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.