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.