Genesis 4--Cain and Abel

​Genesis 4 English Standard Version (ESV)
LISTEN:  https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Gen.4

Cain and Abel
4 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” 2 And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”

8 Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?” 10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” 13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” 15 Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. 16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

17 Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. 18 To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad fathered Mehujael, and Mehujael fathered Methushael, and Methushael fathered Lamech. 19 And Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. 20 Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. 21 His brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. 22 Zillah also bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.

23 Lamech said to his wives:

“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
    you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
    a young man for striking me.
24 If Cain's revenge is sevenfold,
    then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold.”
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25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” 26 To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

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Do not mistake the fact that this is the "next act" in the play that we have before us to mean that these events are one right after the other.  If you've ever been in Sunday School with a flannelgraph or something similar, the images of Cain and Abel were probably that of children or at least young men, but when we get to the genealogy that ends the "generations of Adam," we will see that these too were not young at all--in fact they were rather old when this story occurs.

We don't see any more descriptions of Adam and Eve sinning anywhere else, but once is enough.  They passed on their sin nature to their sons and daughters even though we have no record of them ever messing up again for their children to learn to be bad by nurture.  This is now part of their nature--their "sin nature" or what the Bible will call "the flesh" or "the natural man."

We see here that Cain is older and appears to have taken on the role of the farmer who grows crops, where the younger son, Abel seems to be a farmer who raises and takes care of livestock.  At this point, God had not told man that they were allowed to eat animals.--the only place we've seen animals die so far is when God killed animals to make the first blood sacrifice that was the price of covering Adam and Eve's sin--to cover their nakedness, as the fig leaves they had sown together (symbolizing their own attempts to make themselves better) were insufficient.

In this story, we see that the two sons are bringing offerings to the Lord--we don't see this commanded of them, but they either know they are supposed to do it, or something inside them told them it was the right thing to do.  Since we haven't seen any rules for what kind of offering God commanded, we have no reason to believe that God would not have accepted Cain's offering of fruit if it had been given correctly  We see that Cain didn't put much thought into his offering and gathered "an offering of the fruit of the ground."  The author of Genesis wants us to see the contrast though that Abel provided a sacrifice of faith and that was costly while Cain seemingly offered something of little thought or value.  By Abel offering one of firstborn of his flock for the year, he was by faith depending on God to give additional offspring.  He also gave to God the "best" portions of the animal as a sacrifice--while you may not agree with this the fatty portions of the animal were thought of at that time to be more flavorful and God would later command His people not to eat these fatty portions because they were to be His portion as they were always to give the best part to Him and trust Him to provide them with what they needed and to maybe even provide them with something even better.  It seems that Abel already understood these principles where his older brother Cain seemed to be going through the motions bringing forth something for show and thinking "No one will know any better if this is my best I have to offer of not.  Surely God will be happy that I gave Him SOMETHING." As if God needs our tithes and offerings!  He can speak things into existence out of nothing and owns all the resources in the whole world.  Our sacrifices we bring are not because God needs our material possessions, but because they show our heart of worship and our understanding for who God is and who we are.  Cain had a low view of God and therefore offered God an inferior sacrifice (again, not inferior because it was fruit, but because of the heart he was giving with and the fact that it was not the best he had to offer).  We will see something like this later in the book of Acts and the early Church where a seemingly generous sacrifice was given, but God the Holy Spirit knew better and knew that those giving it were doing it for show and their own recognition and that they were holding something back and not giving the best that they could give.  When questioned about it both Ananias and his wife Sophira lied to the Holy Spirit and the Church to swear they had brought everything as an offering from the land they had sold when they had kept something back for themselves--again, a low view of God and a lack of trust for God to provide and offering a sacrifice to try to impress men instead of as an expression of how worthy you know God is.  In that moment the Holy Spirit struck both Ananias and Sophira dead (separately).  It's just what we give--we need to give our best--but how we give--willingly and to glorify God--that is important.  Even the way we live our lives as an offering to the Lord should follow these rules.

For these reasons we've discussed (and possibly others) we see that Cains sacrifice is not accepted but Abel's sacrifice is accepted and this greatly angers Cain.  God knows exactly what is going on here and warns Cain that if he would only do what is right, his sacrifice would also be accepted and for Cain to watch out because sin is "crouching at his door" like an animal on the hunt stalking its prey--ready to pounce and attack and knock you out and eat you for dinner.  Again, what great mercy we see here.  This time God tries to step in and stop the sin from happening but He still leaves Cain with the choice.

Instead of repenting and doing what is right, Cain continues brooding and blames his brother Abel for his trouble instead of himself.  I can see/hear it, "That goody two-shoes Abel, always trying to one-up me and make me look bad.  Here I am doing all this hard work to grow this food and he didn't really have to do any work to bring forth that baby animal, and God likes HIS sacrifice better?" (not actual quotes but just thinking about sibling rivalry and how this might have played out in Cain's head)  Cain then comes to his conclusion that they only way that he's going to get ahead in life is to get rid of the competition and the obstacles in his way, and right now, that means getting rid of his brother Abel.  He chooses to ignore God's warnings,  I can also imagine this going something like, "He wants a blood sacrifice?  Oh, I'll give Him a blood sacrifice alright....." And again, Cain twists the very thing that God wants into something to satisfy himself because he has a high view of himself and a low view of God.

Cain calls for his brother Abel to come out to the field so he can "talk to him" and kills him and now we see a very similar conversation as what God had with Adam and Eve in chapter 3.  Instead of God coming and asking Adam and Eve, "Where are you?," He asks Cain, "Where is your brother?"  Cain tries to play this off as if he doesn't know and trying to already say, "I'm not responsible for what he does and what happens to him."  When he says, "Am I my brother's keeper?'  While God doesn't answer here and now the biblical answer to this question is a resounding, "Yes!"  You probably aren't going to be held accountable for the decisions they make, but if you knowingly let bad things happen to them and you do nothing to stop it, then you might as well of intended to do those things to them yourself--in this case though we know this was nothing other than premeditated murder and this question by Cain is nothing more than a smokescreen which is probably why God simply ignores it.

God gets right to the point, just like He did with Adam and Eve, "What have you done?" and again God does not wait for the answer to that question without immediately asking a question or making a statement to let the person know that He knows exactly what you have done.  In this case God tells Cain the innocent blood of Abel is crying out to God for justice.  Once again, sin brings yet even more curses.  But, like we've seen this whole time, Cain makes it about himself and says that this punishment is too great for him and how no one could be expected to live under such conditions and everyone (that being his other blood relatives as there is only one family at this point) would hate him and be out to get him.

God hears Cain's concerns and has compassion on him and marks him with a mark that shows that he is under God's protection and that anyone who kills him will have to deal with God and His sevenfold (complete) vengeance.

We also see another moving away here but this time instead of God driving Adam and Eve out of the Garden and putting an angel to stand guard so that they can't return, Cain's sin breaks his fellowship with his family and he leaves by choice to make his own way and build a city to the east of Eden in a land called Nod.  We don't know anything else about this place, but we will see that Cain will have some descendants, but his story will not be the story that we follow moving forward.

We don't know much about the descendants of Cain either other than we see Cain's low view of God and high view of himself and disregard for God's order (which is what sin mostly was at that point and still is today) seems to have been passed on through many generations.  Lamech is five generations apart from Cain and they cycle of lashing out to kill people for injuring you continues.  This time Lamch doesn't hear anything from God to try to stop him from doing it or to confront him with his sin, and while he might at first appear convicted of it, he anticipated that he somehow will also be under God's protection like Cain was and even need a stronger warning against taking his life than Cain did (he ups the ante from sevenfold to seventy-sevenfold.

We do see that God still brought forth blessings through the descendants of Cain through this man Lamech, not because he was deserving, but because God is great and full of mercy.  We see that some of the descendants of Lamech appear to be nomads, living in tents and have livestock and others were the first musicians that we see in the Bible.  That is not to say that music didn't exist before this, but this is the first time that we see craftsmen making instruments on which to make music.  Everything else to this point has been very agrarian and focused on meeting needs, but music is something different and shows a shift in society to at least consider some level of enjoyment and entertainment.  This is about all we know about Cain's descendants though.  While this may not be the end of his family tree, this is the end of this part of the story as we are moving on from the story of Adam and Eve and their sons to the sons of Seth.

Seth is the child that comes to Adam and Even after the death of Abel.  Adam and Eve would be very old by our standards at this point (130 years old).  We see that the birth of this child and the birth of his first son Enosh restored people's faith in God that God would be faithful to keep His promises, specifically of a Savior, and they called upon the name of the Lord again.  We might call this revival, but more than anything this is a sign of God's continued and great faithfulness even in the midst of our unfaithfulness.  From the very beginning, sin deserved nothing other than death.  How much longer will God tolerate sin?  How much worse will it get before God once again steps in and does something?  Why does it seem like God is silent and no longer seems to intervene to try to stop people from sinning or convict them to have them repent after they sin?  His voice was so clear in the Garden and even with Cain.  Can He still work in this way?  Does He?  I assure you that He does, but maybe just not in exactly the same way that we see here (though sometimes it seems He still does that too).  The issue is not one of God choosing to speak, but that of if we are willing to hear and listen to what He has to say.  God stepped in and warned Cain in no uncertain terms and Cain still chose sin over God.  We cannot continue to blame God for us making the choices that we want to make when nothing God would say or do would stop us.  Do we really want God to just strike people down before they sin to keep them from sinning? Because this would also kill them before they could be saved and they'd die in their sin nature--we'd also all die pretty quickly that way.  Listen to the voice of God when He speaks to you and learn the difference between His voice and the voice of the flesh and the devil.  The Spirit always seeks to glorify God where the flesh seeks to glorify itself and the devil seeks to glorify himself as if he were God.  The best way to know which voice is which is to know the Word of God--something we have today that Cain didn't have the benefit of.  We know God through His Word and we recognize His word that is consistent with His Word and that which brings glory to Him.