And Man knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bore Cain, and said, I have acquired a man with Jehovah.
The first baby in human history is born outside the garden, to parents already under God's sentence. Eve's words over him carry real faith in God's promise — and a real mistake about who this child would be.
God made Adam in His own image. But sin came in before Adam became a father. One writer presses the point: where Cain was born, and who fathered him, fixed his starting point — and ours.
But between Adam's creation in the image of God and the birth of a son in his own image, a great change took place. Sin entered. Innocence fled. Adam had become a fallen, ruined, outcast man. The reader must grasp this fact and weigh it. It is a weighty fact. It shows us where the life we have as sons of Adam came from. That source was a guilty, ruined, outcast head. Adam did not become the head of a race while he was innocent. Cain was not born inside Paradise, but outside it, in a ruined and cursed world. Cain was not fathered in the image of God, but in the image of a fallen father.
Another writer sets Adam's fatherhood against Christ's headship:
The "first man," Adam, was now a father — but only after he had fallen. The "Second man" became head of God's new family only when God declared Him righteous by raising Him from the dead. He had obeyed God, and He had borne our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Cor. 15:45-46).
God had said the woman's offspring would crush the serpent's head. Eve's words at the cradle show what she had been holding onto since that day.
She had listened to the same promise. So as soon as her first son was born, she showed that this promise was the chief thing in her heart. "I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD," she said. She overlooked herself as completely as Adam did. Her glory was in her Seed alone... There was a mistake here, it is true. But she showed how fully the object of faith filled her sight, and how the hopes of faith stirred in her heart. Terrible events soon made her mistake plain. They proved that this first son of hers was anything but the promised Seed: instead of crushing the serpent's head, he murdered his brother. Even then she is found on the rock where faith had fixed her soul.
Commentators differ here. One hears real faith in her words. Another hears nature speaking in religious language.
Her phrase can be read as "from" the LORD or "with the help of" the LORD. Either way, one writer finds her error in the timing, not the wording.
Eve takes the lead and puts her thought in religious words. But they are the words of nature, and nature never rises to God's mind about man's sin or God's grace. "I have acquired," she said, "a man (Ish) from (or, with the help of) Jehovah." The haste of nature is fatal! "Whoever believes (or trusts) will not be in haste." But that is always how it goes with man or woman. There was only one exception: the One who was exactly what He said He was, and who waited patiently for Jehovah. Not so Eve. She gave in to her own thoughts and saw in her first son the man received from Jehovah, the woman's Seed who would crush the enemy. But the right time and the right person had not yet come.
Eve's words are also the moment she names the child. "Cain" means acquisition or gain — and the name outlasted her hopes for it.
"Cain" therefore means "acquisition." The name first expressed his mother's natural joy, but it also stamps his character and the character of the natural man. Gain is what he seeks, and what he holds on to. Even in the land of wandering, he builds a city, and decorates and furnishes it.
One writer reads the names of Eve's sons together, and finds an order in them.
Cain means "I have gotten." Abel means "emptiness," because he came to nothing. Eve imagined she had gotten this man from the Lord — that here was the promise — when it was only from nature. Cain means "gotten," Seth means "appointed," and Abel means "the dying man." Eve thinks she has the man that can inherit the blessing. It was not so, as we know well... first comes what is natural, and afterwards what is spiritual.
- Outside. The first child was born outside Eden, in the likeness of a fallen father. That is the source of the life every child of Adam carries.
- Promise. Her words show she had held on to God's promise that the woman's offspring would crush the serpent. Her faith was real, even where her reading of it was wrong.
- Haste. Her error was speed, not sincerity. She read the promise into the first son she held, before the right time or the right Person had come.
- Name. "Cain" means acquisition. A name born of a mother's joy ended up describing the man, who spent his life gaining and holding.
- Order. The natural comes first, the spiritual after: Cain, then Seth the "appointed" one, then the Seed who does crush the serpent.
And she further bore his brother Abel. And Abel was a shepherd, but Cain was a husbandman.
Two brothers grow up outside Eden, and Scripture pauses to tell us only what each one did for a living. It reads like a plain family record. But commentators find three questions in it: why the verse names the younger son first, why Abel kept sheep before anyone ate meat, and what the two trades reveal.
Nothing in the verse marks one trade as holy and the other as worldly. Cain took up the very work God had given his father.
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, and Cain naturally followed this.
Abel's flock raises a question, because people did not yet eat meat.
Abel was in every way a contrast to his brother. It is an interesting question why Abel was a keeper of sheep. God did not allow people to eat animals until after the flood (Genesis 9:3). At creation He gave man "every plant yielding seed" and "every tree with seed in its fruit" for food (Genesis 1:29). Why, then, should Abel be a keeper of sheep, unless for the purpose of sacrifice?
Another writer draws the same conclusion and reads it as evidence of what was in Abel's heart before he ever brought an offering.
This being so, we may gather that Abel reared sheep for purposes of sacrifice, and in this we see his faith made evident.
An ancient record would name the firstborn first. Here the younger comes first, and one commentator sees God claiming a right that runs on through Scripture.
Does not God assert His sovereignty here, so early in Scripture? Not by a direct claim, but quietly by the way He presents things. Does not this very principle run through Scripture? Was not Jacob the younger son? And yet the blessing rested on him. Was not Ephraim the younger? Yet Jacob's right hand rested on his head. Was not Moses, "slow of speech," younger than the eloquent Aaron? Yet God chose him to lead Israel through the wilderness. Was not David the youngest of Jesse's sons? Yet Samuel poured on him the anointing oil.
The same writer says why Abel comes first, and how differently heaven and earth judge.
God clearly put Abel first because he was a man of faith. The man of faith may appear in a less attractive light than the man of the world, but heaven views things very differently from earth. The world's frown lasts only a moment; heaven's favour lasts for ever.
The two names carry meanings that match the two lives.
Their firstborn was named Cain, which means "smith" or "fabricator" — someone who plans and shapes things in a pleasing way. Their second child's name, Abel, means "transitory." Their names show something of what their lives proved. Cain depended on his own ability, while Abel depended on the Lord. Abel's life on earth was brief, yet he still speaks after his death (Hebrews 11:4).
Commentators differ on the sense of Cain. Another writer gives it as "acquisition" and finds in the two brothers a picture of what is in us.
Cain represents what we rightly and necessarily call "the old nature" in us. His name means "acquisition, possession"; Abel's, "vapour, exhalation." No one can question the contrast between them, and it foretold their lives. Cain took possession of the earth that lay under the curse for man's sake. Abel's life rose to God like vapour drawn up by the sun.
If both trades were fair, the difference lay somewhere else. One writer lists how much the two men had in common.
Cain and Abel were alike in outward character and circumstances. God had banished them both from His presence. They both had work, and both seemed to be outwardly decent men. They both came to worship, too, and Cain brought what cost him most, the thing he had worked for. God had sent him out to till the ground, and he tilled it; that was all right, and it was right for him to bring an offering. The difference between them was not in all that.
The real line runs deeper than behaviour or religious activity.
For the difference between the brothers did not lie in the presence or the absence of religion; but Cain was in nature, Abel in faith.
Cain's family kept farming, but for more than a living.
They tilled the ground for something more than a livelihood. Their tillage led to the culture and advancement of the world as a system of gain and pleasure. And so the two families became different. Faith shaped one — that is, obedience to what God had revealed. Contempt for that revelation shaped the other, as the world is to this day.
- Work — Farming and shepherding were both honest callings. God sent Adam himself to till the ground, so Cain's trade was no fault.
- Faith — No one ate meat yet, so Abel's flock points to one purpose: sacrifice.
- Order — Scripture names the younger son first and so asserts God's sovereignty — the pattern repeated in Jacob, Ephraim, Moses and David.
- Names — "Acquisition" and "vapour" foretold the lives. One man grasped cursed ground; the other rose Godward.
- Division — Alike in parents, work and religion, the brothers differed at one point. Cain lived by nature, Abel by faith. From that one difference two families run on to this day.
And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to Jehovah.
Genesis 4 opens with two brothers bringing an offering to God, and one of them is refused. Cain comes to the LORD with a gift he has worked for. Yet the story raises a question that has never gone away: how can a sinner approach a holy God?
Nothing in the verse suggests indifference or unbelief in God's existence. Cain sought God out.
Cain was not an atheist; he not only believed in God's existence, but he wanted to be in God's favour, or he would not have come to Him with an offering. But he had his own ideas about how to approach God. His later behaviour shows he was self-willed, and did not want to do God's will.
The Hebrew word behind "offering" here is a present — a gift brought in recognition of the Giver. Both brothers brought one.
When Cain and Abel approached the LORD with an offering, they each came with a present or gift (minchah). It was their way of acknowledging whose creatures they were... Now, remembering that the ground was then cursed in a way it is not now, and has not been since the flood (Gen. 5:29), Cain's offering must have cost him a great deal of toil.
Cain worked the soil and brought the best it could yield.
In Cain's offering there was no recognition of this. He brought the fruit of the ground which God had cursed. He probably brought the finest produce of his own hard work. But in it there was no acknowledgment of the death sentence that lay upon him. He was like a condemned criminal under sentence of death, trying to win favour with his judge by bribing him with something nice.
Cain and Abel shared the same parents, the same banishment from the garden, the same honest work. The difference was not in circumstances but in what each man knew about his own position.
They both came to worship, and Cain brought what cost him most, what he had worked for. God had sent him out to till the ground, and he tilled it; that was right, and it was right for him to bring an offering... What was Cain's mistake? He had no sense in his heart that he was driven out of paradise because he deserved it... Think of a child who disobeyed his father one day. The next day he comes back as if nothing had happened, expecting a welcome as though all was well between them. What would that father feel?
Cain's gift lacked one thing, and it was not effort.
This sets the difference clearly before us: Cain offered the LORD the fruit of a cursed earth, and without any blood to remove the curse. He presented an "unbloody sacrifice," simply because he had no faith... The penalty of sin is death. Cain was a sinner, and so death stood between him and the LORD. But his offering contained no recognition 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.
Reason would rank Cain's gift highly. Faith measures differently.
No doubt reason might say, "What more acceptable offering could a man present than the one he produced by the labour of his hands and the sweat of his brow?" Reason, and even man's religious mind, may think so. But God thinks very differently. Faith is always sure to agree with God's thoughts.
Before this moment the record says nothing against Cain's character. The murder comes later. His rejection turns on what he carried in his hands.
Cain's character had nothing whatever to do with his rejection by God. He and Abel were both born of fallen parents, outside the garden of Eden. God made a difference between the brothers because their offerings were different. Their offerings expressed what each of them believed in his heart. Hebrews 11:4 makes this plain beyond the possibility of contradiction.
Cain's approach did not die with him.
From that day to this, men have approached God in these two ways. There have been various forms of Cain's offering. In various ways men have brought the fruit of their own toil to Him. Sometimes they have brought what stands for their moral life. Sometimes it is their generosity, their gifts to the poor and needy. Sometimes they bring their religious offerings, their prayers, their professions and promises. But whatever form it takes, the offering of Cain has the same moral character. You find in it no recognition of man's utter ruin, and therefore no atonement. It starts with the man himself, instead of with the provision God has made.
- Sincere — Cain believed in God and wanted His favour. The problem was his own idea of how to come to God.
- Cursed — He brought fruit from ground God had cursed. He never owned the death sentence resting on himself.
- Bloodless — His gift held no sacrificed life to meet God's holiness or to answer his own condition as a sinner.
- Costly — His offering cost him a great deal of hard work. Effort is not the currency God accepts.
- Repeated — Whenever a person brings God the fruit of his own life, it is Cain's offering in another form.
And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of their fat. And Jehovah looked upon Abel, and on his offering;
Two brothers bring God an offering out of their own work. Only one of them is welcomed. This raises the oldest religious question of all. How can a sinner come to God and find a welcome?
The detail about the fat is not decoration. It tells us the animal had died, and it points back to something God had already done for Abel's parents when He clothed them with animal skins.
Abel's offering involved the death of the sheep, as the words "and of their fat portions" show. Read Hebrews 11:4 at this point. It shows us that his offering was an act of faith — the first one on record. Now faith lays hold on what God has revealed. What had God revealed for Abel's faith to grasp? Only what we have in Genesis 3:21. Abel grasped the meaning of the coats of skins. So his offering admitted two things. He was a sinner under a death sentence. He could only come to God through the death of a victim.
Another writer puts Abel's confession into words. Abel came admitting he could not come as he was.
He was accepted by blood. His offering said this: I cannot come to God as I am. I am shut out of paradise. Sin stands between me and God. So death, "the wages of sin," must stand between me and God too, or I cannot come at all. He put death between himself and God — the death God's justice required, carried out by killing the victim. Then he came into God's presence as a worshipper God accepted.
Abel did not invent a clever way of pleasing God. The very shape of what he brought shows he was following instruction.
What he brought shows that sacrifice was God's own arrangement: "By faith Abel offered." It was not worship of his own inventing. No human mind could have guessed that such a gift would please God. Apart from its inner meaning, it would have had no fitness and no welcome from Him. The coats of skin were His own design. They are clear proof that the whole thought and plan came from Him.
Cain's fault was not the size of his gift. It was where the gift came from.
Cain brought of the fruit of a cursed ground, the product of his own skill and labour. God turned him away, not simply because he was a sinner, but because his gifts could do nothing for him. They came from a wrong source. Cain as much as said, "I can bridge the distance between my soul and God. I can bridge it from my side to His. I can by my own efforts and works retrace my steps to God." What arrogance and ignorance! This is what thousands are doing today.
Nothing has changed since that first day: "God rejects man's patchwork and accepts Christ's one offering. It must always be so." (F. B. Hole)
The verse names the fat on purpose. Later, God gave that same part a meaning of its own.
It is striking that the account names "the fat" as given to God in this, the first sacrifice on record. We know how God loves to guide those who believe, far beyond their measure of knowledge. More than two thousand years later, God kept back for Himself the fat as well as the blood. He did this above all in the peace offerings. In those offerings, fellowship with Him was the point more clearly than anywhere else in the law given through Moses. The fat pictured inward richness given to God. It stood for more than what turned away His judgment.
God's regard falls on the man and on what he brought, and the two cannot be separated.
Abel was not accepted apart from the firstlings of his flock... Only God knew the full value of the offering. Abel stood before Him accepted according to all of that value. And Cain could see, and did see, that an accepted sacrifice had been that day presented to God. How close Cain stood to the accepted worshipper! Yet in his soul, how far he was from God!... The fact of a sacrifice having been accepted avails nothing for anyone who is not identified with it.
Commentators differ on which comes first in the order of the verse. 56-word grade-28 sentence; third quote in one section
The animal Abel chose says something about how God would deal with the serpent.
He brought of the firstlings of his flock, a lamb to die. It was no offering of power, not a wolf nor a lion nor a bear to fight the serpent; but on the contrary a little lamb to die. "And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering." Did He not see, as always, what was still dim to every believer? He saw the Lamb without blemish or spot, known to Him before the world was made, and later shown to us in Christ and His blood.
- Death first. The mention of the fat proves the lamb died. Abel came admitting the death sentence was on him. So he placed a victim's death between himself and God.
- Faith, not invention. Sacrifice was God's idea, not man's invention. The coats of skins show the whole plan came from Him. Abel was taking God at His word.
- Fat as well as blood. The fat pictured inward excellence given to God, not only what turned away His judgment. It is the part He later kept for Himself in the offerings of fellowship.
- Joined, not near. Cain stood beside an accepted sacrifice and gained nothing. Abel was one with his offering, and God accepted him according to all its worth.
- A lamb, not a warrior. Abel chose a lamb to die. That was the first dim light on the spotless Lamb through whom acceptance would come.
and upon Cain, and on his offering, he did not look. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.
Two brothers bring an offering to the same God, and God accepts one and refuses the other. This verse asks what makes a sinner acceptable to God, and shows what fills a man's heart when the answer is not his own.
The two offerings differed in what they admitted about sin and its penalty.
Cain offered the Lord the fruit of a cursed earth, and he brought it without any blood to remove the curse. He presented "an unbloody sacrifice," because he had no faith. Faith would have taught him, even at this early moment, that "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." This is a great and central truth. The penalty of sin is death. Cain was a sinner, so death stood between him and the Lord. But his offering gave no recognition of this fact at all. He treated the Lord as though He were just like himself — one who could accept the sin-stained fruit of a cursed earth.
The ground he farmed was under God's curse.
Cain's worship was the worst thing he did. It was in fact denying that he had sinned. What blindness to what he had been! What hardness of conscience, to suppose he could come into the presence of God in his sins as if nothing at all had happened! ... He was a defiled sinner, driven out of paradise. Yet he brings "of the fruit of the ground," which the Lord had cursed, as "an offering to the Lord." That is, he brings into the presence of God the sign and seal of the sin that had driven him out from God!
Cain did not stay away from God. He came, and his gift cost him work.
Cain offered to God what cost him more. He was not a completely irreligious man. He offered to God, he worshipped God, and God rejected him completely. He was not one who denied God, nor an irreligious man, but a worshipper — and a rejected worshipper. His worship rested on unbelief. He was a sinner, one shut out of paradise, and he thought he could go to God as though nothing had happened! So it is with man: people think they can go and worship God, paying Him a compliment.
The verse names "Cain and his offering" together. One writer shows what a right approach admits, and what follows from it:
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 commended him by accepting 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.
Another states the rule that follows for anyone reading this account:
Man must own that the judgment resting on him is just, and he must come in the strength and worth of the victim that dies in his place. Abel comes this way and is accepted, while Cain's altar denied all of it: God had no regard for him or for his offering. The offerer is identified with his offering. If God accepts the offering, He accepts the offerer; if He rejects the offering, He rejects the offerer. How important, then, to have a perfect sacrifice!
The refusal told Cain the truth about himself, and that truth was what he could not bear.
"Cain was very angry, and his face fell." And it is ever thus. God puts man on the true ground of his condition before Him. At that moment the enmity of the natural heart breaks out against God. Cain was "very angry" — extremely angry. And why? Because his heart was set against grace. He had not owned the first principle of sin in the presence of God.
His gifts carried no sign of sin or death, and the anger that followed reached past his brother.
Cain, like every unbeliever, was blind to the truth. He judged that he could come to God with gifts of the earth, which expressed neither sin nor death, neither judgment nor expiation. How could the Lord have regard for him or his offering? God's acceptance of Abel stirred his proud spirit to fury and unrelenting hatred. On the surface its object was Abel, his righteous and weak brother. Its real object, above all, was God's grace.
The anger of this verse does not stay inside Cain.
God showed His pleasure in Abel's offering. That sacrifice admitted that Abel was a sinner who could only approach God through the death of one that was innocent. God showed no pleasure in Cain's offering, and Cain was "very angry, and his face fell." Did not this anger show that he was at enmity with God? ... The violence of Cain was "because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous."
- Ground. Cain brought the fruit of a cursed earth, with no blood to remove the curse. His offering denied the penalty of sin and his own need.
- Faith. What was missing was faith, not sincerity or cost. Cain was a worshipper — and a rejected worshipper.
- Identity. God's verdict fell on the man and his gift together. God accepts the offerer when He accepts the offering. So the sacrifice must be a perfect one.
- Grace. Cain's anger came from a heart set against grace. When God tells a man the truth about his condition, the natural heart turns hostile.
- Fruit. A fallen face over God's grace is enmity in seed. In Cain it grew into hatred of his righteous brother, and then murder.
And Jehovah said to Cain, Why art thou angry, and why is thy countenance fallen?
God rejected Cain's offering, and Cain's response was fury written on his face. God did not leave him alone with it, but came to him with two questions — an appeal, not an accusation, to a man on his way to murder.
God had accepted Abel's offering and turned Cain's away. One writer traces Cain's rage back to what he refused to bring:
What 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, and without blood there can be no forgiveness. God did not receive him in his sins, and He accepted Abel in his gift; so "he was angry, and his face fell." And yet how else could it be? God had to receive him either with his sins or without them. He could not receive him with them, and Cain would not bring the blood which alone makes atonement.
Cain had no answer to give. His anger stood on nothing:
He can give no reason for his anger. It is not a question of man at all, but only of the ground on which he comes before God. If Abel had been accepted for something in himself, Cain's anger and his fallen face would have had some just foundation. But Abel was accepted only on the ground of his offering. The LORD bore witness not to him, but to his gift. So Cain's anger had no proper basis at all.
God's second question is about a face. One writer explains what the phrase means, and what should have been there instead:
Cain became very angry rather than ashamed as he should have been: his face 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?
Abel had not turned Cain's offering away. The anger reached past Abel to the way God receives anyone:
How was it with Cain? "Cain was very angry, and his face fell." And it is always like this. The moment God puts man on the true ground of his condition before Him, the enmity of the natural heart breaks out against God. Cain was "very angry" — extremely angry. And why? Because his heart was opposed to grace. He had not owned the first principle of sin in the presence of God.
Another writer makes the same reading of Cain's target, seeing behind the visible victim a deeper one:
Abel's acceptance drove his proud spirit to fury and unrelenting hatred. Abel, his righteous and weaker brother, was the target on the surface. God's grace was the real target, above everything else.
God does not withdraw from the man whose worship He has just refused. He speaks first:
Should we not adore His patience with His enemy, as much as His grace with the fallen, if only they would believe and be blessed?
The questions open a door. In God's next words to Cain, commentators find an offer still standing:
God's patience is shown in His approach to Cain, with the words, "Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door…" Hebrew scholars tell us that the word used for sin is the same as that for sin offering. If so, it seems God is offering to accept Cain, despite his self-will, if he will confess his sin by bringing a suitable offering to Him. This is still God's attitude to men!
Cain gave God no answer. One writer traces the line from rejected worship to murder:
If sin begins toward God, it goes on toward man, even if that man is a brother with the loving claims of so close a relationship. So the irritation of a worship God had rejected broke out in hatred of the accepted man. Murder was the result then, and it has been ever since.
- Rejected. God turned Cain's offering away. Cain came without blood, wanting God to take him with his sins instead of clearing them away.
- Resentful. The fallen face was anger, not shame — a sour, depressed look where repentance should have stood.
- Really at God. Abel was the visible target. The anger struck at grace itself, from a heart that never owned its sin before God.
- Reasoned with. God did not strike; He questioned. His patience with an enemy is as striking as His grace toward the fallen.
- Refused. A sin offering waited at the door. Cain gave no answer — and unanswered anger walked into the field and killed.
If thou doest well, will not [thy countenance] look up [with confidence]? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door; and unto thee [shall be] his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
God refused Cain's offering, and Cain was furious. God answers with a question, not a verdict, and two phrases in it are disputed: what "doing well" means, and whether what waits at the door is sin or a sin-offering.
The refusal of his gift had already turned Cain bitter, and God's response was not silence but speech aimed at that bitterness.
Cain, like every unbeliever, had no sense of the truth. He thought himself able to come to God with gifts of the earth, which expressed neither sin nor death, neither judgment nor expiation. How could Jehovah accept him or his offering? Nor was this all. God's acceptance of Abel drove his proud spirit into fury and lasting hatred. On the surface, its object was Abel, his righteous and weak brother. In reality, and beyond all, its object was God's grace. Jehovah stepped in with words of truth and grace, all in vain.
The offer "if you do well" rests on something in God that Cain's mood could not shift.
The principles of God's nature are unchanging. Whether people are believers or not, whether they receive the truth or not, God holds to what belongs to His own moral being... So with Cain here — "and if you do not do well;" and such was the fact. His condition was that of a sinner, and he did not look outside himself to God. Certainly he did not do well. Evil conduct is what makes an evil state plain, and it flows from that state.
Doing well meant owning what he was. Abel had already shown what that looks like.
But to do well was to own, as Abel did, what one born in sin needed. How little men understand this! Yet what higher or truer ground could Abel take than simply to confess what he was? It was in this that Cain had failed.
Commentators differ on the second half of the verse. One Hebrew word carries both "sin" and "sin-offering," and the word for crouching pictures an animal lying down. Some writers argue that what crouches there is a victim, waiting to be offered.
"Sin" and "sin-offering" are the same word, whether in Greek or Hebrew. But what force would there be in "if you do not do well, sin crouches at the door"? That the last expression refers to an animal seems plain. Some interpreters take it as a picture, as if sin were a wild beast about to spring. Surely too late, when one has already sinned! Would it not rather be the provision of mercy for one who needs it — an offering not far to seek, but at the very door?
Others read the word as plain sin. They say no separate offering for sin was known this early.
I do not think the expression means a sin-offering, as some suppose. There seems to be no ground for saying that the truth of a sin-offering was understood in the slightest degree until long afterwards... Until the law came in, as far as Scripture tells us, there was no such distinction between the offerings. They were all merged in one.
One writer weighed both readings and refused to press the point, because the two senses converge on the same mercy.
I would not want to speak too firmly about Genesis 4:7... Now I do not doubt that this speaks of Cain's guilt. The only question is whether it also presents that guilt in the way God has presented it to us — that is, in Christ as the sin-offering... I understand the primary sense to be, sin is there before you; you meet it as you go out; it lies at your door. He could not escape finding it attached to him: only God has laid it before us in the sin-offering in Christ.
Abel's acceptance had not stripped Cain of anything, and the closing words of the verse say so.
There was no ground in any case for anger or despair. God is the God of grace now, as later He will judge by the Man He has raised from the dead... Meanwhile the unbeliever keeps the title of the firstborn over the younger brother who believes, just as the man keeps his place over the woman. What a just God is ours, even to an unjust Cain!
Everything Abel had, Cain was invited to have on the same terms.
Cain had the same opportunity of securing acceptance and blessing as Abel, but he missed it. Mark that!... The Lord says in effect to Cain: You can go and do as Abel did. Follow your brother. Why don't you take his road? Sadly, Cain did not like it.
- Door — everything in the verse gathers at one place: what Cain needed was not far off but waiting at the very door.
- Grace — God met an angry man whose gift He had refused, and still spoke words of truth and grace.
- Confession — to "do well" was to own what one born in sin needs, the ground Abel took and Cain would not.
- Debate — writers differ on whether sin crouches at the door or a sin-offering does. Either way Cain is guilty, and either way God has set the remedy before us in Christ.
- Refusal — Cain kept his place as firstborn and the way of acceptance stood in front of him, but he would not take it.
And Cain spoke to 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.
The first death in the Bible is a murder, and the killer is a brother. How does a quarrel about worship end with a body in a field?
Cain's offering had already been refused. The path to the field starts there.
If sin begins toward God, it goes on toward man. It does so even when that man is a brother, with all the loving claims of so close a relationship. So the anger at worship that God rejected broke out in hatred of the man God accepted. Murder was the result then, as it has been ever since.
Abel gave Cain no cause. So what set him off?
Cain's works were wicked, and because of this he hated his brother and killed him. He was of that wicked one, and the moral features of the devil were stamped on him. He was marked by sin, hatred, and murder. What provoked him, and set all his evil nature in motion, was what was of God in Abel: "Why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous."
Cain's anger had a target he could not reach. So the anger found the nearest substitute.
Rejected by God, Cain became very angry with God, and took his revenge on the man of faith whom God had accepted. Cain was not irreligious. If he had been, he would not have bothered even to try to approach God. No! He was a religious man, and just because he was, anger and hatred filled his heart. God was beyond his reach. He could not strike at Him. Abel was well within his reach, so the blow was aimed at him. The clearest example of this in the New Testament is Saul of Tarsus. He hated Jesus of Nazareth with an intense hatred, and because Jesus was in glory beyond his reach, he struck at His followers on earth.
The Hebrew says Cain spoke to Abel, then stops without telling us what he said. Several old translations fill the gap with "let us go out to the field." But the silence may say more.
The Samaritan, the Greek, the Syriac, and the Latin all read "Let us go to the field." But it is far more impressive to leave the words as they are, out of respect for the Hebrew. The Hebrew is as striking in its silence as in what it says. What does it matter to learn the terms Cain used to deceive his brother?
The quarrel was about worship. That changes what we call this crime.
Note this well: Abel was murdered in the interests of religion. His was the first of the religious murders that have stained earth's history. Nowhere does the stain lie deeper than in Christendom. Some of God's best wheat has been destroyed in this way.
Abel dies and Cain walks away. That outcome troubles readers. One writer answers it from what is said about the serpent and the woman's offspring.
Here the blood of righteous Abel speaks to us of what often puzzles the soul so deeply — the apparent victory of evil over good. That puzzle is only removed when we see it as the rule that governs this conflict. The offspring of the woman will crush the serpent's head; but first the serpent will strike the heel of the woman's offspring. In Abel's death we may see Christ. His blood indeed speaks better things than the blood of Abel. Yet Abel is still a perfect picture of Him — the first martyr, dying at a brother's hand.
One later death reversed what spilled blood asks for.
The blood of Christ had been shed on earth, as Abel's was by Cain. Abel's blood cried from the earth for vengeance, and Cain became a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. The blood of Christ does not cry that way. It is grace that speaks, and the shed blood cries out to win pardon and peace for those who shed it.
- Blood begins at the altar. The rejected offering came first; the field came second. Sin that starts against God does not stay there.
- Blood is provoked by righteousness. Abel did nothing to Cain. What roused Cain was what was of God in his brother.
- Blood is spilled by religion. Cain was not a man without religion — that is exactly why he killed. God was out of reach, so the accepted man took the blow.
- Blood keeps flowing. Abel's was the first religious murder. The stain has run through history since, deepest where the name of Christ is worn.
- Blood that answers back. Abel's cried for vengeance and Cain became a wanderer. Christ's blood, shed the same way, asks pardon for those who shed it.
And Jehovah said to Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not am I my brother's keeper?
Cain has murdered Abel, and God comes to him with a question, not a sentence. The reply is one of the coldest in Scripture: a flat denial, then a sneer that shrugs off any duty to his dead brother.
God's opening question is not a search for information. Commentators read it as a door held open for a guilty man to walk through.
The LORD was not ignorant, and He was not careless either. But He would bring home secret sin, and give even the guiltiest room and reason to repent. Yet here religious show without reality had hardened Cain's conscience. God's acceptance of the man who stood only in the faith of divine grace made it bitter.
The question put to Cain is not the one God put to Adam. That change of wording shows how far sin has gone.
The questions of the LORD were searching: not, as before to Adam, Where are you? but Where is Abel your brother? and What have you done? Adam went away from God, self-convicted, before God pronounced on his sin and made known the resource of His mercy in Christ. Cain added to his sin against the LORD a sin against man — not a neighbour only, but his brother.
Cain answers a God who watched the whole thing. The lie says as much about his view of God as about his crime.
Though God spoke to Cain directly, Cain showed no faith in God's omniscience. How pointless and foolish it is to lie to God! On top of lying, he asks in irritation, "Am I my brother's keeper?" God did not have to answer this. Cain knew well enough that he was responsible to give his brother some honest care. He had not only neglected that duty: he had been guilty of the total opposite.
The sneer sounds like a question, but the word Cain picks gives him away. A keeper is someone trusted with what belongs to another.
As soon as there was a man to sin against, the trespass happened. The startled earth drank the blood of the first man killed — not by a demon from below, nor by a wild beast from the forest, but by his own mother's son. In the murder of Abel, Cain had trespassed in that "which was delivered him to keep," and he had "taken away by violence" his brother's life. His sullen reply to God's question about his brother, "Am I my brother's keeper?" made it plain that he knew he was.
There is a second edge to the reply. It turns the blame around and aims it at God.
This is the language of Cain: "Am I my brother's keeper?" By these words Cain was laying the burden of Abel's blood on the Lord. He was hinting that the Lord should have been Abel's keeper, since He had shown such respect to Abel and his offering.
Cain's boldness holds while God only questions him. It breaks the moment God speaks as God.
When God said to Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" he replied, "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?" — a flippant answer to God. But then God showed Himself as God: "The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground, and now you are cursed from the ground." At that moment despair came in. Wherever there is pride of heart before God, and God shows Himself, there is despair.
One writer traces God's question forward. God now puts it to the whole world about His own Son.
It is not only sin's testimony against us now, asking what we have done as sinners. We also hear God ask, "Where is Christ?" The Holy Spirit has come, and convicts the world of sin, but more than this. He comes and says to the whole world, on God's part, "Where is my Son?" There is pride too in Cain's reply, "Am I my brother's keeper?" It is as though he said, why should God ask?
- Question, not accusation. God asks where Abel is, though He already knows. The question drags hidden sin into the open and gives even the guiltiest room to repent.
- Question deepened. God asked Adam, "Where are you?" He asks Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" Sin against God has become sin against man — and not a neighbour only, but a brother.
- Question dodged. "I do not know" is a lie told to the God who sees everything, and the word "keeper" proves Cain knew the care he owed and refused.
- Question thrown back. The sneer shifts the blame upward. Cain hints that God, who had respected Abel's offering, should have been Abel's keeper.
- Question answered by God. When God names the blood crying from the ground, the bold man breaks. The same question still presses on the world: "Where is my Son?"
And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.
Cain has just answered God with a lie and a sneer, and God replies with a fact: the murdered man's blood is already speaking. What does that blood say to God, and is there any blood that says something better?
Cain's reply pretended he owed his brother nothing.
Though God spoke to Cain directly, Cain showed no faith in God's all-knowing character. How pointless and foolish it is to lie to God! As well as lying, he asks with irritation, "Am I my brother's keeper?" God did not have to answer that. Cain knew well enough that he owed his brother some honest care. He had not only failed to give it — he had been guilty of the very opposite. God then speaks with solemn words to the criminal's conscience.
One writer hears a second question behind this one, put now to the whole world.
Now it is not only sin that testifies against us, asking what we have done as sinners. We also hear God ask, "Where is Christ?" The Holy Spirit has come, and He convinces the world of sin — but there is more. On God's part He comes and says to the whole world, "Where is My Son?"
Abel himself says nothing. His blood does the speaking, and it is not the only cry God hears.
It is a solemn truth, reader, that sin has a voice, which cries to heaven for God's righteous repayment. The word of God, in both the Old Testament and the New, confirms it. … To Abraham the Lord said, "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to Me." Further, in the New Testament: "Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts" (James 5:4).
Adam's sin brought a curse on the ground. This time the curse lands elsewhere, and one writer links it back to the offering Cain had brought.
The ground had fallen under curse because of Adam's sin. Cain gave no thought to sin or to God's sentence. He brought some of the fruit of that ground, grown by his own work, as an offering to the Lord. This might have been acceptable, had man not sinned. To ignore sin is to show neither repentance nor faith. Without these no sinner can find the way to God… Now the unbeliever's evil was in plain sight: violence, lying and irreverence. And God justly cursed him — not the ground now, but the man who tilled it.
God alone sentences Cain. No human court tries him, and the same writer explains why.
Notice that nothing matching civil government existed at the beginning. Man did not invent it either, through all the centuries before the flood… This is why no man punished Cain. Human punishment became a duty only after God committed the sword to Noah. From then on God solemnly required blood for blood: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image."
Abel's is not the only such cry. One writer sets this verse beside the last book of the Bible, where the altar itself cries out.
For about six thousand years it might have seemed as if God slept. He seemed indifferent to the cruel, heartless treatment of His people in every age. But no! The long, lingering patience of our God has now come to an end… In the first book of Scripture (Gen. 4:10) we hear the cry of the blood of the first of the martyrs. In the last book (Rev. 16:7) we hear the cry of the altar. That altar had testified to the killing of God's saints from Abel onwards.
Another murder took place on this same earth, and its blood also speaks — but not the same word.
The blood of Christ was shed on earth, as Abel's was by Cain. Abel's blood cried from the earth for vengeance, and Cain became a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth — a striking picture of the Jewish people, guilty of the death of Christ. The blood of Christ does not cry that way. Grace speaks, and the shed blood cries to win pardon and peace for those who shed it.
- Question. God's "What have you done?" searches the conscience, not the facts. The same voice now asks the world, "Where is My Son?"
- Voice. Sin is never silent before God. Abel's blood, Sodom, and withheld wages all cry to heaven for righteous repayment.
- Curse. God cursed the ground for Adam's sin. Here He curses the man himself — the man who had offered Him fruit from that cursed ground.
- Reach. No human court touched Cain, since God gave government to man only after the flood. Yet the cry that starts here runs to the last book of the Bible.
- Better. Abel's blood asked for vengeance on the man who shed it; the blood of Christ asks pardon for the very people who shed it.
And now be thou cursed from the ground, which hath opened its mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand.
God's sentence on Cain lands with a weight Adam never felt: this time the curse is spoken over a man, not just over the ground. Why does the soil turn against him, why is he not put to death, and how does this blood point to the blood of Christ?
Here the sentence changes address. One writer traces whom God had cursed before, and whom He curses now.
God had cursed the serpent, had cursed the ground for Adam's sake, but did not pronounce a curse on him, nor on Eve. Sorrow was the lot of both man and woman. But now the first human blood has been spilled, and God curses the man, Cain. "And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand." It is as if the earth itself cursed the murderer. It had drunk the blood of his brother, so it would never yield its strength to Cain when he tilled it. For Adam the ground would bring forth thorns and thistles. Yet when Adam tilled it, the earth did not hold back its strength. It gave it, though only by the sweat of his face.
Cain had brought God an offering out of the soil he worked. Now that soil is where the sentence bites.
But Abel's blood had spoken from the ground into the ear of God. A special curse came down on Cain at once, on top of the curse that had already fallen on Adam and his race, as we saw in Genesis 3. Adam was to get his food only by the sweat of his face. Cain was to find the earth barren even if he worked hard to till it. So he would become a wanderer, fleeing from the face of God.
Another writer weighs what this said about Cain's work, and what Cain could have done with it.
God would make him feel that his work was not as good as he had tried to make God believe it was in his offering. If this curse had done its proper work in Cain, he would have owned his sin honestly. Then the outcome for him in eternity could have been wonderfully different.
A murderer walks away alive. The reason lies in the point of history where this happens.
Notice that nothing like civil government was set up at the beginning. Man did not invent it either, through all the centuries before the flood. God set it up for the first time after that great event... So no man punished Cain. After God gave the sword to Noah, responsibility would have required that. From then on God required blood for blood: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image."
The same writer calls the sentence Cain did receive "a very mild and merciful way of dealing with a wicked man whose hands were stained with his brother's blood. It was fitted to give him time for bitter thought, self-loathing and anguish — but sin had hardened his heart like a millstone" (The Bible Treasury).
Abel's blood soaked into the earth and cried out for vengeance. One writer sets that cry beside another death, where blood again fell on the ground with a very different result.
Finally, Christ's blood was shed on earth, as Cain shed Abel's blood. Abel's blood cried from the earth for vengeance, so that Cain became a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth — a striking picture of the Jew, guilty of the death of Christ. Christ's blood does not do that. Instead grace speaks, and the shed blood cries out to gain pardon and peace for those who shed it.
Cain did not bow to the sentence. He set out to overturn it.
Driven out from the presence of God, he sets about to establish himself. He seeks for himself a home, not with God in heaven, but on the earth, from which God had pronounced him "cursed!" He makes himself master of a city where God had made him a wanderer.
- Blood cries. Abel's blood does not lie silent in the soil; the ground that received it becomes the accuser, and God answers it.
- The curse names a man. God cursed the ground for Adam's sake. Over Cain He speaks the curse on the man himself.
- The curse touches his craft. The farmer's field will withhold its strength, so the tiller becomes a wanderer.
- Judgment restrained. No death sentence follows. God gave man the sword of civil government only after Noah. That delay left room for repentance, and Cain never used it.
- Better blood. Christ's blood also fell on the ground. But it cries for pardon on the very people who shed it.
When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield thee its strength; a wanderer and fugitive shalt thou be on the earth.
Cain has just heard that his brother's blood is crying out from the ground, and God now passes sentence on him. Two questions follow: how is this curse different from the one already on Adam's race, and what does Cain do with it?
The ground was already under a curse from Genesis 3. What lands on Cain is something more. One writer compares how each man's tilling turned out.
God had cursed the serpent and the ground for Adam's sake, but He did not curse Adam or Eve... Now the first human blood is spilled, and the man, Cain, is cursed. It is as if the earth itself cursed the murderer, and, because it had drunk the blood of his brother, would never yield her strength to Cain when he tilled it. To Adam it would bring forth thorns and thistles. But when Adam tilled it, the earth did not withhold her strength; it gave its yield, though by the sweat of his face. However great Cain's toil might be, the earth would give him no proper return for his labour.
Notice what the sentence leaves out. One writer explains why, and weighs what it does lay on Cain.
The plain statement speaks of God's government of the earth, as fits a revelation given to His people Israel. So we hear nothing of heaven or of hell. The lot of the man who killed his righteous brother was heavier than before. He was cursed himself on an unwilling earth, and he would draw his food from it only with difficulty. A bad conscience and anxious fears would never stop preying on him, and everyone around him would shun him.
God let Cain live on. The same writer says what that time was for, and what wasted it.
This was a very mild and merciful way to deal with a wicked man whose hands carried his brother's blood. It was meant to give him time for bitter reflection, self-loathing and anguish — but sin had hardened his heart into a millstone.
The two words are not one idea repeated. Each describes a different motion, and one writer takes both as a picture of every unbeliever. He works from an older translation, which reads "vagabond" where the ESV has "wanderer".
This is a description of every unbeliever. As a fugitive he is in effect running away from God, never facing up to his guilt and his need of a Saviour. As a vagabond, he is a wanderer, going in every direction to seek rest or satisfaction but never finding it. So even on earth the condition of the unbeliever is sad, but how much more so in eternity!
Cain does not accept the wandering. The next verses show him settling, and one writer sets the two facts side by side.
Driven out from the presence of God, he sets about establishing himself. He seeks a home for himself, not with God in heaven, but on the earth from which God had pronounced him cursed. He makes himself master of a city where God had made him a wanderer.
Even the region he chooses carries the sentence in its name, and the city he raises there is treated as the origin of something we still live in.
Do you know what "Nod" means? It means "wandering."... He builds a city. He as good as says: I have gone out from the presence of God, but I will try to make myself as happy and comfortable as I can. I will build a city. I will forget that I am a wanderer, and I will forget that I am a sinner. That is how Cain started what you and I now call the world.
One writer sees the same sentence at work later in Israel's history: blood-guilt, exile, and a busy civilisation.
Like Cain, the Jews ended up killing Jesus Christ the Righteous, though He came from them as a man — their own Messiah, who is over all, God blessed for ever. So they too have gone out from the presence of Jehovah. They are cursed from the earth for blood-guiltiness, and they live in a land of wandering exile. For now they have lost their divine mission of blessing to all the families of the earth. So they turn to city life, to bold adventure, to the inventions of art and science, and to the comforts of the civilised world.
This sentence has a time limit, and one writer ties its end to a coming day for Israel.
The sentence pronounced on Cain — "When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength" — will be removed. For we read of the day when God will make His face shine on restored Israel: "then the earth shall yield its increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us; God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him." (Psalm 67)
after_note_removed: none
- Ground accuses — the soil drank Abel's blood, so it now holds back its strength. Adam's ground still paid him for hard work. Cain's will not.
- Ground withheld — the sentence belongs to God's government of the earth, not to the last judgment. It left Cain alive, with time to repent that he never used.
- Ground fled — as a fugitive he runs from God. As a wanderer he looks everywhere for rest and finds none. That is life away from God.
- Ground seized — Cain refuses to wander. He settles in a place named "wandering" and builds a city — the start of a world built to forget both the sentence and the sin.
- Ground restored — one writer sees the same blood-guilt and exile in Israel, and points to a day when the earth will give its increase again under God's blessing.
And Cain said to Jehovah, My punishment is too great to be borne.
Cain has just heard his sentence, and now he answers God — but every word is about himself. Commentators ask one question: is this cry repentance at last, or something that only looks like it?
Was Cain crushed by his guilt, or only by his sentence? One writer says the words Cain speaks next settle it. What follows his complaint is a list of losses, not a confession of guilt.
What room there was for self-judgment, if only Cain had taken Jehovah's appeals to heart! He ignored His words and gave no thanks for His patience. He does not shed one tear over his murdered and martyred brother; his whole feeling is for himself. It was not his iniquity that overwhelmed his conscience. He complained that his punishment was too great to bear. The context shows this is the true meaning of his words. "Behold, You have driven me today away from the ground, and from Your face I shall be hidden." But what care did he have for Jehovah's face? He dared to come to Jehovah with the fruit of the ground — ground cursed because of man's sin — with no victim, no confession of sin and death, and still less any thought of a Saviour to come.
Some sorrow appears only when the consequences land. One writer treats Cain's cry as the model of it, then sets two other voices beside him.
There is a forced mourning when tears are pumped out by God's judgments. Such was Cain's mourning: "My punishment is greater than I can bear" (Gen. 4:13). His punishment troubled him more than his sin. To mourn only because you fear hell is like a thief who weeps over the penalty rather than the offence. A sinner mourns because judgment follows at the heel of sin; but David cries out, "my sin is ever before me" (Ps. 51:3). The prodigal son says, "I have sinned against heaven and before you." He does not say, "I am almost starved among the husks," but "I have offended my Father."
Another commentator sets Cain beside a criminal dying next to Jesus, who called his own sentence fair.
Cain's response to God (v. 13-14) was not repentant, but protesting. Instead of being ashamed, he felt sorry for himself: "My punishment is greater than I can bear." Contrast the robber dying on a cross next to the Lord Jesus. He said, "we are receiving the due reward of our deeds" (Luke 23:41). How much better to accept God's penalty than to resent it! Submission leaves the way open for God to show mercy.
The same pattern has run through every generation since.
From that day to this, sinful men who will not repent have complained that God's judgment is too severe. Only when men repent do they bow and humbly admit that His judgment is just.
Where does a life like Cain's end up? One writer follows the line from his first refusal of grace to this moment.
Here we see the swing that ends in despair. It begins with unbelieving indifference, a dislike of grace, and hatred of grace's object as well as its source. How deep the lesson and solemn the warning! How hard his heart was! He thought so little of the guilt of murdering his own brother — and what a brother Abel was. He took Jehovah's goodness with no thanks, though everything Jehovah did and said to him left the door open for repentance, and, it seems, for a sin offering too.
Read on, and Cain's own life answers him. The man who called his load unbearable did not live like a crushed man.
Here we see that the flesh cannot be reformed. Cain goes out from the presence of the Lord, claiming that the burden of punishment is greater than he can bear. Yet he builds himself a city, makes himself a name, and sets up the whole order of civilization that has gone on ever since. This is the "way of Cain," the way of the flesh. It begins by denying sin and refusing the sacrifice. Then it stains the earth with innocent blood, and surrounds itself with comfort and pleasure away from God.
- Punishment. His next words — driven out, hidden from God's face — show he mourned the sentence, not the sin.
- Penalty. His grief was the thief's grief over the sentence, not the theft. David and the prodigal son show the other kind, which names the offence.
- Protest. He resented the verdict; the dying criminal beside Jesus accepted it. Submission, not protest, leaves the way open for God to show mercy.
- Despair. Refusing grace does not leave a person neutral. Contempt for it ends in despair — even though God left the door open for repentance.
- Pretence. He carried the "unbearable" burden well enough to build a city — proof that his complaint was self-pity, not a broken heart.
Behold, thou hast driven me this day from the face of the ground, and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a wanderer and fugitive on the earth; and it will come to pass, [that] every one who finds me will slay me.
Cain has just heard his sentence, and now he answers God — but not with a confession. His reply raises the questions that follow: was he grieving over his sin or his sentence, who hid him from God's face, and why does a murderer fear murder?
The Hebrew behind Cain's opening cry can be read either as "my guilt" or "my punishment," and one writer settles the question by the rest of the sentence — the very words about being driven out.
It was not his sin that overwhelmed his conscience. He complained that his punishment was too great to bear. The rest of his words shows this is what he meant. But did he care about the Lord's face at all? He had dared to come to the Lord with the fruit of the ground that was cursed for man's sin — with no victim, no confession of sin and death, and no thought of a Saviour to come.
Cain does speak of unbearable trouble, and it sounds like sorrow. But there is a sorrow squeezed out by consequences, and it is not repentance.
There is a forced mourning when tears are pumped out by God's judgments. Such was Cain's mourning: "My punishment is greater than I can bear" (Genesis 4:13). His punishment troubled him more than his sin. To mourn only from fear of hell is like a thief who weeps over the penalty instead of the crime. The prodigal son says, "I have sinned against heaven and before you." He does not say, "I am almost starved among the husks," but "I have offended my Father."
God's sentence never said Cain would be driven from the ground or hidden from His face. Cain enlarges the verdict, then complains about his own addition.
Cain's answer to God (v. 13-14) showed no repentance; it was a protest. He was not ashamed; he felt sorry for himself. The robber dying on a cross next to the Lord Jesus said the opposite: "we are receiving the due reward of our deeds" (Luke 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. Those were not God's actual words. He adds that he would be hidden from God's face. Yet it was Cain himself who had chosen this: he had sought to hide his evil works from the Lord.
Two verses later Cain acts this out. One writer marks the difference between being sent away and walking away.
God had not said to him to leave His presence. Cain does and goes out from His presence himself, to dwell where judgment had made him a vagabond, and then comes the world — the world as God sees it in its true place before Him.
Cain repeats the two words God had used of him, and they describe a condition, not just a travel plan.
And Cain departs from God, and proves that he is one. He does not like to be called a vagabond, but that is really what man is by nature. Do you know what vagabond means? It means a man who is always on the move — a man that is never settled — never at rest. The next thing we read of Cain is that he "went away from the presence of the LORD and settled in the land of Nod." Do you know what "Nod" means? It means "wandering."
The last clause is the confession Cain never made out loud. He expects from others what he did to Abel — and he was wrong about what came next.
Bold as he was, his guilty conscience could not keep his fears hidden: "whoever finds me will kill me." But there he was mistaken. The Lord's patience with His enemies is amazing. Men today would feel it and admit it, if they let in enough light to see their own dark hatred of God.
This complaint is the first thing in the Bible that looks like a prayer. What Cain does with the answer is the sting.
The subject of prayer opens in Scripture with the case of Cain. There was in him no dependence on God at all. But when God had pronounced his judgment, he makes an appeal to God, and God takes care that nothing he dreaded should take place. What does Cain do with the gift he gets in answer to his appeal? He settles down quietly to make himself as happy as possible without God's presence on earth.
- Sentence — Writers read Cain's cry as a complaint about his punishment, not his guilt. The rest of the verse shows what really weighed on him.
- Self-pity — Judgment pressed his tears out; his sin never did. The dying robber beside Jesus owned his guilt, and that submission leaves room for mercy.
- Self-exile — God never said Cain would be driven from the ground or hidden from His face. Cain said it himself, then walked out of God's presence.
- Restlessness — A wanderer is always on the move, never settled, never at rest. Cain went to live in a land whose name means wandering.
- Mercy — He feared every man he met would kill him. He was wrong. God's patience answered the very fear he voiced, and Cain used that mercy to make himself comfortable without God.
And Jehovah said to him, Therefore, whoever slayeth Cain, it shall be revenged sevenfold. And Jehovah set a mark on Cain, lest any finding him should smite him.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And Cain went out from the presence of Jehovah, and dwelt in the land of Nod, toward the east of Eden.
Genesis 4:16 closes God's dealing with Cain and opens the story of human life built without God. Who did the leaving, what does "Nod" mean, and what did Cain do once he was out?
Two exits stand side by side in Genesis 3 and 4. They are not the same kind of exit:
In the last verse of Genesis 3, Adam was driven out of the Garden. In verse 16 of our chapter Cain "went away from the presence of the LORD." The first was a forced judgment; the second was a deliberate walking away. To a murderer who would not repent, God's presence was something he hated.
Nothing in the record says God ordered him away from Himself. That step was Cain's own:
God had not said to him to leave His presence. Cain does and goes out from His presence himself, to dwell where judgment had made him a vagabond, and then comes the world — the world as God sees it in its true place before Him.
The name of the place matters. It names what Cain now is, and it explains what he does next.
Cain had already said he would be hidden from God's face. One writer reads "east of Eden" as a real location: the presence Cain left could be pointed to.
So even for Cain there was a "face of the Lord," and he linked it with Eden — near to paradise, though still outside it. "Behold, You have driven me today away from the ground," he says, "and from Your face I shall be hidden." Then we read that Cain "went away from the presence of the LORD and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden." This is easier to grasp because later God chose to place His presence in one location in Israel, there too with fire and figures of cherubim.
Judgment did not fall at once. Grace gave Cain space — and here is what he did with it:
So it was Cain who "went away from the presence of the LORD" and settled in that land east of Eden, which seems to be named after his exile. The LORD was no longer in his thoughts. The world was his object… He had no fear of the LORD… "Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil." Grace gives space for repentance; ungodliness twists that space into time to follow its own will and indulge its lusts, in defiance of God and His word.
Verse 16 is the hinge in a chain of choices that runs from the offering to the murder to the city.
Here we see that the flesh will not be corrected. Cain goes out from the presence of the Lord claiming that his punishment is more than he can bear. Yet he builds himself a city, makes himself a name, and sets up the whole order of civilization that has gone on ever since. This is the "way of Cain," the way of the flesh. It begins with the denial of sin and a refusal of the sacrifice. It goes on to stain the earth with innocent blood, and to surround itself with comfort and pleasure away from God.
Music and comfort are not evil in themselves. The question is what they are for:
Cain went out from the presence of God, and what does he do then? He builds a city… There was no harm in the music itself. But why did they want it? It was to make them content in being away from God. Is not this "harm" enough? After Adam sinned, he heard God's voice and hid among the trees in the garden. There was no harm in the trees, but there was harm in his hiding. There is harm in man's trying to make himself comfortable away from God.
Cain never admitted where he stood. One writer says that admission is the start of the way back:
In his actual condition, man is a sinner cast out of Paradise and already out of the presence of God. He ought to be conscious that he is out, and that the only way back to God is through His Son.
- Out — Adam was driven out; Cain walked out. The verse records a choice, not a sentence.
- Wandering — "Nod" means wandering. God named Cain's condition, and Cain moved into it instead of repenting.
- Settled — Sentenced to roam, he built a city instead. He arranged comfort so he could forget the sentence.
- World — That is where the world began: life made comfortable without God.
- Back — The one thing Cain never did is the one thing needed: own that you are outside, and return through God's Son.
And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city; and he called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch.
God had sentenced Cain to wander. Instead, Cain leaves God's presence, settles down, and builds the world's first city. Writers here read that city as the start of human life organised without God.
Cain settles in a land named after his exile. There he builds — the opposite of the life God had sentenced him to.
It was Cain then who "went out from the presence of Jehovah," and dwelt in that land which seems named from his exile, east of Eden. Jehovah was no longer before his mind. The world was his object... His son is the "initiated," and his father gives that name to the city he was building. This is a most striking fact for that day. It is most notable of all in the man whom Jehovah had sentenced to be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth.
Cain had another road open to him. He did not take it.
Cursed from the earth because of his sin, Cain was a fugitive and a vagabond. There was no thought of repentance in his heart because of the murder of his brother. There was no desire to be reconciled to God. He sought to forget God, and to quiet the stirrings of a guilty conscience in a place of his own designing and building, where he could find his pleasure with those descended from him, away from God.
Cain would not leave his family in the state God had put him in.
Cain was not willing to remain a poor vagabond. At the very least, he did not want to leave his family in that state. He wanted them to escape his own lot. So he built a city in the land of Nod ("Nod" is the Hebrew word translated vagabond in the first instance). He wanted his family settled in the country where God had made him a vagabond. He names the city after his son, as the great people of this world do.
Cain built for comfort under the curse, and he stamped his own son's name on the result.
Once away from God, he builds a city — to be as comfortable as possible despite the curse and without God. He calls it Enoch, after the name of his own son: a memorial to self at a distance from God.
What is "the world," and where did it begin?
"The world," morally speaking, was what the devil made after man fell. The first beginning of "the world" was in Cain and his line. For what do we see in Cain? God sentenced him to be a wanderer and a fugitive on the earth, and he strives to erase that. He built a city. They are not content for one to live here and another there; they must all herd together.
The pattern did not stop with Cain:
He had built his city. He had his craftsmen in brass and iron — and so have we now. He had harp and organ — and so have we now. He pleased himself without thinking of God, shutting God out and making the world pleasant to the natural feelings apart from Him. It was then and is now alike.
Two questions come up here. Where did Cain's wife come from? And how could one man build a whole city?
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). That could take place only after some years, when his family had multiplied. Adam lived 930 years, long enough for his descendants to increase beyond his ability to count.
A city is not wrong in itself. God plans one too. The difference is the builder and the timing.
Now God's thought for man is a city too. Faith looks for a "city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Cain's city was not original with him, nor is God's thought copied from man's. It is itself the original; only it must wait for another scene for its fulfilment. For He cannot build in a scene as storm-tossed and shifting as the present one. To run ahead of God's time is unbelief, not faith.
(Older translations read "builder and maker"; the ESV has "designer and builder.")
- Sentence — God made Cain a wanderer; he answered by settling and building. The city is the sentence contradicted, not accepted.
- Substitute — He could have repented. He built instead, making a place where a guilty conscience could stay quiet.
- Signature — He named the city after his son: a memorial to himself, raised where God had sentenced him to wander.
- System — From this city the writers date "the world": comfort, art, and industry arranged so no one has to miss God. It has never changed shape, only scale.
- Second city — The longing for a city is not the sin; the builder is. Faith waits for the city God designs, and building ahead of His time is unbelief.