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.