Question 1: “Where is Abel your brother?” Here is an invitation to own up to what he did, yet Cain decides to both lie to him and refuse to let God corner him. He would not own up anything as “dumb” as Adam’s “Um…I noticed that I was naked so I sorta’ hid.”Answer 1: “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Question 2: “What have you done?” A question that both acknowledges Cain’s guilt and demands an explanation. No answer is recorded and probably not given.
Statement 1: There is no need to answer. Abel’s blood answered already. “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground.” This is interesting in that it seems to state that God can hear the cries of victims even after they die.

Judgment 1 (Gen 4:11): “You are cursed from the ground which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood.” This is a major hurt especially in light of the man being a farmer…a tiller of the ground. What exactly does it mean to be “cursed from the ground“? It means that when Cain cultivates the ground it will no longer give Cain good results. So although Adam sinned and the ground was cursed making the work hard, Cain’s sin results in making the work weak. His hands buried life, the ground yields weakness.

Judgment 2 (Gen 4:12): “you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth” So instead of being a farmer on a patch of land, he now is sent to be a nomad with no land. This judgment proves difficult with Cain later setting up a city and it may make more textual sense (like some translators state) that Cain’s son built the city. What is immediately difficult is that Cain settled in the Land of Nod and is not a wanderer. Is he disobedient to God’s curse? Does the curse end? Or is this settling just the setting up of his home before moving on in another day. The text tells us nothing in that respect and I personally am left with the difficulty.

Answer 2: “My punishment is too great to bear” because:Y

1. You have driven me this day from the face of the ground
2. I am hidden from Your face
3. I will be a vagrant and a wanderer in the earth
4. And whoever finds me will kill me.

What’s interesting about this is that it sounds like Cain is concerned about his position before God but in actuality he fears his position before men. He’s not sorry about his sin or even asking forgiveness—he fears that someone will kill him on top of everything God has stated.

God’s Judgment 3 is merciful yet not lenient. He doesn’t open it up for men to kill him—but rather declares a seven-times worst condemnation on whoever kills Cain and God gave Cain a sign—whatever that means—so that when found no one would kill him.

So Cain is judged according to his actions which were based on his decisions despite God’s word (which he heard) and despite God’s warning (which he knew). Cain’s condemnation doesn’t include death which is later demanded by the Law—which some may think unfair. I would posit that God has given men a conscience and is holding them responsible for that whereas after He gives the Law He will hold men responsible for the keeping of the Law and for their Conscience.

Now this isn’t to say that men come to God on different terms in different ages as some misrepresent dispensationalists as saying. Men always stand before God by faith in what He has said—it has been so since Adam’s day when He ignored God’s Word and acted accordingly and it is so in our day when people hear God’s Word of salvation and ignore it and act accordingly. And yet, despite that God always furthers man’s responsibility in Man’s standing before Him in the twofold effort of (1) giving Mankind what he wants and (2) teaching Mankind that they will fail.

So when God makes man a steward of a conscience the man is being held responsible for knowingly acting on what is right and what is wrong. When God later (Genesis 9) makes man a steward of governing men, God is making Mankind responsible for judging those who knowingly act on the wrong over the right. In each of these stewardships of responsibility man fails and God judges accordingly.

Since Cain is responsible by means of his conscience he is singularly held responsible for his actions. Since men have not been made responsible to judge Cain’s actions, men are not authorized to penalize him via death. They might do so of their own accord (Cain understood this since he himself had done so to Abel) but they would not be responsible as a governing body to do this.

Series link. Tags: Bible, Bible study, Simple Bible Study Methods, Genesis, Creation, Evolution, Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Israel 

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