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)
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- 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.