the heavenly citizen will feel his brother’s sorrow, his brother’s pain; that he will mourn for his brother’s sadness. Are not these the two principles which have been ignored or slurred over by the modern Church of Christ? Do not we feel that we need their re-stating in no uncertain terms? Is it not just at this point that the Church of Christ has failed in her efforts to grapple with the Home Mission problem of our day? It is the greatest problem that the Church of Christ has got to deal with today; and it is the problem which is nearest to her hand that of the overgrown populations in the poorer parts of our great cities.

III. It is the Modern Lazarus who, by the exigencies of nineteenth and twentieth century life, has been laid at our gate full of sores.

( a ) Look at the physical sore, the unhealthy surroundings, the fetid air of the close alleys or filthy slums. That atmosphere is full of evil of all description.

( b ) Look at the social sore. The people are not only herded together, but they are so far of a dead level of one class of society and that the most helpless class that there is no man to become a leader amongst his fellows.

( c ) Look at the moral sore. See those public-houses at every street-corner, and abounding in all directions, like the links of a chain which bind the people to their sin so that they cannot break away.

( d ) Look at the financial sore. The poor are herded in one district by themselves, and the rich (who should be their leaven, the very stewards of God in this matter) are congregated together elsewhere. Time was when master and man lived near together, and they took an interest in each other’s welfare; but the masters now live far afield, in the residential districts, and the men congregate in dense masses nearer to the place of their employment.

Such is the Lazarus of poverty and misery and sin which is at our gate the gate of every great city in our land today. We need not stay to ask how it came to be there or whose fault it is that things are as they are. Selfishness and sin, we may be pretty sure, have had much to do with it. The great point to notice is that in the providence of God this poor man, this Lazarus with all his sores, is laid at our gate, that he is our brother, and that he is in our keeping.

IV. What are we Going to do with Him? Social movements, political movements, labour movements, have all their own part and a very important part to take in this matter, but it will require the balm of Gilead, the spiritual medicine of the Great Physician, even of Christ, the anointing of the Holy Ghost, before these terrible sores can be healed. And to this intent some one must needs go to Lazarus and tend and care for him.

T. Brocas Waters.

Keeping Our Brother

Gen 4:9

You remember the connexion in which these words were asked. They were the words of a man as he stood forth in the presence of Almighty God with his hands red with the blood of his murdered brother. It was an excuse which fell from the lips of a man who knew perfectly well that he was his brother’s keeper, and it is the same excuse which has risen to the lips of men and women from that day forward men and women who have been false to a charge which has been given to them, to the souls and bodies committed to their care, who have disgraced their humanity by neglecting those whom God has put it into their power to help.

I. Who is my Brother? ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Who is my brother? Think of Calvary and of the outstretched arms of the Saviour, and see there the answer to the question who is my brother? Those arms stretched wide, that He might embrace the whole world. He teaches us, even though upon the cross, that all men are His brothers. And so when we ask ‘Who is my brother; of whom am I the keeper?’ the answer is, every one whom God has given you, every one whom you have the power to help, even though it be but by the kind word spoken we are their keeper, and God looks to you to see to it that they learn from you something of His love and care.

II. How am I to ‘keep’ him? ‘Who is my brother; and how am I to help him?’ Just look for one moment at the way in which Christ helped those across whom He came.

( a ) Help for the body. Christ was surrounded daily by crowds of sick and suffering and poor. Think of the bodily suffering in its two great forms in which you and I know it the suffering which comes from poverty and sickness and see how He dealt with it. You remember in the miracle of the feeding of the four thousand that Christ said: ‘Ye seek Me not because ye saw the works, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled’. But though He knew it was simply curiosity sometimes, or bodily suffering, hunger and want and poverty, still out of the abundance of His heart He did not deny them. Simply because they were hungry and poor He gave them to eat. And so Christ tells us to do today. What we very often forget is that those He has left with us are His representatives. ‘The poor, the hungry, the stricken in Body,’ He says, ‘they are My representatives, and He that does it to one of these does it to Me’.

( b ) Help for the Soul. But we not only think of the way Christ dealt with actual bodily suffering amongst the poor people He came across; we remember the duty that the Church of Christ has to souls of men. Christ rarely wrought a miracle without at the same time touching the soul. And so it is to be with His Church. All systems, however valuable, which would try to make men better off as regards their state avail nothing until they touch the soul.

( c ) The wider call. Next we must look away from our own home, and think of those in our neighbourhood, our town, our country, and even abroad. They are all our brethren, for whom we have work to do. We have to send the Gospel of Christ to those thousands of additional people who are annually crowding into our great cities. These vast multitudes of people spreading out from the centre of the town or city into the suburbs, what do they find? No religious privileges, no church, no minister at all. And you say: ‘Of course, if they want a church they must build one’. Yes, but they do not want a church. They need it badly, but it is about the last thing that some of them want. We must be ready, therefore, whenever we are asked, to help those great Home Mission Societies which seek to take to these thousands of people the blessings of the Gospel. The Church laity as well as clergy has to remember the teaching of our Lord in the parable of the Great Supper, when all those who were bidden would not come and yet there was room: ‘Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in’.

The Flying Angel

Gen 4:9

It is a commonplace that responsibility places man in his true position in the scale of Creation, neither too high nor too low. The fact of his responsibility proves man’s possession of an intelligent mind, a moral sense and will-power which he is bound to exercise deliberately and for the benefit of others. Thus, when a ship is wrecked and human lives are lost, we do not blame the winds and the waves. These blind forces of Nature simply carry out the laws imposed upon them. But we have a right to blame the captain if by neglect or incompetency he has run the vessel upon the rocks. When the lightning strikes the haystack and destroys the collected produce of the year the farmer must accept the inevitable. No other course lies before him. But if tramp or labourer has dropped a burning match among the hay the farmer is justified in expressing indignation for gross neglect of necessary precautions. Yes; man’s place in Nature is too high, his power for good or evil too great, for him to attempt to shirk his unique responsibilities by classing himself with the beasts that perish. And yet, high as he is in the scale of Creation, man is not supreme. Above him stands God, the righteous Judge, against Whose decision there is no appeal; and, however much man may endeavour to delude himself with phrases such as fatalism and the like, his conscience admits that God is just in demanding at the Last Day an account of the deeds done in the body, and that upon that Great Assize should depend his own reward or punishment in the life beyond the grave.

I. Man is his Brother’s Keeper. This lesson of responsibility is not an evolution of modern ethics. At the very dawn of human life we find the truth revealed and enforced that man is his brother’s keeper. From the first, life stands revealed to us as linked with life in the collocation of family and tribe. For good or ill, father and his children stood or fell together, king and his subjects. This simple, this rough-and-ready principle runs continually through the earlier books of the Old Testament. It strikes our modern minds with a certain moral shock to read that not only Dathan and Abiram, but ‘their wives, their sons, and their little children’ were swallowed up in the common ruin; that when Achan was convicted of a theft which involved Israel in an unexpected defeat before their enemies, not Achan only, but his ‘sons and his daughters’ were stoned with stones, and their bodies burned with fire. But we must remember that in the nursery period of the education of humanity lessons are taught with a dramatic simplicity suitable to an age incapable of fine distinctions. As we ponder over these past incidents we must take care not to confuse temporal with eternal punishment. Again, we must not forget that life in family or tribe was linked together not only for special punishment, but for preservation also. Noah, preacher of righteousness, was saved from the waters of the flood. But he was not saved alone. God’s protection was extended to his family also.

II. Fatalism and Responsibility. But as life became more complex moral difficulties began to perplex thoughtful minds and obstinate questionings arose. These difficulties increased as men directed their attention not so much to the central figure of influence, patriarch or king, head of tribe or family, but to those subordinate characters in the drama, those whom his actions so vitally affected for good or ill associated in the common salvation or the common ruin, the recipients of a special favour or the victims (so it seemed) of another man’s sins. In dark days of depression or of national calamity a tendency emerged to doubt the justice of God, to despair of personal effort, as though after all it mattered not, when the many were punished, whether the individual did well or ill. This train of thought, we can see at once, was radically at fault, just because it missed the whole lesson by disregarding the central cause. The far-reaching results of good and evil, when rightly viewed, ought to have proved an added stimulus to the cultivation of character, a new call to personal righteousness of life. But in moments of despair it produced in weaker minds a contrary effect. Fatalism took the place of responsibility. The period of Jewish captivity witnessed the spread of pessimism, and the proverb passed from mouth to mouth: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’. It was to correct this spreading paralysis of personal effort that, by the Providence of God, Ezekiel arose with the exact message needed by the circumstances of his time. He begins by tracing the national judgment to continued national apostasy. But he goes on to explain that national apostasy is the sum total of individual apostasy. And individual responsibility cannot be evaded by attributing present calamity to the sins of a previous generation to the faults of forefathers. He enunciates the law of personal liability. God does not merge the individual in the nation. ‘All souls are Mine,’ He claims. And further, ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die’. A good father may have a bad son, and that bad son may in his turn beget a good son. But, as far as moral responsibility goes, each case in God’s eyes is dealt with singly.

III. The Message of the Gospel. Ezekiel anticipates the message of the Gospel, and this in two ways. First, he calls to repentance with the promise of unconditional forgiveness. ‘When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.’ Next, he points to the larger life beyond the grave. He extends the horizon. ‘Turn yourselves,’ he cries, ‘and live ye;’ live, that is to say, the ampler, fuller life which, commencing here on earth, is continued beyond the grave. For these perplexing questions of cause and effect, of shades of influence good and malign, of rewards and punishments, can be viewed in their completeness only and finally in the Great Beyond. Then shall we understand the mystery of the reconciliation of perfect justice and perfect love; we shall learn how it is that ‘mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.’

Bishop Harmer of Rochester.

My Brother’s Keeper

Gen 4:9

‘How sin gains dominion over human nature.’

I. Among the ties which bind men together what is stronger or more enduring than the sense of consanguinity? Nothing can abolish a man’s duty to the brothers who were boys with him in one home.

II. But we leave home, and go out into a world of fierce competition. And competition encourages us in selfishness. Can we honestly cherish brotherly feelings for our successful rivals? One chief secret of Christianity is that it puts Divine power and meaning into human brotherhood. Christ binds us to our fellow-men by binding us to Himself. The life of self-sacrifice has its origin and fountains not in man, but in the heart of God.

III. As soon as we recognize that this brotherhood even with the unthankful and the evil is a real thing, we wake up to feel the responsibility which it involves. My duty to my brother and especially to my weaker brother is to safeguard him from slipping away from duty, to keep him mindful of his pledges, and faithful to his vows. In life’s practical business it is not easy to remember that we have a daily responsibility to God for the men and women we mix with, the people we employ, and the people also who employ us. We are debtors to the wise and to the foolish.

T. H. Darlow, The Upward Call, p. 288.

The Brotherhood of Man

Gen 4:9

Humanity is one great body, and we as individuals are all members of that body.

I. Man is united to man, nation to nation; and so complete is the union that no man liveth to himself. Nor is this union of social formation only; the relationship is vital. It is a spirit relationship. A mere social relationship would be poor indeed, for the term ‘socialism’ conveys an idea of distinction. Certainly socialism is, in a measure, a means of unification, but it is also a means of separation. But while socialism has its distinctions, while it divides into classes, it is incapable of separating from the mass. If it is weak in uniting, it is impotent to detach. There is a felt though invisible something by which man is inseparably united to man.

II. The composition of this union may be difficult to explain. But I have thought that it is God in each answering to God in all. No life is entirely void of God. Divinity has never been utterly expelled from any man. In some God sits on the throne of the heart, and governs the life; in others He resides as an unrecognized guest, subjugated by the mind of the flesh.

III. This doctrine of universal brotherhood does not diminish the importance of that other great doctrine individual responsibility. It rather increases it. Personal responsibility may, as some one has said, ‘exist independently of relative responsibility’; but the latter greatly enhances the importance of the former. We have not only to bear our own burden; we have also to bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

P. H. Hall, The Brotherhood of Man, p. 5.

References. IV. 9. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 277. Bishop Goodwin, Parish Sermons, vol. iv. p. 72. Archdeacon Sinclair, Christ and Our Times, p. 298. J. Bateman, Sermons Preached in Guernsey, p. 18. D. W. Simon, Twice Born and other Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1399. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1399.

Gen 4:10

The famous preacher, John Geiler of Kaysersberg, used this text in an unusual way. As cathedral preacher in Strasbourg from 1478 to 1510, he was often called upon to deliver funeral orations for great men. His custom was to make the spirits of bishops and others speak in their own person, as it were, and to utter admonitions whose sternness the living preacher might have feared to imitate. Geiler’s chief French biographer, the Abb Dacheux, remarks on the truly apostolic freedom with which he was thus enabled to pour forth warnings. One of his most striking sermons was founded on the text quoted above. ‘He effaced himself and made the dead speak in his own person. “Listen, my brothers,” he said, “to the voice of your brother…. It says remember, ‘Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return’.” Borrowing the words of Job, he told, in the mournful accents of Holy Scripture, of our days which are so short and yet so full of misery; he showed the transient shadow, the scarce-opened flower which was already trampled under the feet of those who pass by. He reminded his hearers of the dread mysteries of the grave. “I have said to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister.”‘

Among those who listened to Geiler of Kaysersberg were the nearest relatives and successors of bishops and other cathedral dignitaries. His pulpit method may be compared with that of Bossuet and Massillon.

The Arabs have a belief that over the grave of a murdered man his spirit hovers in the form of a bird that cries, ‘Give me drink, give me drink,’ and only ceases when the blood of the murderer is shed. Cain’s conscience told him the same thing; there was no criminal law threatening death to the murderer, but he felt men would kill him if they could. He heard the blood of Abel crying from the earth. The blood of Christ also crieth to God, but cries not for vengeance but for pardon.

Marcus Dods.

References. IV. 10. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol viii. No. 461; ibid. vol. xii. No. 708. IV. 15, 16. R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i. pp. 86 and 108. IV. 23, 24. H. Rix, Sermons, Addresses, and Essays, p. 18. IV. 26. E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 354. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 381. IV. J. Monro Gibson, The Ages before Moses, p. 116. V. 1. J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 35. V. 2. J. Laidlaw, Bible Doctrine of Man, p. 98. V. 3. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 382. V. 21-24. J. Bannerman, Sermons, p. 24. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii. No. 1307. V. 22. C. Maclaren, Expositions Genesis, p. 32. V. 23, 24. E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. i. p. 157.

Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson

Early Family Life

Gen 4:2

This chapter begins the family register of the world, and begins it, in truth, very awkwardly. Eve said that she had gotten a man from the Lord, but the man soon showed that the contrary supposition would have been sustained by a higher probability, for it would seem from Cain’s spirit and conduct that the Lord had next to nothing to do with him. He took quietly, however, to his father’s trade, and the three of them lived a dull, narrow life in some place now undiscoverable. A dull life, truly. The old people disgraced, the young man nothing to hear but how his father and mother had misbehaved themselves, and had been made to start the world with a skin a-piece and a rude knowledge of gardening. No newspaper, no telegraph, no politics, no theatres, no public-houses: why, some of you young men think your lives dull enough, but at any rate you can hear the noise, if you cannot join in the glee, and it is something after all to be able to hear a good loud noise: it scares the ghosts off and sets you wondering. Cain had nobody of his own age to speak to. He lived under the cloud of an unhappy memory, and day by day he got moodier and gloomier in temper.

When Abel was born his mother did not say he was from the Lord. She kept a silence full of meaning upon that point. Her experience of Cain’s odd ways and fierce looks had led her to take Abel’s coming very quietly, for if the one had led her such a life, what would two of them do? So Abel came almost without a welcome, and Adam set him in due time to a new business, for no more gardeners were wanted just then. You know what became of Abel; Cain killed him, as many elder sons are trying to kill their younger brothers today. Those who have been some time in possession do not like to be disturbed. Elder sons begrudge their wooden horses and their other toys to their baby brothers now-a-days, and pinch those baby brothers and grin at them unlovingly on the sly; even in your nursery, my friend, though you think your little ones are angels. The late comers have a hard time often, for there is an unwritten law of primogeniture and an unwritten law of knuckles. Your Cain has bitten your Abel many a time when you were not looking, and has been grimly glad when the unlucky baby has had his fingers jammed in the nursery door.

Cain was not without a kind of religiousness, remember. He did go to the unroofed church sometimes, but he went so unwillingly, so slouchingly, so coldly, that it was no church to him he begrudged the few roots and fruits that he took, just as we be grudge the weekly offering, and therefore God let him take them home, just as we would do if we could get secretly at the box. God takes nothing from our unwilling hand. He loves a cheerful giver! He will take two mites, he will take a cup of cold water, he will take a box of ointment, if given gladly; but none of your grudging, none of your dropping a penny as if it were a half-crown, none of your grunting, none of your porcupinishness; all must be free, glad, honest, open, and joyous; then the fire will come down and take back to heaven the gift of your love.

Abel was religious in the right way. He gave the best he had with an open heart, and the Lord said, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Now, observe, if you please, for it will help you through your whole life, that brothers are not necessarily akin. The greatest contrasts I have perhaps ever known have been between brothers. Yes, and they have been utter strangers to one another, have been these very brothers. And if you think of it, the thing is reasonable enough: the human family in all its bearings is one ; human nature is not incoherent, but consolidated. We live in flats, and think that one flat has no connection with another; that is our foolish and ruinous mistake. Your brother may be on the next continent; your mate-heart may be a stranger you have never seen. Cain and Abel were not akin. Cain did things with his hand; Abel did them with his heart: Cain flung his gifts at you, and if you did not catch them so much the more pleased was he; Abel gave them with a hearty love, and was sorry he had not more to give. So Cain killed Abel, and will kill him to the end of the world, spite of all preachers and moralists, but now in a cunning enough way to escape the gaoler and the gibbet. But he will kill him! The man who lost the prize for which his essay was written will kill the man whose essay was accepted; he will sneer at him, and a sneer may be murder. The man who lost the election, being “defeated, not disgraced,” will kill the man who got in; he will shrug a shoulder when his name is up, and a shrug may be homicide! You and I may have killed a good many people, and a good many people may have tried to kill us; they will take away our trade, they will say unkind things of us, they will close an eye or pucker a lip villainously, and then dry their mouths as those who have been drinking in secret. It is very horrible; it smells sulphurously; hell cannot be far away, and we are not to windward.

Some people are very curious to know what these sacrifices were, and grey-headed commentators, who ought to have known better, have spent no end of time in trying to gratify their idle curiosity. Some have thought that the virtue was in the thing taken, as if that could be! No; you must find out what the heart is, what the motive is, what the will is. “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” It is for ever true that God abhors the sacrifice where not the heart is found. If you want to find out Cain’s condition of heart you will find it after the service which he pretended to render; you know a man best out of church; the minister sees the best side of a man, the lawyer the worst, and the physician the real. If you want to know what a man’s religious worship is worth, see him out of church. Cain killed his brother when church was over, and that is the exact measure of Cain’s piety. And so, when you went home the other day you charged five shillings for a three-shilling article, and told the buyer it was too cheap: and that is exactly the value of your psalm-singing and sermon-hearing. You said you enjoyed the discourse exceedingly last Thursday; then you filled up the income-tax paper falsely: and you will be judged by the schedule, not by the sentiment. Do not trouble your heads about the details of the first sacrifice, but remember that what is required of us is that we do justice, love, mercy, and walk humbly with God. If thou doest well thou shall be accepted, and if not sin lieth at the door.

Cain killed Abel and then said he did not know where he was, and pettishly he asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” How sins go in clusters! Murder, lying, selfishness, all found together in this incident. But blood makes itself heard; you cannot wash out the deep stain. All human blood is precious; there is not a drop too much of it in all the earth. It is a fountain that rises close by the throne of God. Slay a child, and the law of civilisation will seize you and kill you with a holy sword. “He that sheddeth man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed.” This is not a question of capital punishment in the vulgar sense of the term, but of capital punishment in its high and eternal necessity. Capital punishment, in our sense of the term, was not inflicted upon Cain, but in the fullest and deepest sense his life was forfeited to the inexorable and righteous law. Capital punishment is the doom of all sin. “The wages of sin is death.” “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” To do evil is to perish at the core.

As we proceed in the chapter we find that family life extends rapidly. What length of time elapses you see we cannot tell. The spaces may have been what some people like to call “geological periods.” I fancy that the true explanation of all these difficulties about the rise of the human race from two people, and all these intermarriages, is to be found in the question of time. But I know nothing about it, and the people called “the commentators” know nothing about it; the solid fact with which we have to deal is that the human race is here, and the account given of it in the Bible is the best account of it yet found in all the world. How wonderfully things begin to take shape in the following verses:

“And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle. And his brother’s name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah” ( Gen 4:20-22 ).

Heretofore we have had rural and pastoral life, now we advance to manufacture and art Man is awakening, and he demands more than he has yet had; “it is the divinity that stirs within him.” Jabal developed cattle and got men to live in tents, having a taste for architecture and order; Jubal made musical instruments, as harps and organs; Tubal-cain wrought in brass and iron. A grand thing it is for a man to see that his trade is from God! The organ-builder is quite as much the creation of God as the sermon-builder. Your spinning and weaving and compounding, are all from heaven. “We are fellow-workers with God.” The Divine meaning is that this earth and all belonging to it shall be developed to the highest possible point. And he who helps in that direction is called of heaven to the work. Build your organs for God; keep your shops for God; employ your men and your money for God: “whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

Towards the end of the chapter Lamech seems to go out of his head.

“And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold” ( Gen 4:23-24 ).

Thus Lamech seems to become the father of all such as are crazy. I cannot tell what he saith. Is it a riddle? Is it a mania? Does he think he has killed somebody? Or is it nothing but frenzy and incoherence? Truly Lamech has a large family to answer for. It is amazing how many incoherent people there are in the world. I believe it is a matter of fact that the most of men are lunatics. Not upon all points; not openly and visibly; not far enough gone to be confined in asylums; but really insane on some vital questions. How else account for their lives? How else explain the discrepancy between their creed and conduct? How else give a reason for their going straight down to hell in the very face of the Cross and against the stress of the whole love of God? “The whole head is sick,” that is the terrible and sufficient answer!

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

X

CAIN AND ABEL

Gen 4

We now commence with the fourth chapter of the book of Genesis. We have an account in this fourth chapter of a number of “first” things: The first birth, the first man born of Adam and Eve; the first recorded act of worship under the reign of grace as set forth in the third chapter and last verse. We have here the first system of theology apart from expiation of sin by sacrifice and apart from regeneration by the Holy Spirit, known in the New Testament as “the way of Cain.” Paul talks about the way of salvation in the New Testament as “this way.” Now here we have a distinct parting of the ways. Cain is the author of one way, and that way is to deny the guilt of man, to deny that he needs a Saviour, to refuse to seek God through a bloody, sacrificial offering. It is further manifested by hatred of the true religious spirit and, as John says, it originated with the devil. He says the devil was the father of Cain. We have here the first murder. In this same chapter we have the first account of a pastoral or nomadic life, that of dwelling in tents. We have the first account of the building of cities; the first account of the manufacture of tools edged tools from iron or brass. We have the first case of bigamy, man taking more than one wife. We have the first case of one man killing another on account of an insult committed against a female member of the family. We have the first poem, which we will consider more particularly when we get to it. So there are many first things in this fourth chapter. No man can understand the fourth chapter of Genesis who does not interpret the last verse of the third chapter to mean that God dwelt between the Cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, under the visible symbol of the sword flame, or Shekinah, and with a view to keep open the way to the tree of life.

This record states that it came to pass at the end of days, or after a time, that Gain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to Jehovah. That expression, “the end of days,” suggests a proper time in which to worship God, the sabbath day as the appointed time in which to appear before God. Cain and Abel came before God; came to him where he resided, visibly in the symbol of the Shekinah, at the east of the garden of Eden. This is supported by the language of Gain when he says that he was driven forth from the presence of God; and he went away from the presence of God. He went away from the place where God was; he went away from the manifestation of God at that place; he went away from the means of approach to God at that place. It also clearly follows from this language that there was not only a place where God could be approached but that appointed means of approach had been established for sacrifice. Neither Gain nor Abel would have known anything about sacrifices unless sacrifices had been appointed. God would have otherwise said, “Who hath required this at your hand?” So that the children of Adam and Eve unquestionably were instructed that there was a place to find God, that there was a time in which to come before him, and that there were means through which to approach him. They were unquestionably instructed in these things.

We also learn from this text that there were two kinds of offerings at least; one was a bloody offering and the other a thank offering. The bloody offering consisted of the offering of the firstling of the flock, and the unbloody, or thank offering, was the offering of the fruits of the field. Both of these are later incorporated into the Mosaic law established upon Mount Sinai both the thank offering and the bloody offering, but it is clearly taught in the subsequent history, and suggested in this history, that the very thank offering to God which disregards the bloody offering and is dissociated from it, is void of value in coming before God. The record states that Abel not only brought of the firstlings of his flock, but also of their fat. Now we know from the subsequent legislation that this proves that there was an altar established there in the presence of God, an altar upon which the victim should be offered, upon which the fat should be burned. You will find this in the Mosaic law in Numbers.

The record states that Jehovah regarded, or received, or approved, first of Abel himself, and second of his offering. It is a prevalent Jewish tradition that the way in which God signified his approval was by sending fire down from heaven to burn up the offering which Abel placed upon the altar. There are many things in the subsequent history that justify this interpretation, that by fire God bore witness to Abel and his offering. He bore witness by fire. When Elijah offered his bullocks upon the altar he asked God to signify his approval by fire from heaven, and fire did come down from heaven and burn up the offering of Elijah. So that answers one of the questions propounded to you: In what way did God bear testimony to Abel’s faith?

The record also states that, when God signified no approval of Cain, nor of his offering, Cain became angry exceedingly, and that his countenance fell; he became very mad. We will see the fruit of that anger after a little, the falling of his countenance and the anger in his heart at being rejected because of the fault in himself. This made him an enemy of his brother whom God did approve, and from that time to this those who reject the vicarious system of expiation hate those who embrace it. There is nothing more evident in the world today than the hatred in the natural heart against the method of approach to God through a sacrifice, through the expiatory or substitutionary victim; and that which is the heart of the gospel they hate far more than they hate the devil. The devil is the author of their system of religion, if it may be called a religion at all. Dr. Eliot, ex president of Harvard, hates the doctrine that he has dissented from and commends the way of Cain. He abhors the thought that man is lost without the regeneration of the Holy Spirit and the substitution and expiation of Jesus Christ. And hence he avows that “the new religion” will have no such dogmas. He has gone in the “way of Cain.”

“Why art thou angry? Why is thy countenance fallen? Is there not, if thou doest well, a lifting up of that fallen countenance?” God is convicting him upon this subject: that his anger is unjustifiable; that there is no good reason for it, that there is no good reason for that fallen countenance; and that if he would do well (and to do well according to the law required that an expiatory victim should be offered) that if he would do well his countenance would be lifted up. Then God explains: “And if thou doest not well, sin is crouching at the door; and toward thee is his desire; and do thou rule over him.” Conant. That latter part of the seventh verse is exceedingly difficult to interpret. I will repeat it: “And if thou doest not well, sin is crouching at the door; and toward thee is his desire; and do thou rule over him.” Now I will tell you what two interpretations have been given. They are both by as distinguished names as there are in the world. After I have given you these interpretations I will let you accept either one, but I will give you my opinion as to which is the better one. Understand that in a matter that is so intricately difficult it does not become a teacher to be too dogmatic and affirm that his view is the right one. I will read and show you where the difficulty comes in: “And if thou doest not well, sin is crouching at the door.” The difficulty here is as to what sin means. One line of interpreters says that it means sin in the usual acceptation of the term. Another line of interpreters says that it means sin offering. The Hebrew use of both meanings is abundant in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. Now, if we translate that “sin-offering,” this would be the idea: “And if thou doest not well, there is a sin-offering at the door. Go and offer it. It is not too late. Your sacrifice was rejected because you did not present the sin-offering. Now you are angered. Are you doing right to be angered? There is a way in which that downcast countenance can be lifted up. There is a way in which you, condemned, may be accepted, justified. There is a sin-offering ready at hand, if you will just offer it.” But if it means sin in the common sense of the word, then this is the meaning: “If you do not well, sin, like a wild beast, crouches at your door ready to spring on you and destroy you.” Dr. Alexander Maclaren, who is said to be the prince of expositors, gives that view. Dr. Conant, who is in great favor with me as a Hebrew scholar and in biblical interpretation, also gives that idea, that if a man does not do right sin is at his door like a wild beast waiting to destroy him. The Jews give that interpretation, and you may see that is Luther’s interpretation and the interpretation of most of the German scholars. My own opinion is that the first view given is right; that sin means a sin offering. That is my judgment. I am sure that the Septuagint necessitates that interpretation. I am sure that most of the early fathers gave it that meaning; and, I am sure that most of the English commentators give it that meaning; I am also sure that is the only way to interpret the rest of the verse, “And toward thee is his desire and do thou rule over him.” Now, whoever says that sin means something like a wild beast crouching at the door to destroy a man interprets the rest of the sentence this way: “Sin’s desire is toward thee, but do thou rule over it.” The trouble about it is that the pronouns are masculine. You cannot say without straining it that sin has a desire toward a man. It breaks the sense to say that a man is to rule over that wild beast. Hence our translators of nearly all versions make these pronouns masculine, not referring to sin. Then to whom do they refer? Now I will give you my opinion of that. “And toward thee is his desire.” Whose desire? Abel’s, and thou shall rule over him, Abel. Cain is the first-born. He has the right of primogeniture. Now see the sensibleness of that interpretation. These two men came to make an offering. The older brother’s offering is rejected; the younger brother’s offering is accepted. The older brother begins to infer from that that the younger brother is to be his ruler; that there is to be a change in the law of primogeniture. Hence his hatred and he is ready to kill Abel rather than submit to him. God says, “Why art thou angry and thy countenance fallen? Is there not, if thou doest well, an excellency for thee, a primogeniture to thee? And if thou doest not well, there is a sacrifice ready to offer. Then the desire of Abel shall be to you and you shall rule over him.” That is my idea of the meaning of it. Cain wants to be first and he does not want to admit that he needs a Saviour. He does not want to make a sacrifice looking to his atonement. He does not come before God as a sinner. He is perfectly willing to come before God as a tenant. “You made me and gave me my strength and power and made this earth I am cultivating, and I am willing to give a tenant’s recognition by giving the firstfruits of the soil. But if you add that I am to come as a lost sinner and seek the salvation of my soul through an atonement, I won’t do it. And if you condition my being the head of this family on my making this sacrifice, I will defeat it in another way. I will kill this man Abel that is to take my place.”

The first murder was committed through the spirit of persecution on account of religion, and since that time in every land streams of blood have flowed from the persecuting spirit. The thought is this: Whoever does right; whoever obeys God, has accepted God and received the witness of God, by those very facts condemns the one who does wrong. He is a standing condemnation, just as Jesus said the Ninevites and the queen of Sheba would condemn the unbelieving Galileans at the judgment, and if you live a clean life, if you hold things sacred you do not commend yourselves to sinners. Sinners hate you, as Jesus said of his disciples: “As they have hated me, so they will hate you.” As a wolf, or an owl, or a bat hates the light because its deeds are evil, so men living in darkness love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. And if this be true with reference to the light that comes from the sun, moon and stars, how much more is it true with reference to the light which comes from God I “This is the condemnation,” says Jesus, “that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” The light exposes their deeds. Your light shining before men by contrast exposes the darkness that is in the man who rejects your God, and the dark places of the earth are the habitations of cruelty. John gives us the real origin of murder. He says that it was the devil, and that Cain in committing murder in being angry against God and in committing murder was acting under the promptings of the devil. “Cain was of the wicked one,” says John, “and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous.”

We now come to the point of inquisition on the part of God. “And Jehovah said to Cain, Where is thy brother? Cain said, I know not.” There is another sin a lie. He did know. And here is another sin that followed when he said to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” “Why do you come to me in this inquisition about Abel? Go to Abel himself, or go to Adam and Eve, the father and mother of Abel. What do you come to me for?” Here arose a widely prevalent doctrine among sinners that in no sense is one man another’s keeper; that there is no responsibility on one man for the well-being of another. When Moses came to enact a law on this subject he said, “If a man be found slain in the field, and it is not known who killed him, you shall measure the distance from that dead body to the cities around, and the city which is nearest to that dead man shall be held responsible, and the rulers of that city shall come and make an oath before God that this murder came through no fault of theirs.” If they were negligent in the administration of Justice, if they had any customs, if they licensed any evil business that tended to murder, then there was responsibility on them for that dead man. When that officer was killed in Fort Worth, Texas, I stated in a sermon this law, quoted that passage in the Mosaic law and referred to the ancient customs on this subject, and then said that the authorities of that city which fostered the saloon whose saloonkeeper committed the murder, in a measure were responsible for that murder. There arose in the Middle Ages a trial of this kind; Sir Walter Scott tells about it in “The Fair Maid of Perth.” One of the burghers of the city had been killed, a certain household was suspected, and they were required to come, from the head of that house to the lowest menial in the service, where the dead body lay. They must touch the dead body wrapped in white linen and swear that they had nothing to do with it; and the tradition was that if the murderer came and touched the dead body blood would flow afresh from the wound. And therefore, according to Sir Walter Scott, the murderer would not stand the test; he was afraid and preferred a trial by combat. It is said of Lorenzo Dow that he was an expert in detecting a guilty man through the working of conscience. He stopped one night at a house and during the night some chickens were stolen. The man of the house asked him if he could find out which one of the Negroes had stolen that chicken. “Yes,” he said. “Bring them here before me.” Whereupon he said to the Negroes: “I have put here a pot just a common cooking pot turned upside down. Now you darkies do not know what is under that pot; Just bear in mind now this thought: that maybe a stolen chicken is under this pot, and when the guilty man touches it that chicken will crow.” And when they all passed around and touched the pot he made them exhibit their fingers. One Negro had only seemed to touch it, and hence no soot was found on his finger at all. “You stole that chicken,” says Dow; “you made out that you touched the pot but did not, because you were afraid. You are the thief and must confess it.” The psalmist says, “When thou makest inquisition for blood, thou rememberest.” When man makes inquisition for blood many witnesses conveniently forget the facts. But when God makes inquisition for blood He remembers, he knows. At an association I was once asked to preach a sermon that would tend to convict men of sin, and I took that text: “When thou makest inquisition for blood, thou rememberest.” It was a singular fact that about a hundred people in the audience were convicted of sin. God’s method of inquiry into a cause is perfect. The darkness can hide nothing from him. He reads the very thoughts of the human heart, and so now he is making inquisition for Abel’s blood: “Where is thy brother?” And when Cain lied God said, “What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.” What a doctrine is here! The voice of blood teaching that the earth which swallows up blood, the earth which drinks up the blood of the slain man, cries out to heaven for vengeance, and the murderer goes away saying, “Who knows I did it, if I just say that I do not know and if I deny that I am responsible for it? Am I my brother’s keeper? Then whence will come any testimony to convict me? We were out there by ourselves and no man witnessed it.” But God tells Cain about a witness; that the earth would not conspire with crime; that blood had a voice, and that blood cries to heaven. Spurgeon preached on the passage in Hebrews, “And to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of Abel.” It was a great sermon. He contrasts Abel’s shed blood with the voice of Christ’s blood. He describes the soul of Abel expelled from the body by bloody murder, and rushing up to heaven in the presence of God crying out, “Avenge my murder.” But he says the blood of Jesus comes into the presence of God and says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Now notice the curse: “And now cursed art thou from the ground, which hath opened its mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee its strength.” No matter where he should go in the world the ground would be against him, the ground that held the blood of his brother, the blood of his victim, and he could not stay long at a place. The thought of this murder would pursue him. It is said that Daniel Webster in prosecuting a murderer (and his speech is reckoned among the classics) described the workings of the conscience of a murderer; what a coward it made of him; how his crime was always before him; how he would turn at any sudden sound, as if expecting a pursuer, crying out at night in his dreams, because the avenger of blood was on his track. “When thou tillest the ground it shall no more yield to thee its strength, a fugitive and a wanderer thou shalt be in the earth.” A man kills another in England; he flees to the United States. Every policeman, he thinks, has had the news telegraphed to him about that murder over there. He goes over to Canada, he is still restless. He goes across the ocean into the islands of the sea. Wherever he goes there is the apprehension in his heart that he may be held up by the officers of the law, held to account for his brother’s blood.

Now, let us see what Cain said to that sentence: “My iniquity is greater than I can bear.” To bear iniquities is to endure the penalty of the iniquities. That is the meaning all through the Bible. So it is just the same as if he had said, “My penalty is greater than I can bear,” i.e., it is unendurable. Then he sums it up by saying, “Thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth, and it shall come to pass that every one that findeth me shall slay me.” This is the first point: “And from thy face must I hide myself.” In Gen 4:16 we have the record: “And Cain went away from the presence of Jehovah, and dwelt in the land of Nod.” “Nod” means wandering. He went from that place where God’s presence dwelt, at the east of the garden of Eden. “And I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth.” Now here he speaks his apprehension: “And it shall come to pass that every one who finds me shall slay me.” Jehovah gives him this assurance: “Whoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” That is, man shall not be judge) no individual can take into his own hands the right of vengeance. You cannot justify yourself in shooting down a murderer; God is the judge, not you. We will come later, in the Mosaic legislation, to study the law of the avenger of blood, but this is not before us now, nor does it oppose the meaning here.

“And God appointed a sign for Cain, lest any finding him should smite him.” But, as the thought prevails among the Negroes, God put a mark on Cain that everybody could see. I heard a lawyer once say, standing over a man on trial for murder, “Sir, the mark of Cain is on your face; you carry with you the handwriting of God on your countenance.” It is questionable that this is the mark. God set a sign for Cain to give him assurance that he would at least be free from individual or human vengeance. As yet there was no organization of civic society. After a while we will come to that and show that at least after Noah left the ark God provided capital punishment. Society might punish a murderer but no individual could do it.

Cain builded a city; Lamech was a bigamist; one of his children was the father of those who dwell in tents and with cattle, and another was the father of all who handle the harp and the pipe, which stands for the representation of stringed instruments, the flute representing the wind instruments. Is there anything in this suggestion? Does the restlessness of sinners promote intervention of musical instruments as a means to soothe sorrow? Does the restlessness of sin in the heart tend to promote invention of stringed instruments? Strange that Cain’s descendants were the first city builders, the first inventors of musical instruments and the first inventors of manufactured implements from iron and brass. Take that thought for what it is worth and try to answer the question for yourselves.

Gen 4:22 closes with the fact that the sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah, and the only reason I can see for inserting that statement is that she is the one through whom Lamech received his wound, and on account of which he killed a young man; that because of a wrong to this kinswoman, his own daughter, Lamech killed a young man. The Southern people know all about that. There has been a rule with them that every man is justified in taking the life of another who brings shame on his family. So Lamech composes a poem. There is a parallelism in these lines:

Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;

Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech:

For I have slain a man for wounding me,

And a young man for bruising me;

If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,

Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.

That is, if God would punish an individual who would kill Cain, because Cain murdered his own brother, he would avenge on the individual who would kill Lamech seventy and sevenfold, because Lamech claims that he was more justified than Cain.

Now, the chapter closes thus: “And Eve bare a son and called his name Seth; for God hath appointed me another seed in the place of Abel; for Cain slew him. And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enosh. Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah.” We have had in the latter part of the chapter the sidetracking of the Cainites. We will come to them again later. We have had the generations of Cain; now we come to the new name, “Seth,” and the Sethites. In the days of the sons of Seth, and in those of Enosh, men began to call upon the name of the Lord. Thus religious worship of the true kind was revived. Some have interpreted it: “Then men began to be called by the name of Jehovah,” i.e., sons of God. Now we have gotten through with another (third) division of the book of Genesis, an important one.

QUESTIONS 1. Give the “first” things of Genesis, the fourth chapter.

2. What hope was inspired in Eve’s heart by the birth of Cain?

3. Show the analogy between the expectation of Christ’s first coming and his second coming.

4. State the system of theology embodied and implied in each of these offerings,

5. What name does the New Testament give to Cain’s theology?

6. Who are the followers of his way now?

7. There was a radical difference between Cain and Abel. In which of the following particulars did it consist:

(1) Human parentage;

(2) Hereditary nature;

(3) Occupation;

(4) Intrinsic value of their offerings;

(5) Or spiritual parentage?

8. Give New Testament account of Cain’s parentage.

9, What bearing on this fourth chapter has the interpretation of the last verse of the third chapter?

10. What may be fairly inferred as to previous appointment of sacrifices together with the time, place and object of their being offered by the fact that Cain and Abel did, “at the end of days,” come before the Lord with their offerings?

11. What was the bearing of this fact on the salvation of Adam and Eve?

12. What two kinds of offerings are indicated in this chapter and what is the evidence of the establishment of the altar of sacrifice?

13. What is meant by Jehovah having respect for one offering and disrespect for the other offering?

14. In what respect was Abel’s offering better than Gain’s?

15. In what way did God bear testimony to Abel’s faith? Give proof.

16. Cite New Testament proof that Abel secured even earthly immortality.

17. What effect did God’s approval of Abel’s offering have on Cain and how evidenced?

18. What is the attitude of the natural heart toward a substitutionary sacrifice? Illustrate.

19. How does God convict Cain?

20. Give the author’s interpretation, of Gen 4:7 .

21. On what ground was the first murder committed and what is the attitude of sinners toward God’s children generally?

22. What inquisition did God make and what the Mosaic law on this point?

23. Give three illustrations. Fort Worth, Texas, Sir Walter Scott, and Lorenzo Dow.

24. What was the psalmist’s testimony on this point and what use was made of the text by the author?

25. What is the meaning of “the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground”? 26. What is meant by the voice of the blood of Abel in Heb 12:24 ; that is, does it mean Abel’s own blood shed by Cain (Gen 4:10 ) or the blood of sacrifice shed by Abel (Gen 4:4 )?

27. In either case show how the sprinkling or application of Christ’s blood speaketh better things than Abel’s blood.

28. What was the curse pronounced upon Cain?

29. Illustrate the effect of this murder on Cain’s conscience?

30. What was Cain’s response and the meaning of “bearing iniquity”?

31. What idea of locality is involved in Cain’s going away from the presence of the Lord?

32. Show wherein Cain committed the unpardonable sin.

33. What purpose was served in exempting Cain from human vengeance and in the visible mark, or sign, which protected him?

34. What was the mark placed upon Cain?

35. Who was Cain’s wife?

36. Cite the achievements wrought by Cain’s several descendants, and show what things originated with them.

37. What is the meaning of If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold?

38. Who was appointed unto Eve as another seed in the place of Abel?

39. What doctrines set forth in this appointment?

40. Should the last clause of Genesis (fourth chapter) be rendered “began to call upon the name of the Lord,” or “be called by the name of Jehovah”?

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Gen 4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.

Ver. 1. I have gotten a man from the Lord. ] Or, that famous man, the Lord; as if she had brought forth the man Christ Jesus. These were words of hope not of substance verba spei, non rei ; for “Cain was of that wicked one,” the devil, 1Jn 3:12 as all reprobates are. 1Jn 3:10 Cain the author of the city of the world, saith Augustine, a is born first, and called Cain, that is, a “possession,” because he buildeth a city, is given to the cares and pomp of the world, and persecutes his brother that was chosen out of the world. But Abel, the author of the city of God, is born second, called “vanity,” because he saw the world’s vanity, and is therefore driven out of the world by an untimely death. So early came martyrdom into the world; the first man that died, died for religion. In a witty sense, saith Hugh Broughton, b Cain and Abel contain in their names advertisements for matter of true continuance and corruption. Cain betokeneth possession in this world; and Abel betokeneth one humbled in mind, and holding such possession vain. Such was his offering – sheep kind, the gentlest of all living beasts; and therefore the favour of God followed him. And the offering of Cain was of the fruit of the earth; as he loved the possession of this world, and the service of the body, which yet can have no continuance, and followed after bodily lusts; therefore the blessed God favoured him not. Thus far he cited from the Rabbins. Another English divine c hath this note upon these words, I have gotten a man from the Lord, Jehovah. Adam and Eve were all about the composition of Cain. His soul was inspired pure and holy; yet as soon as the vital spirits laid hold of it, it was in the compound, a son of Adam. A skilful artificer makes a clock of all its essential parts most accurately; only he leaves the putting of all parts together to his unskilful apprentice, who so jumbles together the several joints, that all falls to jarring, and can keep no time at all, every wheel running backward-way. So God most artificially still perfects both body and soul; but our accursed parents put all out of frame, and set every part in a contrary course to God’s will. Sin is propagated, and proceeds from the union of body and soul into one man, That phrase, “warmed in sin,” Psa 51:5 is meant of the preparation of the body as an instrument of evil, which is not so actually, till the soul come.

a Aug. De Civit. Dei, lib. xv., cap. 1.

b H. Broughton of the 10. part. ex Rab. Bochai.

c Yates’s Model.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Gen 4:1-8

1Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, I have gotten a man-child with the help of the LORD. 2Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. 4Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; 5but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. 6Then the LORD said to Cain, Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it. 8Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

Gen 4:1 the man had relations with his wife Eve Literally, Adam knew Eve. The Hebrew term knew speaks of intimate personal relationship (BDB 393, KB 390, Qal PERFECT, cf. Jer 1:5). Whether this was the first sexual union between Adam and Eve is not stated. The Bible is silent about how many children they had and when they had them. We only know about the three named ones. This is very significant in interpreting the NT words for knowing God which show that it is not only factual content, but a personal relationship that is being emphasized. Basically mankind’s response to God involves (1) truths to be believed, (2) a person to welcome, and (3) an appropriate life to live! See Special Topic below.

SPECIAL TOPIC: KNOW (USING MOSTLY DEUTERONOMY AS A PARADIGM)

Cain The name Cain (qayin, BDB 884 III, KB 1097, and BDB 888-89) is a sound play on the Hebrew word gotten (qaniti). It seems to affirm that Cain was a special gift with the help of YHWH (possibly even a fulfillment of Gen 3:15).

a man-child with the help of the LORD The translation, man-child, seems to catch the emphasis. Some assert that Eve had previous daughters and that this was the first male, but this is speculation. The closing phrase of Gen 4:1, with the help of the Lord, (BDB 86) implies that this was a statement of faith by Eve based on Gen 3:15-16. This is the first use of the name YHWH by itself. The next time it appears alone is in worship by the line of Seth in Gen 4:26.

Gen 4:2 Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel The rabbis say that because the phrase and Adam knew Eve is missing in Gen 4:2 that Cain and Abel were twins, but this seems highly unlikely.

Abel The Hebrew term means breath, vapor, or vanity (BDB 211 II, cf. Ecc 1:2). There are three possible implications of this name:

1. this may reflect (a) Eve’s discouragement about her fallen condition or (b) a prediction about the shortness of his life;

2. a possible link to the Akkadian word son (ibil); and

3. others have asserted that it is related to the word weakness because of Eve’s discouragement over the curse of many children (cf. Gen 3:16).

Gen 4:3 that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground Notice that Cain is the first to bring an offering to the Lord (BDB 97, KB 112, Hiphil IMPERFECT). There is nothing inherently inferior in a grain sacrifice versus an animal sacrifice. The significance is in the faith of the offerer, not the sacrifice itself. Possibly they brought the offering to the gateway of the garden of Eden.

Gen 4:4 Abel on his part also brought out of the firstlings of his flock The key seems to be in the term firstlings (BDB 114). Cain brought some of his agricultural produce, but Abel brought the best of his flock, which showed an attitude of faith and respect. But it must be remembered that the text itself is very ambiguous and brief. We must be careful of reading too much into these early accounts.

NASB and their fat portions

NKJV and their fat

NRSV their fat portions

TEV the best parts of it

NJB and some of their fat

SEPT even some of the fattest of them

JPSOA the choicest

NET even the fattest of them

Apparently here and in later Judaism, the intestines and the fat connected to it were what was offered on the altar: (1) they were seen as the seat of the emotions or (2) the fat was a symbol of prosperity and health.

The SEPT, JPSOA, and NET Bible understand this phrase as referring not to the fat of the intestines offered on the altar, but as the best of the flock. This fits the context better.

and the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering Literally this means looked upon with a positive connotation (BDB 1043, KB 1609, Qal IMPERFECT, cf. TEV and NJB). The how is uncertain although there have been many speculations. It is obvious that God communicated His joy for the one and His displeasure in the other. It has been noted by commentators, both ancient and modern, that God accepted Abel first and then his offering. This is always the order (cf. Heb 11:4). The problem with Cain was his attitude. It is possible that God is showing His sovereignty by loving the younger not the older. This is seen throughout Genesis.

Gen 4:5 Cain became very angry The Hebrew words are very intense here which describe Cain’s emotions (BDB 354, KB 351, Qal IMPERFECT plus the ADVERB very, BDB 547). Notice that he is angry at God but he will take his anger out on his brother. The context here is anger amidst worship. Possibly he was upset because he brought his offering first, but Abel’s was accepted and his was not.

his countenance fell There is a word play between fell in Gen 4:5-6 (BDB 656, KB 709) and will not your countenance be lifted up in Gen 4:7. The term lifted up can mean accepted (BDB 669, KB 724, Qal INFINITIVE CONSTRUCT, cf. NKJV, NRSV, TEV).

Gen 4:6 Why are you angry Here again is God asking several questions, not for information, but to help the person to understand his own feelings and motives (cf. Gen 4:9; Gen 3:9; Gen 3:11; Gen 3:13).

Gen 4:7 sin is crouching at the door In this verse sin is personified as a wild animal whose desire is to destroy (cf. 1Pe 5:8). There is a possible Akkadian connection with the word crouching which was used of the demonic (BDB 918, KB 1181, Qal PARTICIPLE). This shows the true nature of sin in our world.

and its desire is for you This same term desire (BDB 1003, KB 1802) is used in Gen 3:16. It shows that the purpose of evil is our destruction (i.e. to control and to dominate).

but you must master it The VERB (BDB 605, KB 647) is a Qal IMPERFECT. This shows that we are not a puppet in the hand of evil, but we have the ability, with God’s help, to resist evil (cf. Eph 6:13; Jas 4:7; 1Pe 5:9), to repent and be restored! Cain was not bound by Adam’s sin (cf. Eze 18:2-4). We are affected by Adam and Eve’s rebellion, but we are responsible for our own choices.

Gen 4:8 Cain told Abel his brother There has been much discussion about this phrase. Some assert that Cain told Abel about what God had said in Gen 4:6-7. Others assert, along with the Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate, and RSV translations, that Cain lured him into the field so that he could kill him (i.e. premeditated murder).

Cain rose up against Abel Chapter 3 emphasized supernatural temptation; chapter 4 emphasized the development of the Adamic fallen nature in mankind. There is no tempter here, only full-blossomed sin resulting from the sin of Adam and Eve and which extends to all their descendants (cf. Rom 8:9-18; Rom 8:23; 1Jn 3:12). The VERBS rose up (BDB 877, KB 1086, Qal IMPERFECT) and killed (BDB 246, KB 255, Qal IMPERFECT) show the progressive violence.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

Cain = acquisition.

a man. Hebrew. ‘ish. (See App-14.) Literally “a man, even Jehovah”. Revised Version “with the help of”, in italics. Hebrew. ‘ish ‘eth Jehovah. Compare Luk 2:11.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Lets turn to Genesis Chapter four.

Adam and Eve have been expelled from the Garden of Eden because of their disobedience to God.

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord ( Gen 4:1 ).

Now there are always people who are ready to make up theories concerning how certain things happened or what certain things were. But let me say wherever the Bible is silent it is best that we be silent. I’m not really interested in conjecturing on the scriptures. But there are those who teach that Eve’s sin with the serpent was that Eve had copulation with the serpent, according to many people’s theory, and Cain is the product of that relationship. And so actually Cain was a descendent of men after Satan, and then Abel was, you know, the relationship between Adam and Eve, but the scripture does not support that at all. Very clearly here in Chapter four, Adam knew Eve his wife and that’s just a way of saying that they had an intimate relationship and she conceived and bare Cain. That’s the plain obvious teaching of the scriptures; and thus, I count it fantasy the theory that men have devised.

Now when Cain was born, you remember that God promised that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head, and Eve thought that God was fulfilling the promise through Cain. She thought that this is the fulfillment and so she said, “I have gotten a man child from the Lord”. In other words, this is the one that God has promised that is going to bruise the serpent’s head. She was mistaken. Cain was no doubt a disappointment.

And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of the sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time, it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground, an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. But unto Cain and his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell ( Gen 4:2-5 ).

Now why is it that God accepted Abel’s sacrifice and did not accept Cain’s sacrifice? There are those who say it was because Cain offered the works of his hand, where as Abel offered a blood sacrifice unto God; and thus, was Abel’s accepted while Cain’s was rejected. That sounds very plausible. But it is interesting that later on when God established the sacrifices in the book of Leviticus, they did have what was called in your King James, “meat offering”, but it is really the meal offering and they did offer the grain, the meal pressed into flour little cakes. They were a legitimate offering unto the Lord in sacrifice.

So it isn’t really one is of a crop nature and the other is a blood sacrifice. In Hebrews, we are told that by faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, so the problem with Cain was that his was not of faith, whereas Abel’s sacrifice was one of faith. That’s the basic difference: one believing God and trusting God, the other not believing. Thus all of the sacrifices you may make without faith are worthless. The faith was the quality that made Abel’s sacrifice acceptable unto God. And that is the New Testament commentary on the Old Testament and quite often the very best and most valuable commentary you can find for the Old Testament is the New Testament itself, for there are many interesting insights given to us in the New Testament of the Old Testament scriptures. And so this is one where in Hebrews we find the difference between the two sacrifices, one was offered in faith and thus was accepted.

Now the Lord said unto Cain, Why are you angry? Why is your countenance fallen? ( Gen 4:6 )

In other words, Cain was obviously angry that his was not accepted. Now by what virtue they knew that his was not accepted, the scripture doesn’t say. But they no doubt had in those days a very intimate type of communication with God. Because here is God speaking to Cain and saying, “Why do you look so angry? Why is your face fallen?” And God is now giving to Cain a second chance. He’s said,

If you do well, shalt thou not be accepted? ( Gen 4:7 )

In other words, if you’re doing the right thing, I’ll accept you. He’s encouraging him to the right kind of action now. If you do well, will you not be accepted?

And if you don’t do well, then sin lieth at your door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him ( Gen 4:7 ).

And so the Lord speaks of the sin at the door of Cain. And God said, you know, get things right. Offer again. If you’re doing the right thing, it will be accepted.

But Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, after they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I don’t know: Am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What have you done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now thou art cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand ( Gen 4:8-11 );

Now because God is questioning, it doesn’t mean that God doesn’t know. God knows all things, but He still asks questions. Not for his information, but the questions of God are to open us up. Perhaps even to a confession here. You see when Cain tried to pass it off with a lie; God knew exactly what was going on. He said, “Where is your brother?” God knew exactly where his brother was. He wanted an acknowledgment from Cain of what he had done.

Because if we acknowledge our sins, if we confess our sins, than we give God a basis to forgive our sin. The Bible says that he who seeks to cover his sins shall not prosper, but whoever confesses his sins shall be forgiven. So God is asking not because He didn’t know where Abel was, He knew exactly what was going on. He wanted a confession out of Cain, in order that He might have a basis to grant forgiveness and pardons. For if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

But man seems to have a difficult time confessing his sin, his guilt. In Proverbs it says there is a generation that is pure in their own eyes but the truth is far from them. How often we seek to justify the things that we have done. Rather than just saying those three hardest words to utter in the English language. “I was wrong.” Oh, how hard that is to say. Because you see, I’m never wrong, really. It’s just if this had not had happened, and that had not had happened, I wouldn’t have done it. “The woman that thou has given me to be my wife”, you know, there’s always some reason, there’s always some excuse. It’s never really me. Why is it that we always want to find fault or blame with some ulterior cause, rather than just accepting the blame and the responsibility ourselves?

If I cut my finger with a knife, it’s because the kids have the music on too loud in the other room. So I go storming in and say, “Turn that music down!” you know and holding my finger. It really is that I was just careless. And I shouldn’t have been trying to carve it that way. You see there’s always some reason or some outside fault. Man seems to basically be that way. Trying to cast the blame onto something else, but God is always zeroing in, wanting that confession, because until I confess my sin, God really can’t righteously forgive me my sin. And so when God is questioning, it’s not for God’s information purposes, but it’s to give man that opportunity to confess, in order that God might have the opportunity to grant the forgiveness.

“Where’s your brother?” “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” And He said, “What have you done?” You see the questions are to elicit the confession from Cain. And then God goes ahead and declares what he has done. “Your brother’s blood is crying from the ground. And now thou art cursed from the earth, which has opened her mouth to receive your brother’s blood from thy hand.

When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear ( Gen 4:12-13 ).

Really his punishment was very mild for the crime that he had committed.

Behold, thou hast driven me this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that everyone that findeth me shall slay me. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch ( Gen 4:14-17 ).

Now, herein, of course, creates a big problem for a lot of people. Where did Cain get his wife? I think this is one of the most oft asked Bible questions. The genealogical records that are given to us in the Bible are not at all complete. The Lord is interested really in only one genealogical line. And that is the line that comes from Abraham, through David to Christ.

None of the rest of them are really important. Some of the families are followed for a little while just to give you sort of a brief historic background to show you areas of the world that were populated by certain people, descendents of certain people. But they will only trace other lines for just a short way, it cuts off, and the basic line that we are going to follow is the line that will lead from Adam to Abraham, from Abraham to David, and from David to Jesus Christ. After Jesus Christ, genealogical records are of no value. We don’t need them anymore. The only value of holding or maintaining a genealogical record is to bring it down to Jesus Christ, so that when He is born it will be proved that God fulfilled his promise to David and to Abraham, that through thy seed shall the nations of the world be blessed.

And so Adam and Eve had sons and daughters that aren’t even listed, their names aren’t even given. As we get into the fifth chapter and we find a genealogical chart, it names just one son because we’re only following one line, as it will bring us ultimately to Abraham. They had many other children, it says they had sons and daughters, but we’re only interested in one family line, the one that will bring us to Abraham. We’re not interested in all of the sons and daughters that they may have had.

Now at the time that Cain killed his brother Abel, they were probably a hundred and twenty years old at this point. And by this time there were no doubt many other brothers and sisters, children of Adam and Eve, who no doubt had their children, who had their children. He could have married a cousin; he could have married a niece on down the line. There are many possibilities. The Bible doesn’t trace and isn’t interested in tracing all the families of men, just the one line to bring us to Abraham in order that we might come to Christ. And so, he could have married a sister.

In the beginning there would have been a much purer strain. There could have been intermarriage between brother and sister without a genetic foul up which would exist today in close inner marriage because of the whole scheme of things that has deteriorated down through the years. You’re not nearly as healthy as was Cain and Abel and their brothers and sisters. At a hundred and twenty years, they were just starting. I’ll never get that far. But they lived to be nine hundred years old, nine hundred and thirty, nine sixty and so forth. And so there was a much purer strain at the beginning. He could have easily married a sister, there’s really no problem with Cain finding a wife and marrying her.

Now for a moment we’re going to follow Cain’s descendents, but there is no sense of carrying them out very far because his descendents were all destroyed in the flood. And so you’ll start out with a new race after Noah. But we’ll follow them for just a moment here in Chapter five, we’ll trace them for a little way.

Cain knew his wife and she conceived and bare Enoch and Cain built a city and named it after Enoch.

And unto Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methushael: and Methushael begat Lamech. And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, the name of the other Zillah. And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such who dwell in tents, and of such who have cattle. And his brother’s name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ ( Gen 4:18-21 ).

So we see the early development of instruments.

And Zillah, bare Tubalcain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron ( Gen 4:22 ):

So really it is interesting that iron appeared in an anti-delugian age. Before the flood they had already begun to use iron, so they had developed certain smelting methods. Now, it is interesting that even till the time of David, Israel had not advanced to an Iron Age. Many of their enemies would come in with iron chariots and Israel was always at a great disadvantage. It wasn’t really until about the time of Solomon that they really began to smelt copper and come into a use of metals. But Israel was slow in the development of metals. But here in an anti-delugian age, they were using brass and iron, which of course is very interesting.

And the name of his sister was Naamah. And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt ( Gen 4:22-23 ).

Or I have a young man who was seeking to wound me, trying to hurt me, I have killed him. It was a thing of self-defense.

If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold ( Gen 4:24 ).

And so Lamech told his wives a young man was trying to hurt me, he was seeking to wound me, I killed him and if Cain is going to be avenged seven times, I ought to be avenged seventy times seven. Interesting figure because I heard that again some place. When Peter said to the Lord “how often shall I forgive a brother’s trespass, till seven times?” The Lord said, “not seven times. Seventy times seven” ( Mat 18:22 ).

And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son ( Gen 4:25 ),

Now this is after the killing of Abel, but they no doubt had other many children in the meantime. And she bare a son,

and called his name Seth [which means “appointed”]: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew ( Gen 4:25 ).

So originally it would have been perhaps that through Abel it would have come, but now God has appointed another seed, Seth. And from Seth of course, we will follow down to Abraham.

And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos; and then men began to call upon the name of Jehovah [or Yahweh] ( Gen 4:26 ).

Chapter 5

Now chapter five,

This is the book of the generations of Adam. [And as you read these generations of Adam and as it lists them for us] In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived one hundred and twenty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth ( Gen 5:1-3 ).

So you see Adam was a hundred and twenty years when Seth was born so that means Cain was probably in his late hundred teens. And when he killed his brother that would have given him opportunity for him to marry a ninety-year old sister. It would be no problem there at all.

And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years; and he begat sons and daughters. And the days of Adam that he lived were nine hundred and thirty years and he died ( Gen 5:4-5 ).

Prior to the flood, man’s life expectancy was much greater. They lived almost for a millennium. Methuselah came the closest, nine hundred and sixty nine years. But it would seem that the earth was protected by this moisture blanket prior to the flood and that the climactic conditions of the earth were vastly altered from what they are today. It’s easy and interesting to conjecture what a great moisture blanket around the earth would do, as far as the earth’s temperatures, in an equalizing of the earth’s temperatures, as well as the way that the earth would be watered, with its great moisture blanket and also the protection that it would afford to cosmic radiation. We know that just a little ozone gas in the strata sphere filters out much of the ultraviolet rays of the sun. If that ozone blanket, which, of course stretches out for several miles, if it were all compressed it would only be three millimeters thick. So there is not much ozone out there protecting you and really sustaining your life forces here upon the earth.

Now we do know that at one time the earth did have a much milder climate. Of course, there is also that constant decreasing of the electromagnetic field around the earth. If the electromagnetic field has been decreasing at a constant rate since the time of Adam, the electromagnetic field would have caused the temperature of the earth, the mean temperature of the whole earth, to be much warmer than it is now.

In fact, if the decrease of the electromagnetic field, as has been measured for the last hundred and thirty six, seven years, if that is true, a constant factor, and has been for six thousand years, it would have made a vast difference in the shielding of the earth from cosmic radiation because much of the cosmic radiation is reflected or bounces off of the electromagnetic field. And also it would create a heat, but if you would take it back as much as twenty-five thousand years, the electromagnetic field around the earth would have been so strong that the earth temperatures would be about two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. If you would take it back fifty thousand years, the electromagnetic field would be so strong around the earth that the earth’s temperatures would be so high that the earth would be in a molten state.

So, the scientists who believe in evolution had to do some fast thinking. They say that figures don’t lie, but liars sure can figure. And they had to figure something out for this one. And so they have come up with a very interesting theory. That every five thousand years or so, by some mystical magic way, hocus pocus dominocus, the electromagnetic field gets recharged. Now they don’t know how. But just every five thousand years or so the thing gets recharged, new burst of energy and then it starts declining again. It’s interesting to watch them as they try to make the facts fit their theory. And sometimes they really do some real dishonest juggling.

Now as we go through these genealogies here in the fifth chapter, if you’ll take a pencil and paper some time and figure it out, you’ll find some interesting things. Number one, that Noah’s father lived at the same time that Adam was still living. So Noah wasn’t that far removed from Adam. His father was still alive while Adam was alive upon the earth. Another interesting thing is that Methuselah died in the year of the flood. Which makes it very possible that Methuselah himself was destroyed in the flood. In the genealogical records there is one exception to the whole thing and he died, and he died, and he died, until we get down to Enoch. And it says,

and he was not; for God took him ( Gen 5:24 ).

And so Enoch breaks the chain. Enoch was a man of faith. He lived only three hundred and some years walking with God, and Enoch walked with God, a man of faith. “And he was not, for God took him.” Again we have an interesting commentary on Enoch in the New Testament book of Hebrews. “By faith Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him” ( Heb 11:5 ). But before God took him he had this testimony that he pleased God. What a glorious testimony! May that be the testimony of each of our lives that we pleased God.

God said concerning His Son at His baptism, “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”. Jesus said, “I do always those things that please the Father”. In Revelation, we are told that God has created all things and for his pleasure they are and were created. That includes you. But then Hebrews goes on to tell us, “for without faith it is impossible to please God”. So we please God by our trusting Him. God is pleased when you put your trust and you commit yourself to Him.

And so through Chapter five you can work things out if you like, but now here is an interesting thing you see. Where did all of these records come from that Moses got together when he wrote this book? Writing was invented very early in the history. Prior to the writing, it came by verbal tradition. Adam no doubt told his sons, his grandsons, his great grandsons, his great, great grandsons, his great, great, great grandsons. He lived a long time. He had an opportunity to tell them.

And for a hundred years Lamech could have sat on Adam’s knee, but he probably would have only done it for a few years, but at any rate, he could have sat at Adam’s feet while Adam rehearsed for him the whole experience of the garden. You see he could have heard it directly from Adam. And then he told his son, Noah, who also shares it with his son Shem, and Shem was still alive when Abraham was born. So in reality, you have a link between Adam and Lamech, crossover link, Lamech then telling his son Noah, and Noah sharing with his son Shem and Shem sharing with Abraham.

Now it is true that there are other records of the flood in Babylon, Egypt, India, other accounts of creation. Most of them are gross types of exaggerated accounts. Some of them are very parallel to the biblical account. Some of them appearing in historic documents that some of the scholars say anti-date the Bible. But does it disprove the Bible because the Indians have an account of the flood and the Inca Indians have an account of the flood and the Babylonians have an account of the flood and the Egyptians have an account of the flood? Does that disprove the Bible? No.

What does it prove? It proves the common origin of man. The stories being modified, changed and amplified in many cases as they were spread through words of mouth and went to different areas, after the tower of Babel when men were scattered abroad upon the earth. But the common origin of man would then have a creation story in each of the ethnic groups. It doesn’t at all disprove the biblical account, but only substantiates and proves the common origin of man. Though the skeptics would like to twist the evidence to make it show that Moses was perhaps copying the Babylonian account or whatever, which is very farfetched because if you compare the account you will find that Moses in his writing of the account, it is far different from the Babylonian, which is a very exaggerated account indeed. So if you want to look at chapter five and look at their ages and figure out who was living when, who was living and so forth, you’ll find it interesting, but I don’t get too excited over genealogical records. “

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

The degeneration of the first man and woman was transmitted, the firstborn being manifestly an inheritor of the fallen nature of his parents. His mother named him Cain, intimating a hope that the seed had come which should bruise the head of the serpent. How little she knew of the nature of her own sin. Thus from the beginning sin manifested a wayward rebelliousness which ever tends to break the heart of fatherhood and motherhood; and experimentally some of the consciousness of the pain of God over their own sin would be revealed to these first parents. Abel means vanity, and suggests the disappointment which had come to Eve.

Sin is seen at once, breaking up the family ideal in the story of Cain and Abel. Death, the penalty of sin, is first executed by the hand of a sinner.

Jehovah intervenes, dealing with Cain in strict justice. His going out from the presence of God was a willful severance of himself from the divine government and from response to its claims.

The chapter records with perfect fidelity the story of human progress, notwithstanding its godlessness. Here begins a history which continues until this hour-marriage, and children, and the building of a city without God. The origin of colonization and commerce is seen in Jabal, who “was the father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle.” The initiation of what we may speak of as the fine arts was revealed in Jubal, “the father of all such as handle the harp and pipe.” Here, too, we find the beginning of mechanical skill, as Tubal-cain was “the forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron.” In Lamech we have the portrait of a man at the pinnacle of such success. He repeated Cain’s sin, but now evidently without any remorse, for in poetic language he is heard defending himself and boasting in his safety.

A third son is born to Adam and Eve, Seth; and the new line commences. Through Abel there is no succession. The posterity of Cain will ultimately be swept away in the Flood. Through Seth the seed of the woman will be preserved toward the ultimate victory.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

Offerings by Cain and Abel

Gen 3:22-24; Gen 4:1-8

It was good that man should be driven from Eden. Soft comfort enervates. The natives of the South Sea Islands are moral pulp. Man goes forth from the Eden of innocence, of home, of the land of his birth, to create gardens out of deserts, and to become a pilgrim to the abiding City of God. Angels of Love forbid our return. Heaven lies before us, the City gleams with light on the far horizon. For the Tree of Life see Rev 2:7. The inner motive of Cains ruthless deed is supplied in 1Jn 3:12. Abel, deeply conscious of sin, felt that a sacrifice was needed; therefore his faith saved him and links him with all who believe. See Heb 11:4. Cain had no sense of sin, and thought a gift of produce enough. But all the while sin was crouching at the door, like a hungry tiger, waiting for the chance to enter. Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation! Thou shouldst rule.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

Gen 4:3-7

I. The first question to be asked is this: What did Cain and Abel know about sacrifice? Although we should certainly have expected Moses to inform us plainly if there had been a direct ordinance to Adam or his sons concerning the offering of fruits or animals, we have no right to expect that he should say more than he has said to make us understand that they received a much more deep and awful kind of communication. If he has laid it down that man is made in the image of God, if he has illustrated that principle after the fall by showing how God met Adam in the garden in the cool of the day and awakened him to a sense of his disobedience, we do not want any further assurance that the children he begat would be born and grow up under the same law.

II. It has been asked again, Was not Abel right in presenting the animal and Cain wrong in presenting the fruits of the earth? I must apply the same rule as before. We are not told this; we may not put a notion of ours into the text. Our Lord revealed Divine analogies in the sower and the seed, as well as in the shepherd and the sheep. It cannot be that he who in dependence and submission offers Him of the fruits of the ground, which it is his calling to rear, is therefore rejected, or will not be taught a deeper love by other means, if at present he lacks it.

III. The sin of Cain-a sin of which we have all been guilty-was that he supposed God to be an arbitrary Being, whom he by his sacrifice was to conciliate. The worth of Abel’s offering arose from this: that he was weak, and that he cast himself upon One whom he knew to be strong; that he had the sense of death, and that he turned to One whence life must come; that he had the sense of wrong, and that he fled to One who must be right. His sacrifice was the mute expression of this helplessness, dependence, confidence.

From this we see: (a) that sacrifice has its ground in something deeper than legal enactments; (b) that sacrifice infers more than the giving up of a thing; (c) that sacrifice has something to do with sin, something to do with thanksgiving; (d) that sacrifice becomes evil and immoral when the offerer attaches any value to his own act and does not attribute the whole worth of it to God.

F. D. Maurice, The Doctrine of Sacrifice Deduced from the Scriptures, p. 1.

References: Gen 4:4.-G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 374; B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), p. 281.

Gen 4:4-5

There are two things which distinguish the Bible from every other book: the view it gives us of man, and the view it gives us of God. The one is so human, the other so Divine; the one so exactly consistent with what we ourselves see of man, the other so exactly consistent with what we ourselves should expect in God,-in other words, with what our own conscience, which is God’s voice within, recognises as worthy of God, and ratifies where it could not have originated.

I. “The Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect.” Whence this distinction? Was there anything in the material of the two offerings which made the one acceptable and the other offensive? Have we any right to say, apart from the express language of Scripture, that by bringing an animal in sacrifice Abel showed a clear perception of the true way of atonement, and that by bringing of the fruits of the earth Cain proved himself a self-justifier, a despiser of propitiation? In the absence of express guidance we dare not assert with confidence that it was in the material of the two offerings that God saw the presence or the absence of an acceptable principle. In proportion as we lay the stress of the difference more upon the spirit and less upon the form of the sacrifice, we shall be more certainly warranted by the inspired word and more immediately within the reach of its application to ourselves.

II. It was by faith that Abel offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. It was because of the presence of faith in Abel that God had respect unto him and to his offering. And so it is now. The worship of one is accepted and the worship of another disregarded, because one has faith and another has no faith. The worship of faith is the concentrated energy of the life of faith. Where God sees this, there He has respect to our offering; where God sees not this, to that person and to his offering He has not respect.

C. J. Vaughan, Lessons of Life and Godliness, p. 34.

References: Gen 4:5-15.-R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis, vol. i. p. 97. Gen 4:6-7.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii., No. 1929.

Gen 4:7

The key to the interpretation of these words is to remember that they describe what happens after and because of wrong-doing. They are all suspended on “If thou doest not well.” The word translated here “lieth” is employed only to express the crouching of an animal, and frequently of a wild animal: “Unto thee shall be its desire, and thou shalt rule over it” Words like these were spoken to Eve: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.” In horrible parody of the wedded union and love, we have the picture of the sin that was thought of as crouching at the sinner’s door like a wild beast, now, as it were, wedded to him.

I. Think of the wild beast which we tether to our doors by our wrong-doing. Every human deed is immortal; the transitory evil thought or word or act, which seems to fleet by like a cloud, has a permanent being, and hereafter haunts the life of the doer as a real presence. This memory has in it everything you ever did. A landscape may be hidden by mists, but a puff of wind will clear them away, and it will all be there, visible to the farthest horizon.

II. The next thought is put into a strong and, to our modern notions, somewhat violent metaphor-the horrible longing, as it were, of sin toward the sinner: “Unto thee shall be its desire.” Our sins act towards us as if they desired to draw our love to themselves. When once a man has done a wrong thing it has an awful power of attracting him and making him hunger to do it again. All sin is linked together in a slimy tangle, like a field of seaweed, so that the man once caught in its oozy fingers is almost sure to be drowned.

III. The command here is also a promise. “Sin lies at thy door-rule thou over it.” The text proclaims only duty, but it has hidden in its very hardness a sweet kernel of promise. For what God commands God enables us to do. The words do really point onwards through all the ages to the great fact that Jesus Christ, God’s own Son, came down from heaven, like an athlete descending into the arena, to fight with and to overcome the grim wild beasts, our passions and our sins, and to lead them transformed in the silken leash of His love.

A. Maclaren, Christ in the Heart, p. 171.

References: Gen 4:7.-S. Cox, Expositor’s Notebook, p. 1; J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 329; A. W. Momerie, The Origin of Evil, p. 101; B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), p. 489.

Gen 4:8-13

Sin finds in the very constitution of the human mind the enginery of its own retribution.

I. The very consciousness of sin is destructive of a sinner’s peace.

II. Sin tends to develop sin.

III. The consciousness of guilt is always more or less painfully attended with the apprehension of its discovery.

IV. A foreboding of judicial and eternal retribution is incident to sin.

V. From all this we see the preciousness of the work of Christ. He becomes a reality to us, only because He is a necessity. He gives Himself to blot out the past.

A. Phelps, The Old Testament a Living Book for all Ages, p. 137.

Gen 4:9

The feeling of our sonship to God in Christ is a topic which requires to be constantly dwelt upon, because our conventional acceptance of such a relationship is apt to be compatible with a life which has no real apprehension of it.

I. Of the dangers which are partly rooted in our animal nature and partly fostered and intensified by the drift of our time, the one likely to press most heavily on us is that of exaggerated individualism. Where this is not tempered by an infusion of the religious spirit, we find it working with a disintegrating power, and in various ways vitiating both our personal and social life.

II. Almost every advance of civilisation which distinguishes our century has tended to give this principle some new hold on the common life. There is no corner of society, commercial or social, political or artistic, which it does not invade. The volume of its force is intensified as wealth increases and easy circumstances become more common. Our time is preeminently a time of materialistic egoism.

III. The evolutionist, telling us of the growth of all our sentiments, taking us back to germinal forms and then leading us upward through struggle and survival, makes the ruling motive in every early life essentially egoistic. The question arises, Where and how is this motive to change its character? Is this last utterance to be still but an echo of the primeval question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” If this be the last word, we must repeat again, however sadly- .

IV. But we cannot rest in this conclusion. There is no possibility of rest until we have settled it with ourselves that our higher consciousness gives us touch of the reality of the Divine and everlasting, when it declares that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs, joint-heirs with Christ. This we believe to be the last word for us on the mystery of our being and destiny.

J. Percival, Oxford Review and Undergraduates’ Journal, Jan. 25th, 1883.

The first time the relationship of brotherhood is brought before us in Scripture does not present it in the most harmonious or endearing aspect, and yet the very rivalry and resentment which were engendered by it give an incidental sign of the closeness of the tie which it involves.

I. The brother tie is one whose visible and apparent closeness of necessity diminishes under the common conditions of life.

II. Although it is a link whose visible association vanishes, it ought never to be an association which fades out of the heart. There is always something wrong when a relationship like this disappears behind maturer attachments.

III. Whether from the hearth of home or from the wider range of brotherhood which the commonwealth supplies, the pattern and inspiration of true brotherhood is found in Christ, the Elder Brother of us all.

A. Mursell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 251.

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” This is the very gospel of selfishness, and a murderer is its first preacher. The gospel of selfishness is, that a man must take care of his own interests; and out of that universal self-seeking, provided it be wise and restrained, will come the well-being of all.

I. This is an age of rights rather than of duties. It is very notable that there is almost nothing about rights in the teaching of Christ. The Lord seeks to train the spirit of His followers into doing and suffering aright. But by preaching love and duty, the Gospel has been the lawgiver of nations, the friend of man, the champion of his rights. Its teaching has been of God, of duty, and of love; and wherever these ideas have come, freedom and earthly happiness and cultivation have followed silently behind.

II. Our age needs to be reminded that in one sense each of us has the keeping of his brethren confided to him, and that love is the law and the fulfilling of the law. The rights of men to our love, to our consideration, rest upon an act of Divine love. Their chartered right to our reverence is in these terms: That God loved them and sent His Son to be the propitiation for their sins, and the Saviour set to it His seal and signed it with His blood.

Archbishop Thomson, Life in the Light of God’s Word, p. 301.

References: Gen 4:9.-J. Cumming, Church before the Flood, p. 186; H. Alford, Sermons, p. 1; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 277; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 242; A. Hamilton, Sunday Magazine (1877), p. 660; J. D. Kelly, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 243; T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual, p. 5; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv., No. 1399; Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, vol. iv., p. 272; J. Sherman, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 25, No. 39. Gen 4:9, Gen 4:10.-H. Melvill, Sermons on Less Prominent Facts, p. 286. Gen 4:10.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 461, and vol. xii., No. 708. Gen 4:13.-Parker, vol. i., p. 150. Gen 4:15, Gen 4:16.-R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i., pp. 86 and 108. Gen 4:17.-Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 268 Gen 4:23, Gen 4:24.-S. Cox, Expositor’s Notebook, p. 19; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 380; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 227.

Gen 4:26

Prayer is speaking to God-on any subject, with any object, in any place, and in any way.

I. Prayer so regarded is an instinct. It seems to be natural to man to look upwards and address himself to his God. Even in the depth of lost knowledge and depraved feeling, the instinct of prayer will assert itself. A nation going to war with another nation will call upon its God for success and victory; and an individual man, from the bedside of a dying wife or child, will invoke the aid of one supposed to be mighty, to stay the course of a disease which the earthly physician has pronounced incurable and mortal. Just as the instinct of nature brings the child in distress or hunger to a father’s knee or to a mother’s bosom, even so does created man turn in great misery to a faithful Creator, and throw himself upon His compassion and invoke His aid.

II. But prayer is a mystery too. The mysteriousness of prayer is an argument for its reasonableness. It is not a thing which common men would have thought of or gone after for themselves. The idea of holding a communication with a distant, an unseen, a spiritual being, is an idea too sublime, too ethereal for any but poets or philosophers to have dreamed of, had it not been made instinctive by the original Designer of our spiritual frame.

III. Prayer is also a revelation. Many things waited for the coming of Christ to reveal them, but prayer waited not. Piety without knowledge there might be; piety without prayer could not be. And so Christ had no need to teach as a novelty the duty or the privilege of prayer. He was able to assume that all pious men, however ignorant, prayed; and to say therefore only this,-“When ye pray, say after this manner.”

C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets, p. 139.

References: Gen 4:26.-Expositor, 2nd series, vol. vii., p. 230; J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 331; B. Waugh, The Sunday Magazine (1887), p. 491; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 381.

Genesis 4

I.

From the story of Cain we gather the following thoughts:-

I. Eve’s disappointment at the birth of Cain should be a warning to all mothers. Over-estimate of children may be traced sometimes to extreme love for them; it may also arise on the part of parents from an overweening estimate of themselves.

II. We see next in the history of Cain what a fearful sin that of murder is. The real evil of murder (apart from its theftuous character) lies in the principles and feelings from which it springs, and in its recklessness as to the consequences, especially the future and everlasting consequences, of the act. The red flower of murder is comparatively rare, but its seeds are around us on all sides.

III. No argument can be deduced from the history of Cain in favour of capital punishments. We object to such punishments: (1) because they, like murder, are opposed to the spirit of forgiveness manifested in the Gospel of Christ, (2) because, like murder, they ruthlessly disregard consequences.

II.

I. It is singular how mental effort and invention seem chiefly confined to the race of Cain, Feeling themselves estranged from God, they are stung to derive whatever solace they can from natural research, artistic skill, and poetic illusion. It is melancholy to think that so many of the arts appeared in conjunction with some shape or other of evil. The music of Jubal in all probability first sounded in the praise of some idol god, or perhaps mingled with some infernal sacrifice. The art of metallurgy and its cognate branches became instantly the instruments of human ferocity and the desire of shedding blood. Even poetry first appeared on the stage linked with the immoral and degrading practice of polygamy. Gifts without graces are but lamps enabling individuals and nations to see their way down more clearly to the chambers of death.

II. There are certain striking analogies between our own age and the age before the flood. Both are ages of (1) ingenuity; (2) violence; (3) great corruption and sensuality; (4) both ages are distinguished by the striving of the Spirit of God.

G. Gilfillan, Alpha and Omega, vol. i., p. 151.

References: Gen 4.-Parker, vol. i., p. 145; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. v., p. 336; S. Leathes, Studies in Genesis, p. 45. 4-9:17.-J. Monro Gibson, The Ages before Moses, p. 116.

Fuente: The Sermon Bible

CHAPTER 4

After the Fall and the Two Seeds

1. Cain and Abel (Gen 4:1-2)

2. Their offerings (Gen 4:3-5)

3. The divine remonstrance (Gen 4:6-7)

4. Abel slain by his brother (Gen 4:8)

5. Cains judgment (Gen 4:9-16)

6. Cain and his offspring and the progress of the world (Gen 4:17-24)

7. Seth in place of Abel (Gen 4:25-26)

This chapter is filled with many lessons. Here are types of the Seed of the Woman, Christ. Christ as the Good Shepherd, the death of Christ, the shedding of blood, the atonement, righteousness by faith, the self-righteousness of the sinner and his rejection are here indicated. We find in this chapter types of the Jewish nation and their blood-guiltiness as well as the record of the progressing civilization of that age.

Eves first son was Cain (acquired of Jehovah). This tells of her faith; she believed her first born was the promised seed. Cain, however, is the type of the natural man, the flesh, the offspring of the serpent. The second son born was Abel (vapor).

Cains offering and worship was that of the natural, self-righteous man, who needs no blood, but trusts in his character and good works. Cain did not believe in what Jehovah Elohim had declared concerning sin, the penalty of sin; and he did not believe in the prediction of Gen 3:15. God had cursed the ground, but Cain brought of the fruit of the ground. Today the masses of professing Christians go in the way of Cain (Jud 1:10-11).

Abels offering consisted of the firstlings of the flock. He believed himself a sinner who had deserved death. He believed in substitutionary sacrifice (Heb 11:4).

Abel is a type of Christ. Abel was a shepherd. There is no report of evil about him. He was hated by his brother without a cause. Abel died On account of his brothers sin.

Cain, who hated his brother Abel, foreshadows the Jew, who rejected Christ and delivered Him into the hands of the Gentiles and shed innocent blood. As Cain had blood-guiltiness upon himself, the blood of his brother Abel, so there is blood-guiltiness upon the Jewish race. His blood be upon us and our children, was their demand. Cains judgment is typical of the punishment which came upon the Jewish people. Like Cain, they were driven from Him; became wanderers over the face of the earth; bearing a mark, everybody is against them. Cain went with his wife (one of his sisters) to the land of Nod. He built a city. His hope was in earthly things. The progress of the Cainites is given. Polygamy began with Lamech. Jubal became inventor of harp and pipe. Tubal-Cain was the worker in brass and iron. Then there is a song of defiance celebrating murder. The age advanced in civilization, inventions, making the earth under the curse attractive; on the other hand, lust, violence, vice, and crime increased. But Cains seed was also religious following Cains worship. The name of El (God) appears in some of Cains offspring.

The third son of Adam was Seth. From him springs the Seed. Seth is the type of Christ risen from the dead. Abel, the first, died; Seth, the second, lives. Then people began to call at the name of Jehovah. True worship is only possible in the Second Man, Christ risen from the dead.

Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)

Chapter 8

CAIN AND ABEL

The Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.

Gen 4:1-16

Though there were no children born to Adam and Eve before the fall, there were many born to them after the fall (Gen 5:4-5). Adam lived for 930 years! In all likelihood, before he died Adam had thousands of descendants, including sons and daughters, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. Cain was his firstborn son; but how many sons and daughters Adam and Eve had between Cain and Abel we do not know.

Gen 4:1 — “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.” When Cain was born, Eve thought that he was the promised Messiah, Redeemer and Savior. She cried, I have gotten a man from the Lord! Those words might imply that she had already had many daughters; but now she had gotten a man.

Gen 4:2 — “And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.” God the Holy Spirit has singled out these two sons of Adam, Cain and Abel, to teach us by example the blessed gospel doctrine of redemption by blood (Lev 17:11; Heb 9:22), and to condemn the doctrine of salvation by works. The way of Abel is the way of grace. The way of Cain is the way of works.

This is the line that divides the whole human race. It divides husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, brothers and sisters. It probably divides your family, as it does mine. All who attempt to come to God must choose either the way of Cain or the way of Abel, the way of works or the way of grace. The two cannot be mixed, or intermingled, at any point, to any degree (Rom 11:6; Gal 5:2; Gal 5:4).

Gen 4:3-5 — “And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.” Cain and Abel were not young boys. They were grown men. Evidently, they were heads of households, with wives and children and occupations. Cain was a farmer. Abel was a shepherd.

In Genesis 3 we saw the entrance of sin into the world. Here we see the progress of sin and the fruit of sin. In Genesis 3 we saw sin against God. Here it is against man – The man who has no fear of God has no regard for his neighbor – In Genesis 3 we read about enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, the sons of God and the children of the devil. Here we see that enmity displayed. Cain, the wicked works-monger, persecuted and murdered Abel, the child of God. However, the central, primary thing revealed in this chapter is that God is to be worshipped, and that he can only be worshipped by faith in a blood sacrifice.

A Prescribed Place

There was a prescribed place where God was to be worshipped. We are told that both Cain and Abel brought their sacrifices to the Lord, to the place of the Lords presence. We are not told where this prescribed place of worship was; but it was somewhere east of the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:24).

The Jamieson, .Fausset, and Brown Commentary translates Gen 3:24, So he drove out the man; and he dwelt at the east of the Garden of Eden between the Cherubims, as a Shekinah (a fire-tongue, or fire-sword) to keep open the way to the tree of life. That translation is, in my opinion, very accurate. My reasons for saying so are

1.The word placed in this verse is never translated placed anywhere else in the Old Testament. It means to tabernacle, or to dwell. Eighty-three times in the Old Testament it is translated dwell.

2.The Lord God is always portrayed as the One who dwells upon the mercy-seat, between the cherubims (Exo 25:17-18; Exo 25:22; 1Sa 4:4; 2Sa 6:2; 2Ki 19:15; 1Ch 13:6; Psa 80:1; Psa 99:1; Isa 6:1-6; Isa 37:16; Eze 10:2; Eze 10:6-7).

3.Our great God, the God of all grace, who delighteth in mercy, has kept open for sinners the way to the tree of life (Rev 22:2). He kept the way open from eternity by our covenant Surety, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8). He kept the way open under the types and ceremonies of the law, all of which pointed to him by whom the way of access to God would be opened and maintained (Heb 10:1-22).

When the Lord God expelled Adam from the Garden, he appears to have established an altar, a mercy-seat, protected by the Cherubims. The flaming sword, or, as it might be rendered, the flaming tongue, represented Gods presence, the Shekinah glory. Anyone who approached God must worship him at this place by means of a blood sacrifice. There was a prescribed place of worship.

I know that there are no holy places upon this earth. We are not idolaters. God is Spirit. And they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in truth. True worship is spiritual. It is a matter of the heart (Php 3:3). We have no material altar. Christ is our Altar (Heb 13:10). We have no literal mercy-seat. Christ is our Mercy-Seat (1Jn 4:10). Yet, God has always had a prescribed place of worship. –A place where men and women gather in his name. –A place where he gives out his Word. –A place where he meets sinners upon the grounds of mercy through blood atonement. –A place where he dispenses his grace.

During the forty years Israel spent in the wilderness, the prescribed place of divine worship was the tabernacle. Later, the temple of God was established at Jerusalem. In this gospel age, the place appointed for divine worship is the local church, the public assembly of his saints (Mat 18:20; 1Co 3:16-17). This is the prescribed place of the divine presence, divine instruction, and divine blessing (Psa 122:1-9; Psa 133:1-3; Heb 10:23-26).

A Prescribed Time

It also appears that there was a prescribed time for the worship of God. Look at the marginal translation of verse three. The words, in the process of time, are translated, at the end of days. Though there was no appointed sabbath, it appears that at the end of every week men and women came to the altar at the east of Eden to worship God.

In this gospel age we do not keep a literal sabbath day. The Holy Spirit expressly forbids any form of legal sabbath keeping (Col 2:8-19). Believers are not under the law, in any sense whatsoever. Sunday is not the Christian Sabbath. Our Sabbath is Christ. We rest in him. Yet, Sunday is the Lords day. God the Holy Spirit says so (Rev 1:10). This is the day of Christs resurrection (Mat 28:1). This is our appointed day of divine worship (Act 20:7; Psa 118:21-24). I do not suggest that the Scriptures require a specific day or time when we must gather in the house of God. However, it is obvious from the universal testimony of Scripture that it is always both proper and needful for us to have specified, appointed times set aside for the worship of God. God will not be worshipped haphazardly.

A Prescribed Means

Gods ordained means of worship was and is blood atonement. The holy Lord God cannot be approached and will not accept the worship of fallen sinful man, but means of a blood sacrifice. It appears that the children of Adam and Eve had been clearly instructed in the worship of God.

Adam showed his sons what he had done, how he had sinned against the Lord. He told them plainly what God had done for him and Eve, sacrificing the innocent victim for them, stripping away their fig leaves, and clothing them with the garments of salvation he had made specifically for them. He spoke plainly to them about Gods promise of redemption through the womans seed. Adam understood and taught his family the necessity of blood atonement. Believing God, our father Adam, in his fallen state, taught his children that the only way a sinner could ever worship God is by faith in that One whom the Father would send to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Abel believed the gospel his father preached to him. Cain refused to believe.

What was wrong with Cains sacrifice? No doubt, this proud man brought the very best thing he could to God. Yet, God despised his sacrifice. Why? Because It was a bloodless sacrifice! (Heb 9:22). Cains sacrifice, his religion, was a denial of his need of Christ, the Redeemer. Cain thought he could approach God on his own merit, be his own priest, his own mediator and his own intercessor. His sacrifice was a denial of sin. Cain denied his guilt and sin before God. He denied that he deserved condemnation and death under the wrath of God. He approached God on the ground of his own merit and works. Cains sacrifice, indeed, his entire religious system, was a refusal of Gods revelation. God had revealed the way of worship and acceptance and life (Luk 24:44-47; Eph 1:6-7); but Cain did not believe God. This man was not an infidel. He was a proud religionist, a self-righteous Pharisee, an unbeliever. His offering to God was the fruit of his own labor. He really thought, just as most religious people think today, that he was really good enough for God.

Why did the Lord God have respect unto Abel and his offering? God accepted Abels sacrifice, because it looked to Christ. It was an offering of faith (Heb 11:4). Abel believed God. He came to God through faith in a Substitute. His offering was a confession of sin, guilt, and just condemnation.

Our sins deserve the wrath of God. The only way for a holy God to justify guilty sinners is by the satisfaction of Divine justice through blood atonement. That blood atonement which magnifies Gods law and makes it honorable is found only in the substitutionary death of Gods own dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Abels offering was a type of Christ, the Lamb of God (Exo 12:5-6). It was a lamb, the innocent, dying for the guilty. It was a male of the first year, in the prime of life. It was a lamb without spot or blemish, as Christ was without sin. It was a slain lamb. Its blood was shed in a violent death. Abels slain lamb was consumed by fire of God (Lev 9:24), because God accepted it as a type of Christ, whose blood of atonement is a sweet smelling savor to the holy, Lord God, our heavenly Father. There were only two differences between Cain and Abel: — blood and faith. These are the only differences between Gods elect and the lost world around us. The only distinction between Gods elect and the reprobate is the distinction of grace (1Co 4:7).

The way of Cain is the way of natural religion (Jud 1:10-11). It is the religion of works. It gives no comfort, but only misery (Gen 4:6-8). It is the way of all men and women by nature. The way of Cain is the way of ceremonialism and ritualism. The way of Cain is the way of every persecutor. The first human blood to be shed upon the earth was shed by a religious legalist; and the blood he shed was the blood of a sovereign gracer, a worshipper of God. The battle still rages. The issue is still the same. The way of Cain persecutes the way of faith. The way of Cain is the way of Gods curse (Gen 4:10-12). The way of Cain is the way of endless wandering (Gen 4:12; Gen 4:16). Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the Land of Nod. Nod means wandering. There is no rest for the wicked; neither in this world, nor in the world to come.

The way of Abel is the way of life everlasting. It is the way of grace. It is the way of blood redemption. It is the way of faith. It is the way opposed and persecuted by the world. It is the way of life. It is the way of acceptance with God. Here two ways are set before us. The way of Cain (Pro 14:12; Pro 16:25) is the way of works religion and everlasting destruction. The way of Abel (Joh 14:6; Joh 10:9) is the way of free and sovereign grace in Christ, the way of everlasting salvation. Which way will you go?

Fuente: Discovering Christ In Selected Books of the Bible

Cain

Cain (“acquisition”) is a type of the mere man of the earth. His religion was destitute of any adequate sense of sin, or need of atonement. This religious type is described in 2 Peter 2. Seven things are said of him:

(1) he worships in self-will (2) is angry with God (3) refuses to bring a sin offering (4) murders his brother (5) lies to God (6) becomes a vagabond (7) is, nevertheless, the object of the divine solicitude.

Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes

knew: Num 31:17

Cain: That is, gotten or acquired.

I have: Gen 4:25, Gen 3:15, Gen 5:29, 1Jo 3:12

Reciprocal: Gen 19:31 – to come Gen 24:16 – known Gen 29:21 – go in Gen 38:26 – And he knew Jdg 19:25 – knew her 1Sa 1:19 – knew Job 15:7 – the first Isa 7:14 – shall call

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

See Gen 3:21-24

Fuente: F. B. Hole’s Old and New Testaments Commentary

Cain and Abel

Gen 4:1-16

INTRODUCTORY WORDS

It falls to our lot to connect the links between our last study and today’s.

1. We have Adam naming his wife, “Eve.” Here is the Scripture: “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.” This Scripture forever does away with the possibility of there being others upon the earth beside Eve. She could not be the mother of all living if there were others living beside her.

In addition, Eve is the mother of all living, in the sense that she is mother to Mary, of whom was born the Christ. What we mean is, that through Eve, as concerning the flesh, Christ came: and in Christ, born of a virgin, Son of God, and God the Son, we all have life.

2. The coats of skins. God gave unto Adam and to his wife coats of skins for their clothing. We remember how the naked pair had sought to clothe themselves with fig leaves. It is still true that what man seeks to cover, God uncovers. There is no robe by which man can cover his sin, other than the robe of the slain Lamb of God. In Revelation we read, “These are they which * * have washed their robes, and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.”

It is wonderful to us that we have so clear a picture of the Cross in this act of God-God seemed to be saying, “You cannot clothe your nakedness with the robes of the bloodless fig leaves, you must be clothed with the robes of slain beasts, because Christ crucified is the Saviour of men.”

3. The expulsion. God drove man out of the Garden of Eden. This is the same story that we have all about us unto this day. Sin plays havoc with every best interest of man. Sin robs us of our Edens. Sin forces us out into the wilderness barren of the gracious fruit of the Spirit-the love, joy, and peace of life.

Where is man today? He is without God, and without hope in the world. He is a stranger to the covenants of promise, and an alien from the commonwealth of Israel. We do thank God, however, that there is a gate that stands ajar. Christ has said, “I am the Door: by Me if any man enter in, He shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” Over the door that enters in, is that wonderful word, “Whosoever.” It is summed up thus, “By Me if any man enter.”

The voice of the Old Testament is the voice of expulsion. The voice of the New Testament is the call to enter in. The voice of the Old Testament is the safeguarding of the way to the tree of life, for the cherubims, and the flaming sword which turned every way, was placed in Eden to keep the way of the tree of life. In God’s New Jerusalem, however, there will be open doors which shall never be closed, and they who keep His commandments shall have right to the tree of life, and shall enter in through the gates to the City.

I. THE FIRST TWO SONS BORN TO EVE (Gen 4:1)

1. Eve’s first born. When Cain was born, Eve said, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” Unto this day we speak of infants as the gift of God. Eve, however, doubtless had another thought in mind. She knew that the seed of the woman should bruise Satan’s head, and she may have thought that the Lord had sent her that seed. Her hopes went high as her first-born son was placed in her arms.

We read of Cain, however, that he was of that wicked one. Satan was not slow to seek an inroad into the life and heart of earth’s first-born child. There is nothing in the record to show that Cain was vile, or corrupted in character, until he became dominated by satanic power and influence.

2. Eve’s second born. When Abel came, it was not long until there developed between him and his brother marked distinctions in their ideals. Cain was a tiller of the ground. Abel was a keeper of sheep. We pause a moment to take our journey back into the scenes that surrounded that first home. Then, as now, the ground had to be tilled, the seed sown, and the harvest reaped. The sheep had to be kept, and the cattle watched.

More marked, however, than this contrast, is the contrast in their spiritual conceptions. The two boys were, no doubt, fully taught by their parents concerning creation, concerning the sin which overtook their parents, concerning the curse, and the cure which God pronounced in the Garden, and concerning the expulsion from Eden.

Fathers and mothers of today will do well to instruct their children in the things of God. Then, if in after years their children go astray, the parents will at least know that the fault cannot be laid to their door.

II. THE TWO OFFERINGS (Gen 4:3-4)

In the process of time the two boys offered up their own personal offerings. The significance of these have a great bearing, even upon our own times.

1. A contrast in their offerings. Cain, who was a tiller of the ground, brought of his fruit. Abel, who was a keeper of the sheep, brought an offering of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. Cain’s offering, however, was not made according to instructions which must have been given. It is easy to see that the offering of the fruit of the ground was a bloodless offering, while Abel’s offering was a sacrifice Divinely ordered.

Cain seemed to be admitting no sin, and no need of a sacrifice. He came before God in a complimentary way, merely passing the respects of the day; feeling that he had a perfect right to approach God on his own works and worth.

Abel, on the other hand, approached God with a sacrifice, in which he confessed himself a sinner in need of a sacrifice. He came before the Lord through a daysman, a substitution.

There may be some who will doubt what we have just said. Of such we ask, “Why then does the Holy Spirit, in Hebrews, say,-“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts”? Would God have accepted Abel apart from the blood? No. From any aesthetic viewpoint, Cain’s offering was by far the more beautiful. It was faith in the blood that made Abel’s offering more excellent.

2. A contrast in the offerings of today. Cain and Abel have both come to town again. Cain is here in those men who are preaching salvation by character, and who are saying that the Blood of Jesus Christ carries no more value than the blood of cock robin. Abel is here in the millions who have received the Atonement which Christ offered upon Calvary.

III. CAIN’S WRATH (Gen 4:5-7)

1. God’s acceptance of Abel and rejection of Cain. To Abel’s offering God had respect; to Cain’s offering He had not respect. The one was received, the other was rejected. Here is room for real consideration. Was the difference in God’s attitude due to the difference in the character of Cain and Abel? This is impossible, for both were sinners. If Abel was better morally than Cain, nothing in the record thus far suggests it.

No, the difference is the difference between a true, and a false token. Rahab, the harlot, was safe because she anchored behind a scarlet cord. The fact of her harlotry did not condemn her, because in confession and contrition she hovered under the blood.

An evil man who comes to Christ, by the way of the Cross, is absolutely safe, whereas a good man who rejects the Cross, will go down to destruction.

2. Cain’s anger. When Cain saw that he was not acceptable, he was wroth with Abel. There never has been, and never will be, any basts of fellowship between the saint and the sinner. Christ said, “The world hateth you.” The Cross of Jesus Christ makes an impassable gulf between the redeemed and the unredeemed.

(1) God’s query. God said unto Cain, “Why art thou wroth?” Had Cain done well he would have been accepted. God is not partial against one, and openhearted toward another. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to a knowledge of the Truth.

God told Cain that if he did not do well, “Sin lieth at the door.” He who refuses Christ, is a sinner of sinners. The Spirit is today convicting men of sin, because they believe not on Him.

There was not only sin at Cain’s door, but there was also a sin-offering. Had Cain been willing, he could have been accepted, the same as was his brother Abel, even by offering a sin-offering.

IV. THE FIRST MURDER (Gen 4:8)

1. The consultation. After God’s conversation with Cain, Cain talked with his brother Abel. The text of their conversation is not given. It is not difficult for us, however, to imagine the theme of their discussion.

They talked of their sacrifices, of why God had respected the one, and rejected the other. It is doubtful as to whether Cain told Abel all that the Lord had told him, because that would have been an admission of guilt. What Cain did was to find fault with God, and because he could not take it out on the Almighty, he thought he would avenge himself upon his brother Abel.

2. The vengeance of Cain. As they talked by the way, Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. He slew his brother because there was no ground of communion, and no basis of fellowship between them. Abel, in following with God, had severed himself from his brother Cain, with an impassable gulf.

Cain slew his brother because his own deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous. Back of this first murder, was Satan himself. We believe that the devil entered into Cain, and slew Abel; just as much as, in after years, he entered into Judas and slew Christ. The hatred against Abel was on a par with the hatred against the Son of God.

V. THE GREAT JUDGE (Gen 4:9)

1. Sin will out. Cain probably thought that he might cover his sin. When the Lord asked him, “Where is Abel thy brother?” he endeavored to evade a direct answer. God, however, knew Cain altogether.

There is a verse which says, “Be sure your sin will find you out.” That is, they will discover you, and pounce upon you. Men may hide successfully their sins from men, but they cannot hide them from God. The Lord hath searched us and known us. He knows our down-sitting and our uprising. He understandeth our thoughts afar off. He compasses our path and our lying down, and is acquainted with all our ways. He besets us behind and before.

If any one would seek to hide from God, whither should he flee? If he ascends into Heaven, God is there; if he makes his bed in hell, God is there; if he takes to himself the wings of the morning, and dwells in the uttermost part of the sea, even there God’s hand will hold him; if he thinks the darkness will cover him, it will prove only light unto God.

2. Man’s responsibility to man. Cain said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Yes, he was. Every one of us is our brother’s keeper. We are responsible for their best welfare. We have no right to lift up our hand against any man. We should seek to do good, and not evil, all the days of our life. We should help, but never harm.

As believers, we are responsible until we have carried the gospel message to the last man of earth. We may slay the heathen by neglecting them. Our skirts are not free from the blood of other men, until, so far as in us lies, we have done all we can to save them. To harm our brother is grievous sin; but to know to do good and to do it not is also sin.

VI. THE BLOOD AND ITS VOICE (Gen 4:10)

1. The voice of Abel’s blood cried for vengeance. The blood is the life, and he that taketh man’s blood, by him shall man’s blood be taken. If the voice of Abel’s blood reached the ears of God, so also does the voice of all the blood of all of the men who have been slain throughout the ages come up before Him. We read concerning the world of Noah’s day, “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth.” Concerning the men of Lot’s day we read,-“The men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.” We read of Nineveh, how God said,-“Their wickedness is come up before Me,” Thus it was in the case of Cain, the voice of his brother’s blood cried unto God.

2. The voice of Christ’s Blood cries, “Forgiveness.” How wonderful is the verse, “The Blood of [Jesus Christ] * * speaketh better things than that of Abel!” And what does it speak? Even now we can hear the dying Lamb of God as He cried, “Father, forgive them.” They shed His Blood, and the Blood they shed became the ransom for their sins. They opened His side, and the opened side became a Rock of Ages, in which they might hide from the wrath to come.

We have before us an echo. The voice of Abel’s blood cried for vengeance, and the voice of Christ’s Blood echoed back, and said, “Remission.” Christ died that we might live. He suffered that we might sing.

VII. THE PRONOUNCEMENT OF THE CURSE (Gen 4:11-15)

1. The curse upon Cain’s labor. Cain was a tiller of the ground, and it was the ground which opened its mouth to receive his brother’s blood. Therefore, God said, “When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength.”

We have often heard eulogies of the boys who were slain on Flander’s Field. Their blood is said to have nourished the poppies, and made them grow more profusely. Not so with the blood of Abel.

Is it not true that Israel’s sin caused God to withhold the early and the latter rain? Malachi tells the story. The devourer had destroyed the fruits of their ground. Their vines had cast its fruit before the time in the field.

Joel said, “That which the palmer worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.” God had laid waste their vineyards, their land mourned, their oil languished; the pomegranate, the palm tree, and the apple tree withered. One of the marks of sin’s ravaging is famine and pestilence.

2. Cain was pronounced a fugitive and a vagabond. He was to be driven, as he felt, from the face of the earth, and from the face of God. The poor man felt quite differently about his own curse, than he did about Abel’s ‘death. He bemoaned himself, more than he did his brother. He said unto God, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.” So it is with sin. Sin wrecks; sin slays. Sin takes the light out of the eye, the color out of the cheek, the joy out of the heart. What untold agony has been wrought by sin!

3. The mark set on Cain. The Lord said, “Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” It was Lamech afterward, who said, “Hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.”

AN ILLUSTRATION

Cain slew Abel, but Cain’s worst enemy was himself.

“There is an old Icelandic legend that contains its own lesson. There was a man who was constantly pursued by a terrible spirit which took the form of a dwarf:

“‘His grain ricks were fired, his barns unroofed, his cattle destroyed, his lands blasted, and his first-born slain. So he lay in wait for the monster where it lived in the caves near his house, and in the darkness of night he saw it With a cry he rushed upon it, and gripped it about the waist, and it turned upon him and held him by the shoulder.

“‘Long he wrestled with it, reeling, staggering, falling, and rising again, but at length a flood of strength came to him, and he overthrew it, and stood over it, covering it, conquering it, with his. right hand set hard at its throat. Then he drew his knife to kill it, and the moon shot through a rack of cloud, opening an alley of light about it, and he saw its face, and lo! the face of the evil dwarf was his own.’

“We ourselves are our own worst enemy. The greatest business that we ever have to do is with God. Sin leaves such a stain that there is no power in all the world that can cleanse it.”

Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water

Subdivision 2. (Gen 4:1-26; Gen 5:1-32.) The Seeds.

(Division of the waters, second day.) The breach shows itself in the contrasted seeds in the world at large, and in the strife of good and evil within the saint, of which this is the type.

The breach now shows itself as division among men. There is at the very beginning of the world what answers to the seed of the serpent among men; and there is (but only through grace) the seed of the woman also. The natural outcome of fallen man we see in Cain, -man, as sin and the devil have made him. Cain is therefore the elder; for “first” we have “that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” But the natural has first possession of the earth, and throughout man’s day keeps it. “Cain” is therefore “acquisition,” a name expressive, in the first place, of his mother’s natural joy, but which stamps his and the natural man’s character. Gain is what he seeks, and seeks to hold; and though in the land of vagabondage, builds a city, and adorns and furnishes it. His descendants are for that period the world’s great men. Morally, lust and violence mark them as out of the presence of God, although, after their own sort, religious too. The name of God -El -in the names of his descendants testify for this.

Abel stands out every way in contrast. His name is “exhalation, vapor,” as his life is. He is not a success on earth. And of Seth’s seeds who continue the line of the bruised heel, their history in the world is a blank: they but live and die, although God numbers these apparently barren years of theirs; they are something in His account. Out of this line too Enoch goes to heaven without dying, before the flood; and Noah goes through the flood, safe to the world beyond. Thus they fill heaven, and at last earth also.

That this is the picture of “man’s day” upon earth is plain. It is the “world that now is” in contrast with the “world” that is “to come.” And a deeper look confirms this fully. Here Cain is the type of the self-righteous Jew, the Pharisee who brings his gift to God, knowing nothing of faith’s way of acceptance, or of a lost condition, and who, after the death of Christ (the Offerer of the only acceptable sacrifice), at the hands of His people, was cast out from the land in which God had made known His presence, into vagabondage (Nod), though marked for preservation nationally. The type is here, one would say, too manifest for doubt.

But within the individual saint there is the same breach realized, and Cain and Abel have here also their representatives. Cain gives us the “flesh” in its spiritual significance, -self-righteous, Christ-rejecting, and away from God, yet marked as not to be slain by human hand. Abel, on the other hand, is that which is of God in us, as new born, but as known in experience simply, -a thing very important here to note. The new nature which we have of God, of course cannot die; but in our experience, ere yet we know God’s way of power for us, it is just the lesson of death that we have to learn, and to cry, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

The hopelessness of mere effort to produce fruit from the new nature is seen in the death of Abel; the flesh, unchanged in evil to the last (Rom 8:7), is traced in Cain’s descendants, Tubal-cain the last son of this line, being but (according to the name) “Cain’s issue.” Then in the third section comes Seth, and Abel is replaced by one who is really fruitful for God.

“Seth” means, according to Eve’s words, “set” (in the place of Abel). He represents to us Christ, and the man in Christ. This realized is that “law of the Spirit,” which is the law “of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:2) which “delivers us from the law” -the practical dominion -“of sin and death.” The man in Christ is never a matter of experience, but only of faith. Seeing ourselves in Christ, we are lifted out of ourselves. We find a new self in which without pride we can glory, while in ourselves we do not glory, save in our infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon us. (2Co 12:2; 2Co 12:5.) Self-occupation is exchanged for occupation with Christ, and “we all, with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Lord the Spirit.” (2Co 3:18.) Faith and its blessed effect are here pictured.

Seth’s issue is thus Enosh -“frail man” -the opposite of the Cainite Lamech, the “strong man” and then men begin to call on the name of Jehovah. Here is the full typical expression of the apostle’s words, “We are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” (Php 3:3.) All self-confidence, though in the saint, is confidence in the flesh.

Thus, in the genealogy following, we have no Cain nor Abel, but Seth and his issue only, and the image of God again appears. The fourth section (Gen 5:1-32) pictures the fruit that follows, though our eyes may be dim to trace it.

{Critical Notes

“A sin-offering coucheth at the door.” (Gen 4:7.)

The common translation is “Sin lieth at the door;” but it is allowed on all sides that the word means just as well “sin-offering.” The question between these must be decided on other grounds than that of the dictionary.

Now the idea in “sin lieth at the door” is not, as the common one is, that sin lies against the person. Sin must really be represented as a couching animal; for this is how the word “lieth” really reads. The thought is, then, “If thou doest not well, sin couches like a wild beast at the door,” -why “at the door”? and would it not be, in the case supposed, that sin had prevailed over, rather than that it was merely watching and ready to attack?

But on the other hand, that “if thou sinnest, a sin-offering lies [or couches] at the door,” is clear, beautiful gospel-truth for Cain. And not for Cain only, but for all his age and generation. It is “at the door,” not to seek or hunt after, but a victim ready to render its meek life up for the sacrifice. Thus God openly announces the way of approach to Him at the beginning, -His way, in fact, all through.

In connection with the typical meaning also, the sin-offering declares God’s way of sanctification, condemnation passed upon the flesh -our old man crucified with Christ. And thus the cross clears the way for occupation with Christ; not merely our sins taken away, but ourselves also, -nature, as well as the fruit of it, judged in the cross for our deliverance: “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, -yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”}

Fuente: Grant’s Numerical Bible Notes and Commentary

THE STREAM OF HUMANITY DIVIDED

TWO KINDS OF WORSHIPPERS (Gen 4:1-8)

What were the occupations of these brothers? What does the name of God in (Gen 4:3 bring to mind from our second lesson? We are not told how God showed respect for Abels offering and disrespect for Cains, but possibly, as on later occasions, fire may have come out from before the Lord (i.e., in this case from between the cherubim) to consume the one in token of its acceptance. A more important question is why God showed respect for it? Reading Heb 11:4 we see that by faith Abel offered his sacrifice. This means faith is some previous revelation or promise of God touching the way a guilty sinner might approach Him. Such a revelation was doubtless given in Gen 3:21, which has been reserved for consideration until now.

Where did God obtain the coats of skins mentioned there except as some innocent animal (a lamb?) was slain for the purpose? In this circumstance doubtless is set before us in type the truth afterwards revealed that there is such a thing as a sinners placing the life of another between his guilty soul and God (Heb 9:22). Abel grasped this truth by faith, and submitted his will to Gods testimony regarding it. Just what teaching he had concerning it we do not know, but the result shows that it was sufficient. He approached God in the revealed way, while Cain refused to do so. It is not that Cains offering was not good of its kind, but before a mans offering is received the man himself must be received, and this is only possible on the ground of the atoning sacrifice and the shed blood of Jesus Christ to which Abels offering pointed (see Mat 20:28; Joh 14:6; Act 4:12; Rom 3:21; Rom 3:25; Heb 11:11-14; 1Pe 1:18-21; 1Jn 1:7; Rev 1:5-6).

What was the effect on Cain (Gen 4:5)? Notice that the question put to him: If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? might be rendered: If thou doest well, shall it (thy countenance) not be lifted up? When a man does ill he cannot look God in the face. But the following sentence is equally interesting: If thou doest not well, sin lieth [croucheth] at the door. The idea is that sin, like a hungry beast, is waiting to spring upon Cain if he be not wary. But another idea is possible. The word for sin being the same as for sin-offering, it may be that God is calling Cains attention to the fact that hope of acceptance remains if he will avail himself of the opportunity before him. The lamb, the sin-offering, is at hand, it lieth at the door why not humbly lay hold of it and present it as Abel did? What a beautiful illustration of the accessibility of Christ for every sinner. Does Cain accept or reject the invitation? What was the final outcome? (Read here 1Jn 3:12.)

THE FIRST CITY BUILT (Gen 4:9-18)

What sin did Cain add to murder (Gen 4:9)? What additional curse is now laid upon the earth and upon Cain on account of his sin (Gen 4:11-12)? How does the Revised Version translate vagabond? The explanation of the mark is unknown, but it may have been set upon Cain lest by his death the populating of the world would have been arrested at a time when it was almost uninhabited.

Gen 4:16 is significant: Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. His parents were still in the presence of the Lord (see the last lesson concerning the cherubim and the flaming sword), but he is excluded further. This is the sinners fate in time and eternity. He now lives in the world without God and without hope (Eph 2:12), but even this will be exceeded in the day mentioned in 2Th 1:7-10, which please read. In what land did Cain dwell, and what geographical relation to Eden did it bear? The meaning of Nod is wandering, and it is affecting to think of Cain, and every sinner unreconciled to God through Jesus Christ, as a wanderer in the land of wandering.

The next verse brings up a question often asked: Where did Cain get his wife? The answer is: From among his sisters; for although such are not named, there can be no doubt that daughters were born to Adam and Eve. Marriages of this character are repugnant now and unlawful (Lev 18:9), but it was not so at the beginning, since otherwise the race could not have been propagated.

When it is now said that Cain builded a city, we should not think of a modern metropolis but only a stockade perhaps, and yet it represents an aggregation of individuals for the promotion of mutual comfort and protection. During Cains long lifetime it may have attained a prodigious size.

PRODUCTS OF CIVILIZATION (Gen 4:19-24)

The posterity of Cain is not given till we reach the seventh from Adam, Lamech, whose history is narrated at length. Of what sin was he guilty in the light of revelation (Mal 2:15)? Adah means ornament, and Zillah shade, and it is not unlikely that the sensuous charms of women now began to be unduly prominent. The suggestion of wealth and possessions is presented in Gen 4:20, art comes into view with Jubal (see especially the Revised Version), and the mechanical sciences with Tubal-cain. The cutting instruments speak of husbandry and agriculture, but also alas! of war and murder, preparing us for what follows in Lamechs history. The latters words to his wives are in poetry, and breathe a spirit of boasting and revenge, showing how mans inventions in science and art were abused then as now.

These antediluvians, in the line of Cain at least, seem to have done everything to make their life in sin as comfortable as possible in contrast to any desire to be delivered from it in Gods way.

MEN OF FAITH (Gen 4:25; Gen 5:24)

What is the name of the third son of Adam? While contemporaneous with Cain what indicates that he was younger? What is immediately predicated of his line (Gen 4:26)? Notice the capital letters in the name of God, and recall the Hebrew word for which it stands and the truth it illustrates. If now men began to call on the name of Jehovah, the God of promise and redemption, may it indicate that they had not been calling on Him for some time before? Does it then speak of a revival, and single out the Sethites from the line of Cain? In the same connection, notice that nothing is said of their building cities, or owning possessions, or developing the arts and sciences. Nor is mention made of polygamy among them, nor murder, nor revenge. Not that they may have been wholly free from these things, but that the absence of any record of them shows a testimony to their character as compared with the descendants of Cain. They were the men of faith as distinguished from the men of the world. Thus early was the stream of humanity divided.

Notice again the phrase the generations of and refer to what was said about it in an earlier lesson. Here it introduces the line of Seth as distinguished from Cain and for the purpose of leading up to the story of Noah, with whose history the next great event in the story of redemption is identified.

But first notice Noahs ancestor Enoch (Gen 5:18-24). This is not the same Enoch as in Gen 4:17, but a descendant of Seth. What mark of faith is attached to his life story (Gen 5:22)? And what reward came to him thereby (Gen 5:24)? How does Heb 11:5 explain this? The translation of Enoch into the next world is a type of the translation of the church at the second coming of Christ (1Th 4:16-17). Enoch was a prophet and spoke of that day (Jud 1:14). And notice finally that he was the seventh from Adam in the line of Seth, as Lamech was in the line of Cain. What a contrast between the two, between the people of the world and the people of God, the men of reason and the men of faith! What a contrast in their lives and in the end of their lives!

This lesson had better not close without some reference to the longevity of men in those days. It is singular that it is not spoken of in the line of Cain. May it be attributed to the godliness in that of Seth? Examine Psa 91:1-16, especially the last verse, and consider also what Isa 65:20 says on the longevity of men in the millennium. Observe too, that this longevity was a means of preserving the knowledge of God in the earth, since tradition could thus be handed down for centuries from father to son.

QUESTIONS

1.Can you recite Heb 11:4?

1.With what previous event may Abels act of faith be connected?

2.If Abel walked by faith, by what did Cain walk?

3.What two constructions might be placed on the phrase, sin lieth at the door?

4.What was the name of the oldest city in the world?

5.Who was the first polygamist?

6.Was primeval civilization based on holiness or sin?

7.What did men begin to do in the days of Seth?

8.Whose history shows death to be not inevitable?

9.What evidential value is found in the longevity of antediluvian man?

Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary

Even though Adam and Eve had sinned and been driven out of the garden, there were moments of joy. Eve conceived and bore Cain. She said, “I have gotten a man from the Lord” ( Gen 4:1 ). Her statement shows she recognized God as the source of her blessing ( Psa 127:3-5 ). She also bore Abel, Seth and other children (4:2, 25 and 5:4).

They Both Offered

When Cain and Abel reached manhood, Cain became a farmer. Abel was a shepherd.

They both brought sacrifices to God as an offering. Cain was not guilty of idolatry. Neither did he fail to work. One could not successfully accuse him of failing to worship. So, we might ask why God had respect for Abel’s sacrifice and not Cain’s (4:3-5). The only difference in these two sacrifices is that Abel offered by his sacrifice by faith ( Heb 11:4 ). Obviously, it was a working faith since the text says he “offered” ( Jas 1:22 ; Jas 2:17 ).

The Hebrew writer lets us know God witnessed Abel’s sacrifice and its righteousness.

The words “witness” and “testifying” come from the same Greek word meaning to give a good report of. John tells us Abel’s works were righteous and Cain’s evil ( 1Jn 3:11-12 ). The word “righteous” tells us that Abel had followed the divine law. God had apparently given some directions as to the sacrifice to be made, though we have no record of that command ( Rom 10:17 ).

God’s Will Or Man’s?

It may be God had commanded them to offer animal sacrifices. Or, it may be God had instructed them to give the first and the best. Remember, in the Genesis account we learn that Cain offered of the “fruit of the ground.” There is no comment as to the quality of the fruit offered. However, concerning Abel’s sacrifice it is said he offered “firstlings of his flock” and “of the fat thereof.”

Certainly, we know that God wanted obedience and not just sacrifice. When King Saul spared the best of the flocks and King Agag, Samuel had to tell him what God thought. “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams” ( 1Sa 15:22 ). We can be assured God will see our gifts just as surely as he did theirs. He will reward us if we are faithful in the doing of his will ( Mat 6:1-6 ; Mat 6:16-18 ).

Cain did as he willed, but Abel did as God willed. Cain was angry and had resentment because his sacrifice had been rejected. God let him know he was ready to take him back (4:5-7). If Cain did what was right, God would know. Further, Cain would be able to rule over sin. If he did not gain control, sin was at the door of his life ready to take over and rule him. Cain did not repent, but murdered his brother (4:8). The next verse tells of God coming to Cain, perhaps to give him a chance to repent, but he would not. Instead, he lied.

Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books

Gen 4:1-2. Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters, Gen 5:4 : but Cain and Abel seem to have been the two eldest. Cain signifies possession; for Eve, when she bare him, said, with joy, and thankfulness, and expectation, I have gotten a man from the Lord. Abel signifies vanity. The name given to this son is put upon the whole race, Psa 39:5, Every man is, at his best estate, Abel, vanity. Abel was a keeper of sheep He chose that employment which did most befriend contemplation and devotion, for that hath been looked upon as the advantage of a pastoral life. Moses and David kept sheep, and in their solitudes conversed with God.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Gen 4:1. I have gotten. kaniti, from the root kana, he possessed. The LXX have betrayed their ignorance of the Eternal Word, or Wisdom, by frequently rendering this word created. God could no more create his own wisdom than Eve could create Cain. See Pro 8:22, and Sirach 24.

Cain; that is, a possession. Abel; that is, vanity. Augustine makes Cain to be a figure of the men of this world, who have their good things in the present life. Abel he regards as a figure of the children of God, who look on the present state as vanity, a shadow that passeth away, while they follow after the things of eternity.De Civit. Dei.

Gen 4:2. BareAbel; it is generally allowed that Cain and Abel were twins. Eve bare many daughters, who are not named in sacred history, and they of necessity became wives to their brothers, nephews, &c. That she also bare many sons before Seth, there can be no doubt; for Moses names only the greater patriarchs of the earth.

Gen 4:4. The firstlings of his flock. He approached his Maker by an atoning victim for sin which God had enjoined on man, though the injunction is not named, being known and understood. To this, at the close of the service, the Mincha was added, consisting of flour, oil, and wine; part of which was burned on the altar, and the rest was a meat-offering. Cain, a mere unitarian, failed in this, and dared to approach without atonement for his sin.

Gen 4:7. Sin lieth at the door. To understand this text of a sin-offering lying at the door, seems to promise Cain acceptance whether he did well or ill. It undoubtedly means that iniquity should be visited on himself and his children, as the events proved.

Gen 4:8. Cain talked. The Samaritan text reads here, Let us go out, &c.; words which seem requisite to complete the sense; they are found also in the Vulgate. He advised his brother to go with him to a secret place, and slew him in about the 128th year of his age, when they were both fathers of families.

Gen 4:26. Then began men to call upon: some read to call themselves by; others, to use profaneness in calling on the name of the Lord. But the learned Rabbi Maimonides gives quite another turn to the text. Then began men to fall away from the Lord. It is true, however, that the Hebrews, the Goths, and the Greeks attached the name of God to their own name; as Samuel, Ethelbert, Theodosius.

REFLECTIONS.

The preseding history of the fall is immediately followed by a chapter of tragic events. We learn from it, that public worship was established, and that the righteous and the wicked bowed before the altar of God. This is a reasonable service. Our sins and our mercies are all public, and our repentance and homage should be public also.

The Lord makes a difference between the oblation of the righteous and the wicked. He had respect unto the believing and righteous Abel, accepting his choice lamb, either by fire from heaven, or by evident prosperity in his cattle and lands. But unto Cain, who brought his fruits, though not his first fruits, he had no respect. It is so still: the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is his delight. Pro 15:8. Unless men bring their hearts to God, their exterior reverence is a vain oblation. Isa 1:13.

Cain, instead of being humbled for his sins, was wrathful and envious against his brother; and in fact, against God, who had made the difference. How cautious should we be to eradicate bad passions the moment when perceived, otherwise the consequences may be tragical also to us and our families.

God graciously expostulates with the wicked, to bring them to a better mind. He promised Cain acceptance in case of repentance and reformation; and threatened to visit on him and his house the most awful vengeance, if he perpetrated the wicked purposes of his heart. He has in a hundred places expostulated with the wicked to the same effect. Let us learn therefore, in opposing sin, to call to the aid of reason, all the promises and threatenings of Gods word. It is by faith and prayer, and by divine assistance, that we are to conquer the bad propensities of the heart.

The wicked we see are very artful in accomplishing and covering their crimes. Cain seduced his brother to a secret place; and after the murder he pretended that Abel was lost in the desert, or devoured by the beasts. One crime leads to another, yea, to wickedness without measure. Alas, the children of Cain do the same to this day. The history of all nations evinces, that the wicked have uniformly endeavoured to tarnish the virtues of their opponents, and to array their own foulest deeds in the garb of equity.

God will unmask all secret crimes, and pursue the guilty with the arm of vengeance. Fix your eye on this unhappy man. Wherever he goes, the sight of his murdered brother is before him; he still hears his cries, and sees him struggling in the agonies of death. Unable to bear the sight of Abels weeping family, and see the face of man, for he thinks they all read in his countenance the horrors of his conscience, he flies to solitude for succour. There he takes his misery along with him. Every thought inflicts some new wound, or a thousand wounds in one. There also he hears a voice calling him by name, Cain! See him turning his ghastly countenance, and rolling his eyes this way and that way; but seeing no one, he fears the more. Cain, Cain, where is thy brother Abel? He looks again; but with greater horror and affright, he says, am I my brothers keeper? God hurls back the false and guilty plea with sevenfold vengeance, by adding, The voice of thy brothers blood crieth unto me from the ground. Let every sinner tremble; let every sinner haste to bring forth the fruits of repentance for his secret crimes, for our God is a consuming fire, and he will make manifest the thoughts of the heart.

God sentenced him to hard labour on a barren soil, which reproached him with his crimes; to exile from his friends, for the land of Nod signifies the land of exile or vagrancy; and he was driven out from the presence of the Lord; that is, excommunicated from the church, and cut off from the family altar. How vain then are all hopes of committing sin, and escaping punishment! God, in like manner, will cut off all the wicked if they repent not.

But we learn, lastly, that a bad father is often the destruction of his family. Lamech, one of Cains line, transgressed the laws of marriage by a plurality of wives, and by murder, and began to fill the earth with those crimes which proved its destruction. What dreadful out-breakings of original sin! Let us pray the Lord to give us a new heart, and a right spirit.

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Genesis 4 – 5

As each section of the Book of Genesis opens before us, we are furnished with fresh evidence of the fact that we are travelling over, what a recent writer has well termed, “the seed-plot of the whole Bible;” and not only so, but the seed-plot of man’s entire history.

Thus, in the fourth chapter, we have, in the persons of Cain and Abel, the first examples of a religious man of the world, and of a genuine man of faith. Born, as they were, outside of Eden, and being the sons of fallen Adam, they could have nothing, natural, to distinguish them, one from the other. They were both sinners. Both had a fallen nature. Neither was innocent. It is well to be clear in reference to this, in order that the reality of divine grace, and the integrity of faith, may be fully and distinctly seen. If the distinction between Cain and Abel were founded in nature, then it follows, as an inevitable conclusion, that they were not the partakers of the fallen nature of their father, nor the participators in the circumstances of his fall; and, hence, there could be no room for the display of grace, and the exercise of faith.

Some would teach us that every man is born with qualities and capacities which, if rightly used, will enable him to work his way back to God. This is a plain denial of the fact so clearly set forth in the history now before us. Cain and Abel were born, not inside, but outside of Paradise. They were the sons, not of innocent, but of fallen Adam. They came into the world as the partakers of the nature of their father; and it mattered not in what ways that nature might display itself, it was nature still – fallen, ruined, irremediable nature. “That which is born of the flesh is (not merely fleshly, but) flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is, (not merely spiritual, but) spirit.” (John 3)

If ever there was a fair opportunity for the distinctive qualities, capacities, resources, and tendencies of nature to manifest themselves, the lifetime of Cain and Abel furnished it. If there were ought in nature, whereby it could recover its lost innocence, and establish itself again within the bounds of Eden, this was the moment for its display. But there was nothing of kind. They were both lost. They were “flesh. They were not innocent. Adam lost his innocence and never regained it. He can only be looked at as the head of a fallen race, who, by his “disobedience,” were made “sinners.” (Rom. 5: 19) He became, so far as he was personally concerned, the corrupt source, from whence have emanated the corrupt streams of ruined and guilty humanity – the dead trunk from which have shot forth the branches of a dead humanity, morally and spiritually dead.

True, as we have already remarked, he himself was made a subject of grace, and the possessor and exhibitor of a lively faith in a promised Saviour; but this was not anything natural, but something entirely divine. And, inasmuch as it was not natural, neither was it within the range of nature’s capacity to communicate it. It was not, by any means, hereditary. Adam could not bequeath nor impart his faith to Cain or Abel. His possession thereof was simply the fruit of love divine. It was implanted in his soul by divine power; and he had not divine power to communicate it to another. Whatever was natural Adam could, in the way of nature, communicate; but nothing more. And seeing that he, as a father, was in a condition of ruin, his son could only be in the same. As is the begetter, so are they also that are begotten of him. They must, of necessity, partake of the nature of him from whom they have sprung. “as is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy.” (1 Cor. 15: 48)

Nothing can be more important, in its way, than a correct understanding of the doctrine of federal headship. If my reader will turn, for a moment, to Rom. 5: 12-21, he will find that the inspired apostle looks at the whole human race as comprehended under two heads. I do not attempt to dwell on the passage; but merely refer to it, in connection with the subject in hand. The fifteenth chapter of first Corinthians will also furnish instruction of a similar character. In the first man, we have sin, disobedience, and death. In The Second man, we have righteousness, obedience, and life. As we derive a nature from the former, so do we also from the latter. No doubt, each nature will display, in each specific case, its own peculiar energies; it will manifest in each individual possessor thereof, its own peculiar powers. Still, there is the absolute possession of a real, abstract, positive nature.

Now, as the mode in which we derive a nature from the first man is by birth, so the mode in which we derive a nature from the Second man is by new birth. Being born, we partake of the nature of the former; being “born again,” we partake of the nature of the latter. A newly born infant, though entirely incapable of performing the act which reduced Adam to the condition of a fallen being, is, nevertheless, a partaker of his nature; and so, also, a newly born child of God – a newly regenerated soul, though having nothing whatever to do with the working out of the perfect obedience of “the man Christ Jesus,” is, nevertheless, a partaker of His nature. True it is that, attached to the former nature, there is sin; and attached to the latter, there is righteousness. man’s sin, in the former case; God’s righteousness in the latter: yet, all the while, there is actual, bona fide participation of a real nature, let the adjuncts be what they may. The child of Adam partakes of the human nature and its adjuncts; the child of God partakes of the divine nature and its adjuncts. The former nature is according to “the will of man,” (John 1) the latter is according to “the will of God;” as St. James, by the Holy Ghost, teaches us, “Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth, (James 1: 18)

From all that has been said, it follows, that Abel was not distinguished from his brother Cain by anything natural. The distinction between them was not grounded upon ought in their nature or circumstances, for, as to these, “there was no difference.” What, therefore, made the vast difference? The answer is as simple as the gospel of the grace of God can make it. The difference was not in themselves, in their nature, or their circumstances; it lay, entirely, in their sacrifices. This makes the matter most simple, for any truly convicted sinner – for any one who truly feels that he not only partakes of a fallen nature, but is himself, also, a sinner. The history of Abel opens, to such an one, the only true ground of his approach to, his standing before, and his relationship with, God. It teaches him, distinctly, that he cannot come to God on the ground of anything in, of, or pertaining to, nature; and he must seek, outside himself, and in the person and work of another, the true and everlasting basis of his connection with the Holy, the Just, and only True God. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews sets the whole subject before us, in the most distinct and comprehensive way. “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice (pleiona thusian) than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God bearing witness (parturountos) to his gifts; and by it he being dead yet speaketh.” Here we are taught that it was, in no wise, a question as to the men, but only as to their “Sacrifice” – it was not a question as to the offerer, but as to his offering. Here lay the grand distinction between Cain and Abel. My reader cannot be too simple in his apprehension of this point, for therein lies involved the truth as to any sinner’s standing before God.

And, now, let us enquire what the offerings were. “And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto Jehovah. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fruit thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel, and to his offering; but unto Cain and to his offering, he had not respect.” (Gen. 4: 3-5) This sets the difference clearly before us: Cain offered Jehovah the fruit of a cursed earth, and that, moreover, without any blood to remove the curse. He presented “An unbloody sacrifice,” simply because he had no faith. Had he possessed that divine principle, it would have taught him, even at this early moment, that “Without shedding of blood, there is no remission.” (Heb 9) This is a great cardinal truth. The penalty of sin is death. Cain was a sinner, and, as such, death stood between him and Jehovah. But, in his offering, there was no recognition whatever of this fact. There was no presentation of a sacrificed life, to meet the claims of divine holiness, or to answer to his own true condition as a sinner. He treated Jehovah as though He were, altogether, such an one as himself, who could accept the sin-stained fruit of a cursed earth.

All this, and much more, lay involved in Cain’s “unbloody sacrifice.” He displayed entire ignorance, in reference to divine requirements, in reference to his own character and condition, as a lost and guilty sinner, and in reference to the true state of that ground, the fruit of which he presumed to offer. No doubt, reason might say, “what more acceptable offering could a man present, than that which he had produced by the labour of his hands, and the sweat of his brow?” Reason, and even man’s religious mind, may think thus; but God thinks quite differently; and faith is always sure to agree with God’s thoughts. God teaches, so faith believes, that there must be a sacrificed life, else there can be no approach to God.

Thus, when we look at the ministry of the Lord Jesus, we see, at once, that, had He not died upon the cross, all His services would have proved utterly unavailing as regards the establishment of our relationship with God. True, “He went about doing good” all His life; but it was His death that rent the veil. (Matt. 27: 61) Nought but His death could have done so. Had he continued, to the present moment, “going about doing good,” the veil would have remained entire, to bar the worshipper’s approach into” the holiest of all.” Hence we can see the false ground on which Cain stood as an offerer and a worshipper. An unpardoned sinner coming into the presence of Jehovah, to present “an unbloody sacrifice,” could only be regarded as guilty of the highest degree of presumption. True, he had toiled to produce his offering; but what of that? Could a sinner’s toil remove the curse and stain of sin Could it satisfy the claims of an infinitely holy God! Could it furnish a proper ground of acceptance for a sinner? Could it set aside the penalty which was due to sin? Could it rob death of its sting, or the grave of its victory? Could it do any or all of these things? Impossible. “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” Cain’s “unbloody sacrifice,” like every other unbloody sacrifice, was not only worthless, but actually abominable, in the divine estimation. It not only demonstrated his entire ignorance of his own condition, but also of the divine character. “God is not worshipped with men’s hands as though he needed anything.” And yet Cain thought he could be thus approached. And every mere religionist thinks the same. Cain has had many millions of followers, from age to age. Cain-worship has abounded all over the world. It is the worship of every unconverted son, and is maintained by every false system of religion under the sun.

Man would fain make God a receiver instead of a giver; but this cannot be; for, “it is more blessed to give than to receive;” and, assuredly, God must have the more blessed place. “Without all contradiction, the less is blessed of the better.” “Who hath first given to him?” God can accept the smallest gift from a heart which has learnt the deep truth contained in those words, “Of thine own have we given thee;” but, the moment a man presumes to take the place of the “first” giver, God’s reply is, “if I were hungry, I would not tell thee;” for “He is not worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all “life and breath and all things.” The great Giver of “all things” cannot possibly “need anything.” Praise is all that we can offer to God; but this can only offered in the full and clear intelligence that our sins are all put away; and this again can only be known by faith in the virtue of an accomplished atonement.

My reader may pause, here, and read prayerfully the following scriptures, namely, Psalm 1; Isaiah 1: 11-18; Acts 17: 22-34, in all of which he will find distinctly laid down the truth as to man’s true position before God, as also the proper ground of worship.

Let us now consider Abel’s sacrifice. “And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof.” In other words, he entered, by faith, into the glorious truth, that God could be approached by sacrifice; that there was such a thing as a sinner’s placing the death of another between himself and the consequence of his sin, that the claims of God’s nature and the attributes of His character could be met by the blood of a spotless victim – a victim offered to meet God’s demands, and the sinner’s deep necessities. This is, in short, the doctrine of the cross, in which alone the conscience of a sinner can find repose, because, therein, God is fully glorified.

Every divinely convicted sinner must feel that death and judgement are before him, as “the due reward of his deeds;” nor can he, by ought that he can accomplish, alter that destiny. He may toil and labour; he may, by the sweat of his brow, produce an offering; he may make vows and resolutions; he may alter his way of life; he may reform his outward character; he may be temperate, moral, upright, and, in the human acceptation of the word, religious; he may, though entirely destitute of faith, read, pray, and hear sermons. In short, he may do anything, or everything which lies within the range of human competency; but, notwithstanding all, “death and judgement” are before him. He has not been able to disperse those two heavy clouds which have gathered upon the horizon. There they stand; and, so far from being able to remove them, by all his doings, he can only live in the gloomy anticipation of the moment Then they shall burst upon his guilty head. It is impossible for a sinner, by his own works, to place himself in life and triumph, at the other side of “death and judgement – yea, his very works are only performed for the purpose of preparing him, if possible, for those dreaded realities.

Here, however, is exactly where the cross comes in. In that cross, the convicted sinner can behold a divine provision for all his guilt and all his need. There, too, he can see death and judgement entirely removed from the scene, and life and glory set in their stead. Christ has cleared the prospect of death and judgement, so far as the true believer is concerned, and filled it with life, righteousness, and glory. “He hath abolished death, and brought life and incorruptibility to light, through the gospel.” (2 Tim. 1: 10) He has glorified God in the putting away of that which would have separated us for ever, from His holy and blissful presence. “He has put away sin,” and, hence it is gone. (Heb. 9: 26) all this is, in type, set forth in Abel’s “more excellent sacrifice.” There was no attempt, on Abel’s part, to set aside the truth as to his own condition, and proper place as a guilty sinner – no attempt to turn aside the edge of the flaming sword, and force his way back to the tree of life – no presumptuous offering of an unbloody sacrifice” – no presentation of the fruit of a cursed earth to Jehovah – he took the real ground of a sinner, and, as such, set the death of a victim between him and his sins, and between his sins and the holiness a sin-hating God. This was most simple. Abel deserved death and judgement, but he found a substitute.

This is it with every poor, helpless, self-condemned, conscience-smitten sinner. Christ is his substitute, his ransom, his most excellent sacrifice, his ALL. Such an one will feel, like Abel, that the fruit of the ground could never avail for him; that were he to present to God the fairest fruits of earth, he would still have a sin-stained conscience, inasmuch as “without shedding of blood is no remission.” The richest fruits, and the most fragrant flowers, in the greatest profusion, could not remove a single stain from the conscience. Nothing but the perfect sacrifice of the Son of God can give ease to the heart and conscience. All who by faith lay hold of that divine reality, will enjoy a peace which the world can neither give nor take away. It is faith which puts the soul in present possession of this peace. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 5: 1) “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.”

It is not a question of feeling, as so many would make it. It is entirely a question of faith in an accomplished fact, faith wrought in the soul of a sinner, by the power of the Holy Ghost. This faith is something quite different from a mere feeling of the heart, or an assent of the intellect. Feeling is not faith. Intellectual assent is not faith. Some would make faith to be the mere assent of the intellect to a certain proposition. This is fearfully false. It makes the question of faith human, whereas it is really divine. It reduces it to the level of man, whereas it really comes from God Faith is not a thing of today or tomorrow. It is an imperishable principle, emanating from an eternal source, even God Himself; it lays hold of God’s truth, and sets the soul in God’s presence.

Mere feeling and sentimentality can never rise above the source from whence they emanate; and that source in self; but faith has to do with God and His eternal word, and is a living link, connecting the heart that possesses it with God mho gives it. Human feelings, however intense; human sentiments, however refined, could not connect the soul with God. They are neither divine nor eternal, but are human and evanescent. They are like Jonah’s gourd, which sprang up in a night, and perished in a night. Not so faith. That precious principle partakes of all the value, all the power, and all the reality of the source from whence it emanates, and the object with which it has to do. It justifies the soul; (Rom. 5: 1) it purifies the heart; (Acts 15: 9) it works by love; (Gal. 5: 6) it overcomes the world. (1 John 5: 4) Feeling and sentiment never could accomplish such results; they belong to nature and to earth, faith belongs to God and to heaven; they are occupied with self, faith is occupied with Christ; they look inward and downward, faith looks outward and upward; they leave the soul in darkness and doubt, faith leads it into light and peace; :they have to do with one’s own fluctuating condition, faith has to do with God’s immutable truth, and Christ’s eternally enduring sacrifice.

No doubt, faith will produce feelings and sentiments spiritual feelings and truthful sentiments – but the fruits of faith must never be confounded with faith “itself. I am not justified by feelings, nor yet by faith feelings, but simply by faith. And why? Because faith believes God when He speaks; it takes Him at His word; it apprehends Him as He has revealed Himself in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is life, righteousness, and peace. To apprehend God as He is, is the sum of all present and eternal blessedness. When the soul finds out God, it has found out all it can possibly need, here or hereafter; but He can only be known by His own revelation, and by the faith which He Himself imparts, and which, moreover, always sees divine revelation as its proper object.

Thus, then, we can, in some measure, enter into the meaning and power of the statement, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” Cain had no faith, and, therefore, he offered an unbloody sacrifice. Abel had faith, and, therefore, he offered both “blood, and fat,” which, in type, set forth the presentation of the life, and also the inherent excellency of the Person of Christ. “The blood,” set forth the former; “the fat,” shadowed forth the latter. Both blood and fat were forbidden to be eaten, under the Mosaic economy. The blood is the life; and man, under law, had no title to life. But, in the sixth of John, we are taught, that unless we eat blood, we have no life in us. Christ is the life. There is not a spark of life outside of Him. ALL out of Christ is death. “In him was life,” and in none else.

Now, He gave up His life on the cross; and, to that life, sin was, by imputation, attached, when the blessed One was nailed to the cursed tree. Hence, in giving up His life, He gave up, also, the sin attached thereto, so that it is, effectually, put away, having been left in His grave from which He rose triumphant, in the power of a new life, to which righteousness as distinctly attaches itself, us did sin to that life which He gave up on the cross. This will help us to an understanding of an expression used by our blessed Lord, after His resurrection, “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see we have.” He did not say, “flesh and blood;” because, in resurrection, He had not assumed, into His sacred person, the blood which He had shed out upon the cross, as an atonement for sin. “The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood which maketh an atonement for the soul.” (Lev. 17: 11) Close attention to this point will have the effect of deepening, in our souls, the sense of the completeness of the putting away of sin, by the death of Christ; and we know that whatever tends to deepen our sense of that glorious reality, must, necessarily, tend to the fuller establishment of our peace, and to the more effectual promotion of the glory of Christ, as connected with our testimony and service.

We have, already, referred to a point of much interest and value, in the history of Cain and Abel, and that is, the entire identification of each with the offering which he presented. My reader cannot possibly bestow too much attention upon this. The question, in each case, was not as to the person of the offerer; but, entirely, as to the character of his offering. Hence, of Abel we read that “God testified of his gifts.” He did not bear witness to Abel, but to Abel’s sacrifice; and this fixes, distinctly, the proper ground of a believer’s peace and acceptance before God.

There is a, constant tendency, in the heart, to ground our peace and acceptance upon something in or about ourselves even though we admit that that something is wrought by the Holy Ghost. Hence arises the constant looking in, when the Holy Ghost would ever have us looking out. The question for every believer is not, “what am I” but, “what is Christ?” Having come to God “in the name of Jesus,” he is wholly identified with Him, and accepted in His name, and, moreover, can no more be rejected than the One in whose name he has come. Before ever a question can be raised as to the feeblest believer, it must be raised as to Christ Himself. But this latter is clearly impossible, and thus the security of the believer is established upon a foundation which nothing can possibly move. Being in himself a poor worthless sinner, he has come in the name of Christ, he is identified with Christ, accepted in and as Christ, bound up in the same bundle of life with Christ. God testifies, not of him, but of his gift, and his gift is Christ. ALL this is most tranquillising and consolatory. It is our happy privilege to be able, in the confidence of faith, to refer every objection, and every objector, to Christ, and His finished atonement. ALL our springs are in Him. In Him we boast all the day long. Our confidence is not in ourselves, but in Him who hath wrought everything for us. We hang on His name, trust in His work, gaze on His Person, and wait for His coming.

But the carnal mind, at once, displays its enmity against all this truth which so gladdens and satisfies the heart of a believer. Thus it was with Cain. “He was very wroth, and his countenance fell.” That which filled Abel with peace, filled Cain with wrath. Cain in unbelief, despised the only way in which a sinner could come to God. He refused to offer blood, without which there can be no remission; and, then, because he was not received, in his sins, and because Abel was accepted, in his gift, “he was wroth, and his countenance fell.” And yet, how else could it be? He should either be received with his sins, or without them; but God could not receive him with them, and he would not bring the blood which alone maketh atonement; and, therefore, he was rejected, and, being rejected, he manifests in his ways, the fruits of corrupt religion. He persecutes and murders the true witness – the accepted, justified man – the man of faith; and, in so doing, he stands as the model and forerunner of all false religionists, in every age. At all times, and in all places, men have shown themselves more ready to persecute on religious grounds, than on any other. This is Cain-like. Justification – full, perfect, unqualified justification, by faith only, makes God everything, and man nothing: and man does not like this; it causes his countenance to fall, and draws out his anger. Not that he can give any reason for his anger; for it is not, as we have seen, a question of man at all, but only of the ground on which he appears before God. Had Abel been accepted on the ground of ought in himself, then, indeed, Cain’s wrath, and his fallen countenance, would have had some just foundation; but, inasmuch as he was accepted, exclusively, on the ground of his offering; and, inasmuch as it was not to him, but to his gift, that Jehovah bore testimony, his wrath was entirely without any proper basis. This is brought out in Jehovah’s word to Cain:” If thou doest well, (or, as the LXX reads it, if thou offer correctly, (orthos prosenegkes) shalt thou not be accepted?” The well-doing had reference to the offering. Abel did well by hiding himself behind an acceptable sacrifice. Cain did badly by bringing an offering without blood; and all his after-conduct was but the legitimate result of his false worship.

“And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” Thus has it ever been; the Cains have persecuted and murdered the Abels. At all times, man and his religion are the same; faith and its religion are the same: and wherever they have met, there has been conflict.

However, it is well to see that Cain’s act of murder was the true consequence – the proper fruit – of his false worship. His foundation was bad, and the superstructure erected thereon was also bad. Nor did he stop at the act of murder; but having heard the judgement of God thereon, despairing of forgiveness through ignorance of God, he went forth from His blessed presence, and built a city, and had in his family the cultivators of the useful and ornamental sciences-agriculturists, musicians, and workers in metals. Through ignorance of the divine character, he pronounced his sin too great to be pardoned.* It was not that he really knew his sin, but that he knew not God. He fully exhibited the terrible fruit of the fall in the very thought of God to which he gave utterance. He did not want pardon, because he did not want God. He had no true sense of his own condition; no aspirations after God; no intelligence as to the ground of a sinner’s approach to God. He was radically corrupt – fundamentally wrong; and all he wanted was to get out of the presence of God, and lose himself in the world and its pursuits. Be thought he could live very well without God, and he therefore set about decorating the world as well as be could, for the purpose of making it a respectable place, and himself a respectable man therein, though in God’s view it was under the curse, and he was a fugitive and a vagabond.

{*The word used by Cain occurs in Ps. 32: 1 whose transgression is forgiven. The LXX renders it by aphethenai, to be remitted.}

Such was “the way of Cain in which way millions are, at this moment, rushing on. Such persons are not, by any means, divested of the religious element in their character. They would like to offer something to God; to do something for Him. They deem it right to present to Him the results of their own toil. They are ignorant of themselves, ignorant of God; but with all this there is the diligent effort to improve the world; to make life agreeable in various ways; to deck the scene with the fairest colours. God’s remedy to cleanse is rejected, and man’s effort to improve is put in its place. This is “the way of Cain.” (Jude 11)

And, my reader, you have only to look around you to see how this “WAY is prevailing at the present moment. Though the world is stained with the blood of “a greater than” Abel, even with the blood of Christ; yet see what an agreeable place man seeks to make of it As in Cain’s day, the grateful sounds of “the harp and organ,” no doubt, completely drowned, to man’s ear, the cry of Abel’s blood; so now, man’s ear is filled with other sounds than those which issue from Calvary; and his eye filled with other objects than a crucified Christ. The resources of his genius, too, are put forth to render this world a hot-house, in which are produced, in their rarest form, all the fruits for which nature so eagerly longs. And not merely are the real wants of man, as a creature, supplied, but the inventive genius of the human mind has been set to work for the purpose of devising things, which, the moment the eye sees, the heart desires, and not only desires, but imagines that life would be intolerable without them. Thus, for instance, some years ago, people were content to devote three or four days to the accomplishing of a journey of one hundred miles; but now they can accomplish it in three or four hours; and not only so, but they will complain sadly if they happen to be five or ten minutes late. In fact, man must be saved the trouble of living. He must travel without fatigue, and he must hear news without having to exercise patience for it. He will lay iron rails across the earth, and electric wires beneath the sea, as if to anticipate, in his own way, that bright and blissful age, when “there shall be no more sea.”*

{*True, the Lord is using all those things for the furtherance of His own gracious ends; and the Lord’s servant can freely use them also; but this does not hinder our seeing the spirit which originates and characterises them.}

In addition to all this, there is abundance of religion, so called; but, alas charity itself is compelled to harbour the apprehension, that very much of what passes for religion is but a screw in the vast machine, which has been constructed for man’s convenience, and man’s exaltation. Man would not be without religion. It would not be respectable; and, therefore, he is content to devote one-seventh of his time to religion; or, as he thinks and professes, to his eternal interests; and then be has six-sevenths to devote to his temporal interests; but whether he works for time or eternity, it is for himself, in reality. such is “the way of Cain.” Let my reader ponder it well. Let him see where this way begins, whither it tends, and where it terminates.

How different the way of the man of faith! Abel felt and owned the curse; he saw the stain of sin, and, in the holy energy of faith, offered that which met it, and met it thoroughly – met it divinely. He sought and found a refuge in God Himself; and instead of building a city on the earth, he found but a grave in its bosom. The earth, which on its surface displayed the genius and energy of Cain and his family, was stained underneath with the blood of a righteous man. Let the man of the world remember this; let the man of God remember it; let the worldly-minded Christian remember it. The earth which we tread upon is stained by the blood of the Son of God. The very blood which justifies the Church condemns the world. The dark shadow of the cross of Jesus may be seen by the eye of faith, looming over all the glitter and glare of this evanescent world. “The fashion of this world passeth away.” It will soon all be over, so far as the present scene is concerned. “The way of Cain” will be followed by “the error of Balaam,” in its consummated form; and then will come “the gainsaying of Core;” and what then “The pit” will open its mouth to receive the wicked, and close it again, to shut them up in “blackness of darkness for ever.” (Jude 13)

In full confirmation of the foregoing lines, we may run the eye over the contents of Chapter 5 and find therein the illuminating record of man’s weakness, and subjection to the rule of death. He might live for hundreds of years, and “beget sons and daughters;” but, at last, it must be recorded that “he died.” “Death reigned from Adam to Moses.” “It is appointed unto men once to die.” Man cannot get over this. He cannot, by steam, or electricity, or anything else within the range of his genius, disarm death of its terrible sting. He cannot, by his energy, set aside the sentence of death, although he may produce the comforts and luxuries of life.

But whence came this strange and dreaded thing, death? Paul gives us the answer: “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.” (Rom. 5: 12) Here we have the origin of death. It came by sin. Sin snapped asunder the link which bound the creature to the living God; and, that being done, he was handed over to the dominion of death, which dominion he had no power whatever to shake off. And this, be it observed, is one of the many proofs of the fact of man’s total inability to meet God. There can be no fellowship between God and man, save in the power of life; but man is under the power of death; hence, on natural grounds, there can be no fellowship. Life, can have no fellowship with death, no more than light with darkness, or holiness with sin. Man must meet God on an entirely new ground, and on a new principle, even faith; and this faith enables him to recognise his own position, as “sold under sin,” and, therefore, subject to death; while, at the same time, it enables him to apprehend God’s character, as the dispenser of a new life – life beyond the power of death – a life which can never be touched by the enemy, nor forfeited by us.

This it is which marks the security of the believer’s life – a risen, glorified Christ – a Christ victorious over everything that could be against us. Adams life was founded upon his own obedience; when he disobeyed, life was forfeited. But Christ, having life in Himself, came down into this world and fully met all the circumstances of man’s sin, in ever possible form; and, by submitting to death, destroyed him who had the power thereof, and, in resurrection, becomes the life and righteousness of all who believe in His most excellent name.

Now, it is impossible that Satan can touch this life, either in its source, its channel, its power, heaven its sphere, or its duration. God is its source; a risen Christ, its channel, The Holy Ghost, its power; heaven, its sphere; and eternity its duration. Hence, therefore, as might to one possessing this wondrous life, the whole scene is changed; and while, in one sense, it must be said, “in the midst of life we are in death,” yet, in another sense it can be said, “in the midst of death we are in life”. There is no death in the sphere into which a risen Christ introduces His people. How could there be? Has not he abolished it? It cannot be an abolished and an existing thing at the same time, and to the same people; but God’s word tells us it is abolished. -Christ emptied the scene of death, and filled it with life and, therefore, it is not death, but glory that lies before the believer, death is behind him for ever. As to the future, it is all glory, cloudless glory. True, it may be his lot to “fall asleep” – to “sleep in Jesus” – but that is not death, but “life in earnest.” The mere matter of departing to be with Christ cannot alter the specific hope of the believer, which is to meet Christ in the air, to be with Him, and like Him, for ever.

Of this we have a very beautiful exemplification in Enoch, who forms the only exception to the rule of Gen. 5. The rule is, “he died;” the exception is, “he should not see death.” “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him; for before his translation be had this testimony, that he pleased God.” (Heb. 11: 5.) Enoch was “the seventh from Adam;” and it is deeply interesting to find, that death was not suffered to triumph over “the seventh;” but that, in his case, God interfered, and made him a trophy of His own glorious victory over all the power of death. The heart rejoices, after reading, six times, the sad record, “he died,” to find, that the seventh did not die; and when we ask, how was this? the answer is, “by faith.” Enoch lived in the faith of his translation, and walked with God three hundred years. This separated him, practically, from all around. To walk with God must, necessarily, put one outside the sphere of this world’s thoughts. Enoch realised this; for, in his day, the spirit of the world was manifested; and then, too, as now, it was opposed to all that was of God. The man of faith felt he had nought to do with the world, save to be a patient witness, therein, of the grace of God, and of coming judgement. The sons of Cain might spend their energies in the vain attempt to improve a cursed world, but Enoch found a better world and lived in the power of it.* His faith was not given him to improve the world, but to walk with God.

{*It is very evident, that Enoch knew nothing whatever about of “making the best of both worlds.” To him there was but one world. Thus it should be with us}

And, oh! how much is involved in these three words, “walked with God!” What separation and self-denial! what holiness and moral purity! what grace and gentleness what humility and tenderness! and yet, what zeal energy? What patience and long-suffering! and yet what faithfulness and uncompromising decision! To walk with God comprehends everything within the range of the divine life, whether active or passive. It involves the knowledge of God’s character as He has revealed it. It involves, too, the intelligence of the relationship in which we stand to Him. It is not a mere living by rules and regulations! nor laying down plans of action; nor in resolutions to go hither and thither to do this or that. To walk with God is far more than any or all of these things. Moreover, it will sometimes carry us right athwart the thoughts of men, even of our brethren, if they are not themselves walking with God. It may, sometimes, bring against us the charge of doing too much; at other times, of doing too little; but the faith that enables one to “walk with God,” enables him also to attach the proper value thoughts of man.

Thus we have, in Abel and Enoch, most valuable instruction as to the sacrifice on which faith rests; and, as to the prospect which hope now anticipates; while, at the same time,” the walk with God” takes in all the details of actual life which lie between those two points. Lord will give grace and glory;” and between the grace that has been, and the glory that is to be, revealed, there is the happy assurance, that “no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” (Psalm 84: 11)

It, has been remarked, that “the cross and the coming of the Lord form the termini of the Church’s existence on earth,” and these termini are prefigured in the sacrifice of Abel, and the translation of Enoch. The Church knows her entire justification through the death and resurrection of Christ, and she waits for the day, when He shall come and receive her to Himself. She, “through the Spirit, waits for the hope of righteousness by faith.” (Gal. 5: 5) She does not wait for righteousness, inasmuch as she, by grace, has that already; but she waits for the hope which properly belongs to the condition into which she has been introduced.

My reader should seek to be clear as to this. Some expositors of prophetic truth, from not seeing the Church’s specific place, portion, and hope, have made sad mistakes. They have, in effect, cast so many dark clouds and thick mists around “the bright and morning star,” which is the proper hope of the Church, that many saints, at the present moment, seem unable to rise above the hope of the God-fearing remnant of Israel, which is to see “the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings.” (Mal. 4) Nor is this all. Very many have been deprived of the moral power of the hope of Christ’s appearing, by being taught to look for various events and circumstances previous to the moment of His manifestation to the Church. The restoration of the Jews, the development of Nebuchadnezzar’s image, the revelation of the man of sin – all these things, it is maintained. must take place ere Christ comes. That this is not true, might be proved from numerous passages of New Testament scripture, were this the fitting place to adduce them.

The Church, like Enoch, will be taken away from the evil around, and the evil to come. Enoch was not left to see the world’s evil rise to a head, and the judgement of God poured forth upon it. He saw not the fountains of the great deep broken up,” nor “the windows of heaven opened.” He was taken away before any of these things occurred; and he stands before eye of faith as a beautiful figure of those,” who shall not all sleep, but shall all be changed, in a moment in the twinkling of an eye.” (1 Cor. 15: 51, 52) Translation, not death, was the hope of Enoch; and, as to the Church’s hope, it is thus briefly expressed by the apostle, “To wait for the Son from heaven.” Thess. 1: 10) This, the simplest and most unlettered Christian can understand and enjoy. Its power, too be can, in some measure, experience and manifest. He may not be able to study prophecy very deeply, but he can, blessed be God, taste the blessedness, the reality, the comfort, the power, the elevating and separating virtue of that celestial hope, which properly belongs to him as a member of that heavenly body, the Church; which hope is not merely to see “the Sun of Righteousness” how blessed soever that may be in its place, but to see “the bright and morning star.” (Rev. 2: 28.) And as in the natural world, the morning star is seen, by those who watch for it, before the sun rises, so Christ, as the morning star, will be seen by the Church, before the remnant of Israel can behold the beams of the Sun.

Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch

Gen 4:1-16. The Story of Cain and Abel.This belongs to the J cycle of stories, but apparently not to the same stratum as Gen 4:3, for it is assumed that the earth has a population from which Cain fears vengeance, and the curse in Gen 4:11 f. ignores the cursing of the ground in Gen 3:17-19. Originally then the story was placed in a later period of human history: its present position is perhaps due to the identification of Cain the murderer with Cain the firstborn of Eve. Whether the original story had to do with peoples or individuals is uncertain; in any case Stades theory that it accounted for the nomad life of the Kenites is improbable in spite of the identity in the name.

The two brothers naturally brought their offerings from the produce of their callings. Cains offering was not rejected because it was bloodless; the fault apparently lay in himself (Gen 4:7). His failure breeds resentment, which, in spite of Yahwehs warning, leads him to kill Abel in the field, to which he had invited his brother to accompany him (mg.). Yahweh learns of the murder from the cry uttered by Abels blood. It was a widely-spread belief that blood which fell on the ground cried for vengeance (Eze 24:7 f., Isa 26:21, Job 16:18; Job 31:38 f., (see Job in Cent.B on these passages),Heb 11:4; Heb 12:24); hence precautions were taken to use methods which did not involve bloodshed, or at least to prevent the blood from falling on the ground. Cain has taken no such precautions, and when questioned by Yahweh lies brazenly and perhaps with a shameless witticism on his brothers occupation as keeper of sheep. So Yahweh sentences him to the life of the nomad in the desert, for the cultivated ground, having drunk Abels blood, will not yield its strength to the fratricide. Brought to a more chastened frame of mind, Cain pleads that his punishment is too great to bear. For in the desert he will be hidden from Yahweh, whose presence is regarded as localised, and, murderer though he is, Yahweh is his God; and he will be exposed to the lawlessness of the desert. So Yahweh mercifully sets a visible mark on him, not to identify him to all men as the murderer Cain, but to warn any who may desire to kill him that sevenfold vengeance will be taken for his death. Thus shielded, Cain leaves Yahwehs presence for the wilderness, where he lived in the Land of Wandering (mg.)

Gen 4:1. The text of the closing words is difficult, probably corrupt.

Gen 4:4. fat: fat pieces, specially dedicated to God.

Gen 4:4 b, Gen 4:5. How acceptance and rejection were indicated is not said.

Gen 4:7. The text is probably incurably corrupt; MT seems to mean that if Cain does well will there not be lifting up of his fallen countenance? otherwise sin couches like a beast at his door, waiting to rend him; it has a longing for him, but he ought to master it (see mg.).

Gen 4:10. Render Hark! thy brothers blood, etc.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

CAIN AND ABEL

Adam and Eve, having acquired a sinful nature, could only communicate the same nature to their children. Their firstborn was named Cain, which means “smith” or “fabricator,” one who plans and fashions things in a pleasing way. Their second child’s name, Abel, means “transitory”. Their names indicate something of what their history proved. Cain depended on his own ability, while Abel depended on the Lord, having his earthly life only transitory, though still speaking after his death (Heb 11:4). Abel was a shepherd, Cain a farmer. Neither of these has any stigma attached to it: in fact Adam was commissioned by God to till the ground (ch.1:23), and Cain naturally followed this.

Eventually, however, both of these young men brought offerings to the Lord. They must have learned from their father that they could not actually approach God without an offering, and Adam would certainly only offer an animal, just as he knew that God had sacrificed an animal in order, to make garments for him and his wife.

However, Cain ignored this, no doubt considering that the fruit of his own work should be just as acceptable to God as an animal, while Abel offered a lamb, a firstborn of the flock. We may think this was simple enough for him, and not so simple for Cain, who as not a shepherd; but whether simple or not, man must not dare to choose his own thoughts in preference to God’s thoughts. Certainly Cain could have easily obtained a lamb if he had wanted to. Abel’s offering was acceptable to God, but Cain’s was not. Man’s sin can only be atoned for by the shedding of blood. The clean animal was thus a type of Christ, the only sacrifice acceptable to God. His blood shed makes full atonement for sin, which nothing else could do.

Cain became very angry rather than ashamed as he should have been: his countenance fell, that is, the very look of his face became sour and depressed. God spoke to him directly, questioning him in such a way that it ought to have appealed to his common sense. Why should he be angry? If he had done will, he would have been accepted. All he needed was the proper sacrifice. If he did not well, yet a sin offering was available to him at his very door. He could still bring the proper offering and be accepted, if he would. Thus God pleads graciously with the young man to change his mind.

However, Cain did not even answer the Lord, but did talk with Abel, no doubt in an arrogant, self-righteous way, for he was not only angry at God, but so jealous of his brother that he killed him. How sad a picture of the multitude of unbelievers since that time, who have resented God’s authority and His grace (as though they were not in need of it!) and have persecuted those who have honestly confessed their faith in the Son of God.

As well as pride, anger, selfishness, stubbornness, jealousy and hatred, Cain adds dishonesty to his unsavory qualities when the Lord asks him, “Where is Abel your brother?” (v.9). though there was no announced law against murder, Cain showed that he knew he had sinned in killing Abel. If he had considered himself right, he would have told the Lord plainly that he had killed Abel. But when one is determined to defend his sin, he will continue to multiply his sinful actions and to cover them up by falsehood. Thus, in the first child born of Adam we see the ugly works of the flesh come strongly to the forefront.

Though God spoke to Cain directly, Cain showed no faith in God’s omniscience. How futile and foolish it is to lie to God! but as well as lying, he asks irritably, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God did not have to answer this: Cain knew well enough that he was responsible to have some honest care for his brother, but he had not only neglected this: he had been guilty of the total opposite. God then speaks with solemn words to the criminal’s conscience, “What have you done! The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground” (v.10). Of course this means that Abel’s blood cries out to God for righteous retribution (Compare Rev 6:10).

God’s sentence against Adam was that the ground would be cursed for his sake. Now Cain himself is “cursed from the earth” to which he had committed Abel’s blood (v.11). The ground would no longer yield as abundantly as before: he would be made to feel that his work was not so satisfactory as he had tried to impress God that it was in his offering. If this curse had produced the proper effect in Cain, he would have honestly acknowledged his sin and the result could have been wonderfully different for him in regard to eternity. For it was evident that he must eventually leave the earth in which he had put his foolish confidence. But many today are the same as he: “they are enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame — who set their mind on earthly things” (Php 3:18-19). Their own proud works are more important to them than the sacrifice of Christ!

Cain would be “a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth” (v.12). This is a description of every unbeliever. As a fugitive he is virtually running away from God, never facing up to his guilt and his need of a Savior. As a vagabond, he is a wanderer, going in every direction to seek rest or satisfaction but never finding it. Thus even on earth the condition of the unbeliever is sad, but how much more so in eternity!

Cain’s response to God (vs.13-14) was not contrite, but protesting. Instead of being ashamed, he was sorry for himself: “My punishment is greater than I can bear.” This is in contrast to the words of the robber dying on a cross next to the Lord Jesus. He said, “we receive the due reward of our deeds” Luk 23:41. How much better it is to submit to God’s penalty rather than to resent it, for submission leaves the way open for God to show mercy. But Cain says that God has driven him out from the face of the earth (not God’s actual words), and adds that he would be hid from the face. Yet it was Cain himself who had chosen this: he had sought to hide his evil works from the Lord. How can one deliberately lie to the Lord and expect the light of God’s face in his life? God practically confirmed Cain’s choice by His word, and Cain is unhappy. In fact, he goes farther and says that whoever finds him would kill him. But is it not only to be expected that a murderer should live in fear of being killed? Why did he not think of this before he killed Abel?

However, the Lord set a mark upon Cain, saying that vengeance would be taken sevenfold on whoever would kill Cain. God was dealing with him, and man must not interfere. In Noah’s day, later on, God gave authority to governmental powers to execute a murderer (Gen 9:5-6), but in Cain’s time human government had not been introduced. God was dealing with Cain directly. This is also a striking picture of God’s dealing with the nation Israel after they had suffered as a fugitive, fleeing from the God of their fathers, and as a wanderer, finding no resting place for the sole of their foot. Still, God does not give permission to Gentiles to exterminate them, though this has been tried time and again. God’s mark is upon Israel, and those nations that make her suffer will themselves suffer God’s retribution.

CAIN’S CIVILIZATION

Cain left the Lord’s presence because he preferred this, as is clearly true of unbelievers today. He went to the land of Nod, which means “wandering,” east of Eden (v.16). His wife there bore him a son who was named Enoch (meaning “dedicated”). Of course Cain’s wife would be his sister, the daughter of Adam and Eve. We are told then that Cain built a city (v.17), which could take place only after some years, when his family had multiplied. Adam lived 930 years, long enough that his offspring could increase beyond his ability to count. We are not told how long Cain lived, but his brother Seth lived 921 years (ch.5:8).

Cain’s building a city emphasizes the fact that man away from God sets his sights on building something great in the world. Cain wanted his city quickly, just as also, in Gen 11:4 the successors of Noah wanted to build a city and a tower long before God’s time. For God is still waiting for the day of glory to establish His city (“which has foundations” – Rev 21:10), and the believer may wait patiently for this too.

In Cain’s family there was also a Lamech as well as an Enoch (v.18), just as was the case in the offspring of Seth (ch.5:18,25). The Lamech in the line of Cain is the first bigamist of whom we read (v.19). His sons by Adah were Jabal and Jubal, the first occupied with trade and commerce, dwelling in tents and keeping livestock; the second a musician. Zillah bore a son to Lamech names Tubal-cain, an instructor of those skilled in brass and iron work. The line of Cain is therefore seen in a foremost place in reference to trade and commerce, the arts and the sciences. Of course the unbeliever concentrates on these things rather than on the knowledge of God, and often the ungodly prosper in the world.

However, linked from the very first with this prosperity are two principles of evil that cannot but undermine the whole society. These are seen in verse 23, corruption and violence. Lamech corrupted God’s institution of marriage by having two wives. But he also confesses to his wives that he had been guilty of murder. These two degrading evils have spread throughout all the world, and today are continually advertised in the media, while government unsuccessfully tries to control the wild beastly character of men. However, he claims that he killed the young man because he had been hurt by him, and under these extenuating circumstances he thought he would be more protected from retribution than was Cain. If seven fold judgment fell on one who killed Cain, then the judgment against Lamech’s killer would be seventy-sevenfold. Cain is a picture of Israel having killed the Lord Jesus and not confessing their crime. Lamech seems to be a type of Israel too, in a coming day confessing their guilt in having killed the Messiah. Then those nations that are determined to exterminate Israel will be punished with an overwhelming vengeance (Zec 12:9-14).

SETH: TYPE OF CHRIST, THE SECOND MAN

After reading of the development of Cain’s see — man in the flesh, — we are told now of the birth of Seth, as Eve says, “another seed instead of Abel” (v.25). Abel was a type of Christ in His death: Seth is a picture of Him in His resurrection, and we read of Seth’s seed in Chapter 5. As the second Man, the last Adam, we see the Lord Jesus having triumphed over death. In this place we hear Him say, “Here am I and the children whom God has given me” (Heb 2:13). His resurrection introduces a new chosen seed. Cain, clinging to the first creation, seems to gain the most, but he must lose it all, while what Christ has gained in resurrection is eternal. Though it seems that man in the flesh has taken the first place, yet the second Man will in His own time take over the place of highest prominence and glory. The son of Seth was Enoch, which means “frail man”. this indicates that when one is born of God he realizes his frailty and dependence: therefore at this time “men began to call on the name of the Lord” (v.26). In this new line of Seth the dependence of faith is seen, not boastful, but in felt weakness that requires the grace of the Lord.

Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible

4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she {a} conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man {b} from the LORD.

(a) Man’s nature, the estate of marriage, and God’s blessing were not utterly abolished through sin, but the quality or condition of it was changed.

(b) That is, according to the Lord’s promise, as some read Gen 3:15, “To the Lord” rejoicing for the son she had born, whom she would offer to the Lord as the first fruits of her birth.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

2. The murder of Abel 4:1-16

Chapter 4 shows the spread of sin from Adam’s family to the larger society that his descendants produced. Not only did sin affect everyone, but people became increasingly more wicked as time passed. Human self-assertion leads to violence. Gen 4:1-16 show that the Fall affected Adam and Eve’s children as well as themselves. Gen 4:17-26 trace what became of Cain and Seth and their descendants. Note that the chapter begins and ends with the subject of worship.

God had warned Adam and Eve about sin. Even so, Cain murdered his brother, the beginning of sibling rivalry, because God accepted Abel’s offering but not his own. Sibling rivalry plagued each of the godly families in Genesis. Cain denied responsibility for his sin and objected to the severity of God’s punishment. God graciously provided protection for Cain in response to his complaint. Chapter 3 gives the cause and chapter 4 the effect.

There are structural and conceptual parallels between this pericope (section of verses) and the previous one (Gen 2:4 to Gen 3:24). [Note: Wenham, p. 99.]

A    Scene 1 (narrative): Cain and Abel are active, Yahweh passive (Gen 4:2-5).

B    Scene 2 (dialogue): Yahweh questions Cain (Gen 4:6-7).

C    Scene 3 (dialogue and narrative): Cain and Abel are alone (Gen 4:8).

B’    Scene 4 (dialogue): Yahweh confronts Cain (Gen 4:9-14).

A’    Scene 5 (narrative): Yahweh is active, Cain passive (Gen 4:15-16).

Both stories conclude with the sinners leaving God’s presence and going to live east of Eden (Gen 3:24; Gen 4:16).

". . . though the writer of Genesis wants to highlight the parallels between the two stories, he does not regard the murder of Abel simply as a rerun of the fall. There is development: sin is more firmly entrenched and humanity is further alienated from God." [Note: Ibid., p. 100.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Was Eve thanking God for helping her bear a son (Cain), [Note: Mathews, p. 265; Wenham, pp. 101-2.] or was she boasting that she had created a man (Cain) as God had created a man (Adam, Gen 4:1)? [Note: Sailhamer, The Pentateuch . . ., pp. 111-12; Waltke, Genesis, p. 96.] The former alternative seems preferable (cf. Gen 4:25). "Cain" means "acquisition," a portent of his own primary proclivity. Abel, from the Hebrew hebel, means "breath, vapor, exhalation, or what ascends." As things turned out, his life was short, like a vapor. "Abel" also means "meadow" elsewhere.

Why did God "have regard" for Abel’s offering and not Cain’s (Gen 4:4)? It was because Abel had faith (Heb 11:4). What did Abel believe that Cain did not? The Bible does not say specifically. The answer may lie in one or more of the following explanations. [Note: See Jack P. Lewis, "The Offering of Abel (Genesis 4:4): A History of Interpretation," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 37:4 (December 1994):481-96.]

1.    Some commentators believed Abel’s attitude reveals his faith. Cain’s improper attitude toward God is evident in Gen 4:5. [Note: Davis, p. 99; Pentecost, p. 41; et al.]

 

2.    Others say Abel’s faith is evident in his bringing the best of the flock (Gen 4:4) whereas Moses did not so describe Cain’s offering (Gen 4:3).

"He [the writer] characterizes Abel’s offerings from the flocks as ’from the firstborn’ and ’from their fat.’ By offering the firstborn Abel signified that he recognized God as the Author and Owner of Life. In common with the rest of the ancient Near East, the Hebrews believed that the deity, or lord of the manor, was entitled to the first share of all produce. The firstfruits of plants and the firstborn of animals and man were his. . . .

"Abel’s offering conformed with this theology; Cain’s did not. In such a laconic story the interpreter may not ignore that whereas Abel’s gift is qualified by ’firstborn,’ the parallel ’firstfruits’ does not modify Cain’s. . . .

"Abel also offered the ’fat’ which in the so-called ’P’ [Priestly] material belonged to the Lord and was burned symbolically by the priests. This tastiest and best burning part of the offering represented the best. Abel’s sacrifice, the interlocutor aims to say, passed the test with flying colors. Cain’s sacrifice, however, lacks a parallel to ’fat.’" [Note: Bruce K. Waltke, "Cain and His Offering," Westminster Theological Journal 48:2 (Fall 1986):368. Cf. idem, Genesis, p. 97; Keil and Delitzsch, 1:110; and Hamilton, p. 223.]

Possibly Cain’s bad attitude resulted in his not offering the best to God. In other words, both options 1 and 2 could be correct.

"Abel went out of his way to please God (which meant he had faith in God, Heb 1:6), whereas Cain was simply discharging a duty." [Note: Ross, "Genesis," p. 34.]

"We think the absence of ’firstfruits’ for Cain in juxtaposition with Seth’s ’firstborn’ would not have been lost on the Mosaic audience.

"Both giver and gift were under the scrutiny of God. Cain’s offering did not measure up because he retained the best of his produce for himself." [Note: Mathews, p. 268. I prefer this view.]

3.    Many believe that Abel realized the need for the death of a living substitute to atone for his sins, but Cain did not. If he understood this, he may have learned it by divine revelation that Scripture did not record explicitly. [Note: Thomas, et al.] Perhaps Cain and Abel learned that an animal sacrifice satisfied God whereas a vegetable sacrifice did not from the fact that the fig leaves that Adam and Eve used to cover their nakedness were not satisfactory but an animal skin was (Gen 3:7; Gen 3:21). They provided the fig leaves, but God provided the animal skins. Thus the contrast in the case of Cain and Abel may also be between what man provides (works) and what God provides (grace).

"Faith always presupposes a Divine revelation to which it is the response . . ." [Note: Ibid., p. 55.]

"Whatever the cause of God’s rejection of Cain’s offering, the narrative itself focuses our attention on Cain’s response. It is there that the narrative seeks to make its point." [Note: Sailhamer, The Pentateuch . . ., p. 112.]

God questioned Cain, as He had Adam and Eve (cf. Gen 3:9; Gen 3:11), to elicit Cain’s admission of sin with a view to repentance, not simply to scold him. His father reluctantly admitted his guilt, but Cain tried to cover it up by lying. Cain was "much more hardened than the first human pair." [Note: von Rad, p. 106.] "Sin is crouching at the door" (v.7) probably means that the power and tragic consequences of sin could master the person who opens the door to it (cf. Gen 3:16).

"The consequences of his reaction to God’s correction are more far-reaching than the initial sin itself, for if he pursues sin’s anger, it will result in sin’s mastery over him. This is his decision. It is possible for Cain to recover from sin quickly if he chooses the right thing." [Note: Mathews, p. 270.]

The Apostle John revealed the reason Cain killed Abel in 1Jn 3:12: ". . . his own works were evil and his brother’s righteous." Abel’s attitude of faith in God resulted in righteous works that produced guilt in Cain. The seriousness of Cain’s sin is clear from God’s repeated references to Abel as Cain’s "brother" (Gen 4:9-11).

"If you want to find out Cain’s condition of heart you will find it after the service which he pretended to render; you know a man best out of church . . ." [Note: Joseph Parker, The People’s Bible, 1:147.]

Later, under the Mosaic Law, the fact that a killing took place in a field, out of the range of help, was proof of premeditation (cf. Deu 22:25-27).

"Cain and his unrighteous offspring served as a reminder to Israel that its destiny was measured in the scales of ethical behavior." [Note: Mathews, p. 269.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

CAIN AND ABEL

Gen 4:1-26

IT is not the purpose of this narrator to write the history of the world. It is not his purpose to write even the history of mankind. His object is to write the history of redemption. Starting from the broad fact of mans alienation from God, he means to trace that element in human history which results in the perfect re-union of God and man. The keynote has been struck in the promise already given that the seed of the woman should prevail over the seed of the serpent, that the effects of mans voluntary dissociation from God should be removed. It is the fulfilment of this promise which is traced by this writer. He steadily pursues that one line of history which runs directly towards this fulfilment; turning aside now and again to pursue, to a greater or less distance, diverging lines, but always returning to the grand highway on which the promise travels. His method is first to dispose of collateral matter and then to proceed with his main theme. As here, he first disposes of the line of Cain and then returns to Seth through whom the line of promise is maintained.

The first thing we have to do with outside the garden is death-the curse of sin speedily manifests itself in its most terrible form. But the sinner executes it himself. The first death is a murder. As if to show that all death is a wrong inflicted on us and proceeds not from God but from sin, it is inflicted by sin and by the hand of man. Man becomes his own executioner, and takes part with Satan, the murderer from the beginning. But certainly the first feeling produced by these events must have been one of bitter disappointment, as if the promise were to be lost in the curse.

The story of Cain and Abel was to all appearance told in order to point out that from the very first men have been divided into two great classes, viewed in connection with Gods promise and presence in the world. Always there have been those who believed in Gods love and waited for it, and those who believed more in their own force and energy. Always there have been the humble and self-diffident who hoped in God, and the proud and self-reliant who felt themselves equal to all the occasions of life. And this story of Cain and Abel and the succeeding generations does not conceal the fact, that for the purposes of this world there has been visible an element of weakness in the godly line, and that it is to the self-reliant and God-defying energy of the descendants of Cain that we owe much of the external civilisation of the world. While the descendants of Seth pass away and leave only this record, that they “walked with God,” there are found among Cains descendants, builders of cities, inventors of tools and weapons, music and poetry and the beginnings of culture.

These two opposed lines are in the first instance represented by Cain and Abel. With each child that comes into the world some fresh hope is brought; and the name of Cain points to the expectation of his parents that in him a fresh start would be made. Alas! as the boy grew they saw how vain such expectation was and how truly their nature had passed into his, and how no imparted experience of theirs, taught him from without, could countervail the strong propensities to evil which impelled him from within. They experienced that bitterest punishment which parents undergo, when they see their own defects and infirmities and evil passions repeated in their children and leading them astray as they once led themselves; when in those who are to perpetuate their name and remembrance on earth they see evidence that their faults also will be perpetuated; when in those whom they chiefly love they have a mirror ceaselessly held up to them forcing them to remember the follies and sins of their own youth. Certainly in the proud, self-willed, sullen Cain no redemption was to be found.

Both sons own the necessity of labour. Man is no longer in the primitive condition, in which he had only to stretch out his hand when hungry, and satisfy his appetite. There are still some regions of the earth in which the trees shower fruit, nutritious and easily preserved, on men who shun labour. Were this the case throughout the world, the whole of life would be changed. Had we been created self-sufficing or in such conditions as involved no necessity of toil, nothing would be as it now is. It is the need of labour that implies occasional starvation and frequent poverty, and gives occasion to charity. It is the need of labour which involves commerce and thereby sows the seed of greed, worldliness, ambition, drudgery. The ultimate physical wants of men, food and clothes, are the motive of the greater part of all human activity. Trace to their causes the various industries of men, the wars, the great social movements, all that constitutes history, and you find that the bulk of all that is done upon earth is done because men must have food and wish to have it as good and with as little labour as possible. The broad facts of human life are in many respects humiliating.

The disposition of men is consequently shown in the occupations they choose and the idea of. life they carry into them. Some, like Abel, choose peaceful callings that draw out feeling and sympathy; others prefer pursuits which are stirring and active. Cain chose the tillage of the ground, partly no doubt from the necessity of the case, but probably also with the feeling that he could subdue nature to his own purposes notwithstanding the curse that lay upon it. Do we not all sometimes feel a desire to take the world as it is, curse and all, and make the most of it: to face its disease with human skill, its disturbing and destructive elements with human forethought and courage, its sterility and stubbornness with human energy and patience? What is stimulating men still to all discovery and invention, to forewarn seamen of coming storms, to break a precarious passage for commerce through eternal ice or through malarious swamps, to make life at all points easier and more secure? Is it not the energy which opposition excites? We know that it will be hard work: we expect to have thorns and thistles everywhere, but let us see whether this may not after all be a thoroughly happy world, whether we cannot cultivate the curse altogether out of it. This is indeed the very work God has given man to do-to subdue the earth and make the desert blossom as the rose. God is with us in this work, and he who believes in Gods purpose and strives to reclaim nature and compel it to some better products than it naturally yields, is doing Gods work in the world. The misery is that so many do it in the spirit of Cain, in a spirit of self-confident or sullen alienation from God, willing to endure all hardship but unable to lay themselves at Gods feet with every capacity for work and every field He has given them to till for Him and in a spirit of humble love to cooperate with Him. To this spirit of godless energy, of merely selfish or worldly ambition and enterprise, the world owes not only much of its poverty and many of its greatest disasters, but also the greater part of its present advantages in external civilisation. But from this spirit can never arise the meekness, the patience, the tenderness, the charity which sweeten the life of society and are more to be desired than gold: from this spirit and all its achievements the natural outcome is the proud, vindictive, self-glorifying war-song of a Lamech.

The incompatibility of the two lines and the persecuting spirit of the godless are set forth by the after history of Cain and Abel. The one line is represented in Cain, who with all his energy and indomitable courage, is depicted as of a dark, morose, suspicious, jealous, violent temper; a man born under the shadow of the fall. Abel is described in contrast as guileless and sunny, free from harshness and resentment. What was in Cain was shown by what came out of him, murder. The reason of the rejection of his offering was his own evil condition of heart. “If thou doest well, shalt not thou also be accepted”; implying that he was not accepted because he was not doing well. His offering was a mere form; he complied with the fashion of the family; but in spirit he was alienated from God, cherishing thoughts which the rejection of his offering brings to a head. He may have seen that the younger son won more of the parents affection, that his company was more welcome. Jealousy had been produced, that deep jealousy of the humble and godly Which proud men of the world cannot help betraying and which has so very often in the worlds history produced persecution.

This cannot be considered too weak a motive to carry so enormous a crime. Even in a highly civilised age we find an English statesman saying: “Pique is one of the strongest motives in the human mind. Fear is strong, but transient. Interest is more lasting:, perhaps, and steady, but weaker; I will ever back pique against them both. It is the spur the devil rides the noblest tempers with, and will do more work with them in a week, than with other poor jades in a twelvemonth.” And the age of Cain and Abel was an age in which impulse and action lay close together, and in which jealousy is notoriously strong. To this motive John ascribes the act: “Wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brothers righteous.”

We have now learned better how to disguise our feelings; and we are compelled to control them better; but now and again we meet with a deep-seated hatred of goodness which might give rise to almost any crime. Few of us can say that for our own part we have extinguished within us the spirit that disparages and depreciates and fixes the charge of hypocrisy or refers good actions to interested motives, searches out failings and watches for haltings and is glad when a blot is found. Few are filled with unalloyed grief when the man who has borne an extraordinary reputation turns out to be just like the rest of us. Many of us have a true delight in goodness and humble ourselves before it when we see it, and yet we know also what it is to be exasperated by the presence of superiority. I have seen a schoolboy interrupt his brothers prayers, and gird at him for his piety, and strive to draw him into sin, and do the devils work with zest and diligence. And where goodness is manifestly in the minority how constantly does it excite hatred that pours itself out in sneers and ridicule and ignorant calumny.

But this narrative significantly refers this early quarrel to religion. There is no bitterness to compare with that which worldly men who profess religion feel towards those who cultivate a spiritual religion. They can never really grasp the distinction between external worship and real godliness. They make their offerings, they attend to the rites of the religion to which they belong, and are beside themselves with indignation if any person or event suggests to them that they might have saved themselves all their trouble, because these do not at all constitute religion. They uphold the Church, they admire and praise her beautiful services, they use strong but meaningless language about infidelity, and yet when brought in contact with spirituality and assured that regeneration and penitent humility are required above all else in the kingdom of God, they betray an utter inability to comprehend the very rudiments of the Christian religion. Abel has always to go to the wall because he is always the weaker party, always in the minority. Spiritual religion, from the very nature of the case, must always be in the minority; and must be-prepared to suffer loss, calumny, and violence, at the hands of the worldly religious, who have contrived for themselves a worship that calls for no humiliation before God and no complete surrender of heart and will to Him. Cain is the type of the ignorant religious, of the unregenerate man who thinks he merits Gods favour as much as any one else; and Cains conduct is the type of the treatment which the Christ-like and intelligent godly are always likely to receive at such hands.

We never know where we may be led by jealousy and malice. One of the striking features of this incident is the rapidity with which small sins generate great ones. When Cain went in the joy of harvest and offered his first fruits no thought could be further from his mind than murder. It may have come as suddenly on himself as on the unsuspecting Abel, but the germ was in him. Great sins are not so sudden as they seem. Familiarity with evil thought ripens us for evil action; and a moment of passion, an hours loss of self-control, a tempting occasion, may hurry us into irremediable evil. And even though this does not happen, envious, uncharitable, and malicious thoughts make our offerings as distasteful as Cains. He that loveth not his brother knoweth not God. First be reconciled to thy brother, says our Lord, and then come and offer thy gift.

Other truths are incidentally taught in this narrative.

(1) The acceptance of the offering depends on the acceptance of the offerer. God had respect to Abel and his offering-the man first and then the offering. God looks through the offering to the state of soul from which it proceeds; or even, as the words would indicate, sees the soul first and judges and treats the offering according to the inward disposition. God does not judge of what you are by what you say to Him or do for Him, but He judges what you say to Him and do for Him by what you are. “By faith,” says a New Testament writer, “Abel offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain.” He had the faith which enabled him to believe that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. His attitude towards God was sound; his life was a diligent seeking to please God; and from all such persons God gladly receives acknowledgment. When the offering is the true expression of the souls gratitude, love, devotedness, then it is acceptable. When it is a merely external offering, that rather veils than expresses the real feeling; when it is not vivified and rendered significant by any spiritual act on the part of the worshipper, it is plainly of no effect.

What is true of all sacrifices is true of the sacrifice of Christ. It remains invalid and of none effect to those who do not through it yield themselves to God. Sacrifices were intended to be the embodiment and expression of a state of feeling towards God, of a submission or offering of mens selves to God; of a return to that right relation which ought ever to subsist between creature and Creator. Christs sacrifice is valid for us when it is that outward thing which best expresses our feeling towards God and through which we offer or yield ourselves to God. His sacrifice is the open door through which God freely admits all who aim at a consecration and obedience like to His. It is valid for us when through it we sacrifice ourselves. Whatever His sacrifice expresses we desire to take and use as the only satisfactory expression of our own aims and desires. Did Christ perfectly submit to and fulfil the will of God? So would we. Did He acknowledge the infinite evil of sin and patiently bear its penalties, still loving the Holy and Righteous God? So would we endure all chastening, and still resist unto blood striving against sin.

(2) Again, we here find a very sharp and clear statement of the welcome truth, that continuance in sin is never a necessity, that God points the way out of sin, and that from the first He has been on mans side and has done all that could be done to keep men from sinning. Observe how He expostulates with Cain. Take note of the plain, explicit fairness of the words in which He expostulates with him-instance, as it is, of how absolutely in the right God always is, and how abundantly He can justify all His dealings with us. God says as it were to Cain; Come now: and let us reason together. All God wants of any man is to be reasonable; to look at the facts of the case. “If thou doest well, shalt thou not (as well as Abel) be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door,” that is, if thou doest not well, the sin is not Abels nor any ones but thine own, and therefore anger at another is not the proper remedy, but anger at yourself, and repentance.

No language could more forcibly exhibit the unreasonableness of not meeting God with penitent and humble acknowledgment. God has fully met our case, and has satisfied all its demands, has set Himself to serve us and laid Himself out to save us pain and misery, and has so entirely succeeded in making salvation and blessedness possible to us, that if we continue in sin we must trample not only upon Gods love and our own reason, but on the very means of salvation. State your case at the worst, bring forward every reason why your countenance should be fallen as Cains and why your face should lower with the gloom of eternal despair – say that you have as clear evidence as Cain had that your offerings are displeasing to God, and that while others are accepted you receive no token from Him, -in answer to all your arguments, these words addressed to Cain rise up. If not accepted already you have the means of being so. If you do well to be hardened in sin it is not because it is necessary, nor because God desires it. If you are to continue in sin you must put aside His hand. It can only be sin which causes you either to despair of salvation or keeps you any way separate from God-there is no other thing worse than sin, and for sin there is an offering provided. You have not fallen into some lower grade of beings than that which is designated sinners, and it is sinners that God in His mercy hems in with this inevitable dilemma He presented to Cain.

If, therefore, you continue at war with God it is not because you must not do otherwise: if you go forward to any new thought, plan, or action unpardoned; if acceptance of Gods forgiveness and entrance into a state of reconciliation with Him be not your first action, then you must thrust aside His counsel, backed though it is with every utterance of your own reason. Some of us may be this day or this week in as critical a position as Cain, having as truly as he the making or marring of our future in our hands, seeing clearly the right course, and all that is good, humble, penitent, and wise in us urging us to follow that course, but our pride and self-will holding us back. How often do men thus barter a future of blessing for some mean gratification of temper or lust or pride; how often by a reckless, almost listless and indifferent continuance in sin do they let themselves be carried on to a future as woful as Cains; how often when God expostulates with them do they make no answer and take no action, as if there were nothing to be gained by listening to God-as if it were a matter of no importance what future I go to-as if in the whole eternity that lies in reserve there were nothing worth making a choice about-nothing about which it is worth my while to rouse the whole energy of which I am capable, and to make, by Gods grace, the determination which shall alter my whole future-to choose for myself and assert myself.

(3) The writer to the Hebrews makes a very striking use of this event. He borrows from it language in which to magnify the efficacy of Christs sacrifice, and affirms that the blood of Christ speaketh better things, or, as it must rather be rendered, crieth louder than the blood of Abel. Abels blood, we see, cried for vengeance, for evil things for Cain, called God to make inquisition for blood, and so pled as to secure the banishment of the murderer. The Arabs have a belief that over the grave of a murdered man his spirit hovers in the form of a bird that cries “Give me drink, give me drink,” and only ceases when the blood of the murderer is shed. Cains conscience told him the same thing; there was no criminal law threatening death to the murderer, but he felt that men would kill him if they could. He heard the blood of Abel crying from the earth. The blood of Christ also cries to God, but cries not for vengeance but for pardon. And as surely as the one cry was heard and answered in very substantial results; so surely does the other cry call down from heaven its proper and beneficent effects. It is as if the earth would not receive and cover the blood of Christ, but ever exposes it before God and cries to Him to be faithful and just to forgive us our sins. This blood cries louder than the other. If God could not overlook the blood of one of His servants, but adjudged to it its proper consequences, neither is it possible that He should overlook the blood of His Son and not give to it its proper result.

If then you feel in your conscience that you are as guilty as Cain, and if sins clamour around you which are as dangerous as his, and which cry out for judgment upon you, accept the assurance that the blood of Christ has a yet louder cry for mercy. If you had been Abels murderer, would you have been justly afraid of Gods anger? Be as sure of Gods mercy now. If you had stood over his lifeless body and seen the earth refusing to cover his blood, if you felt the stain of it crimson on your conscience and if by night you started from your sleep striving vainly to wash it from your hands, if by every token you felt yourself exposed to a just punishment, your fear would be just and reasonable were nothing else revealed to you. But there is another blood equally indelible, equally clamorous. In it you have in reality what is elsewhere pretended in fable, that the blood of the murdered man will not wash out, but through every cleansing oozes up again a dark stain on the oaken floor. This blood can really not be washed out, it cannot be covered up and hid from Gods eye, its voice cannot be stifled, and its cry is all for mercy.

With how different a meaning then comes now to us this question of Gods: “Where is thy brother?” Our Brother also is slain. Him Whom God sent among us to reverse the curse, to lighten the burden of this life, to be the loving member of the family on Whom each leans for help and looks to for counsel and comfort-Him Who was by His goodness to be as the dayspring from on high in our darkness, we found too good for our endurance and dealt with as Cain dealt with his more righteous brother. But He Whom we slew God has raised again to give repentance and remission of sins, and assures us that His blood cleanseth from all sin. To every one therefore He repeats this question, “Where is thy brother?” He repeats it to every one who is living with a conscience stained with sin; to every one that knows remorse and walks with the hanging head of shame; to every one whose whole life is saddened by the consciousness that all is not settled between God and himself; to every one who is sinning recklessly as if Christs blood had never been shed for sin; and to every one who, though seeking to be at peace with God, is troubled and downcast-to all God says, “Where is thy brother?” tenderly reminding us of the absolute satisfaction for sin that has been made, and of the hope towards God we have through the blood of His Son.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary