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)
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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.