Genesis 4-5
Introduction
This lesson examines the 4th and 5th chapters of Genesis. Genesis 4 begins the second great epoch of human history, the first of course being from creation to what is called the Fall of Man. God had given Adam and Eve dominion over all the earth, but the serpent conned them out of it. Treachery and death would be the common experience of all their progeny, and Cain and Abel the pattern of violence and victimization.
Gen. 4:1-7
Adam was intimate with his wife Eve, who conceived and gave birth to Cain and said,
God has given me a man!Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. He grew up to be a shepherd, while Cain worked the land.After some time passed, Cain brought a sacrifice to the Master from the produce of the land, but Abel brought the first and best of his sheep. God looked favorably on Abel and his offerings, but he did not accept Cain and his offerings. So Cain was extremely disturbed and became depressed. But the Sovereign God said to him,
Why are you dejected and depressed? Isn’t it still a violation if you indeed brought a sacifice but not a proper one? Calm down; it is being returned to you, so you can decide what to do.
Gen. 4:1-7 Commentary
The first thing we see in this chapter is that children began to be born, the first of whom was Cain. Recalling the debunking of the serpent seed theory in the previous lesson, it states clearly in verse 1 that it was Adam, not the serpent, who fathered Cain. Some claim that the serpent fathered Cain and that this bloodline was what Jesus meant in John 8:44 when he told some people that they were of their father, the devil. But not only does the context there clearly speak of spiritual matters rather than genetics, verse 1 here explicitly states that Cain’s father was Adam.
Another question to address here is the claim of some pre-Adamic race that was wiped out between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2, since when Cain later went to a distant city and married, there had to be prior civilizations for him to go to. But Rom. 5:12 says that sin entered the world through one man, that being Adam. If there had been a pre-Adamic race or un-named children from Adam and Eve, any who lived before Adam’s rebellion would be sinless and probably immortal, since none of them would have been part of God’s curse.
Adam and Eve certainly had many other children after Cain and Abel, who were simply not mentioned because they weren’t key personages in the Bible’s overarching theme and purpose. And if anyone objects to the practice of what we now call incest, which had to be the case when the human race was just beginning to multiply, such a law was not yet given nor needed. The reason God would later prohibit it is because of the ever-degrading nature of our genome, and the errors that had built up by then, causing mutations.
God's conversation with Cain is significantly different in the Greek compared to the Hebrew, but either way it’s the first failed attempt at persuasion, and no less than God who was rejected. The Hebrew text has God saying to Cain that sin was crouching at the door but that Cain would need to resist it. But the Greek text has God telling Cain that he would have his offering returned to him so he could have another chance at doing the right thing. We can only speculate as to the reason for the rejection, but it seems that since the text points out that Abel brought the best he had, then Cain did not. I don’t believe it was that Cain didn’t bring an animal, but that the produce he brought was of inferior quality. Admittedly, the Greek wording is difficult to follow, but I think this interpretation makes better sense of the immediate context, though most seem to view it as the reason for what happens next in the chapter.
Gen. 4:8-16
Now Cain said to his brother Abel,
Let’s go out to the field.After they got there, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Sovereign God confronted Cain:Where is your brother Abel?
How should I know?he retorted.I’m not his guardian.What have you done?the Master demanded.Your brother’s blood shouts to me from the ground! So now you are accursed from the earth that opened up its mouth to take your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground and it no longer yields good produce for you, you will be miserable and weak.Then Cain replied to the Master,
My crime is too great for me to be forgiven. If you banish me from the earth and from your presence, I will hide in misery and weakness on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.
Not so,replied the Sovereign God.Anyone who tries to kill Cain will suffer 7 times as much punishment.So the Sovereign God marked Cain, so that any who would find him would not kill him. Then Cain left God’s presence and settled in the land of Nod, across from Eden.
Gen. 4:8-16 Commentary
What I find particularly striking (pun intended) about Cain’s retort to God, is the dripping sarcasm of not being his brother’s guardian. His father Adam failed at guarding Eden, and his mother Eve failed at guarding Adam. He seems to be trying to shirk responsibility for his actions by rubbing in God’s face the fact that he, unlike his parents, was not charged with protecting anyone. But just like his father Adam, he shifted blame from himself to God. This attitude was already evident in his prior attempt to appease God with a substandard offering.
Of course, God wasn’t having any of that, and he pronounced a curse on Cain himself, as opposed to when God cursed the ground on Adam’s account. Here again, the Greek wording is significantly different from the Hebrew, which has Cain saying his punishment was greater than he could bear, rather than that his crime was too great to be forgiven. The Hebrew almost seems to try and garner sympathy for Cain.
Gen. 4:17-26 Commentary
First off we see that Cain marries, and we’ve already addressed the issue of where his wife might have come from. But keep in mind that names are often given to more than one person, just as people have always done since then. We see the name Enoch, but we know this isn’t the Enoch mentioned by Jude 1:14, because that Enoch was in the 7th generation after Adam, while this one is only the 3rd.
Then we see that Noah’s father Lamech traces his genealogy back through Methuselah, to Mehujael, to Enoch, to Cain. Then what becomes of the serpent seed theory from the line of Cain, since Noah is in Cain’s genetic line?
Some claim that the Dead Sea Scrolls cite Satan as Cain’s father, but you can see the text yourself here. This source shows that the man
fathered Cain.
The rest of the chapter is genealogy, but it includes some interesting remarks about the originators of things like music and instruments, metalurgy, and raising cattle.
Verse 23 begins the account of Lamech, who killed a young man. Though it isn’t clear in the Greek text whether the young man was killed for wounding Lamech or that Lamech was grieving over the youth’s death, it’s interesting that he claimed even more protection for himself that God gave to Cain, though God doesn’t say so here.
The last two verses name Seth as another of Adam and Eve’s children, and then Seth fathered Enos. Notice that it’s been Eve naming her children, and that she considered them blessings from God. The Greek text differs from the Hebrew in the final sentence. The Greek says that Enos hoped to call on the name of the Sovereign God
, but the Hebrew says then men began to call
. Neither reading is actually very informative; we have no details on what that meant.
Gen. 5 Commentary
This chapter, like the first, begins with a subtitle, this time saying that what follows is focused on genealogy from Adam to the three sons of Noah. Some information is repeated from ch. 4 but with added detail such as ages and lifespans. The famous Enoch, called by Jude the 7th from Adam, must include Adam as the 1st if you check the number of generations here. Aside from being the father of the longest-lived person ever, Methuselah, Enoch was taken alive at the age of 365 years to be with God. The Greek word there is also in Heb. 11:5 when it reports on this event. It indicates that he was transported, not simply that he disappeared.
Everyone wants to know if this Enoch wrote any books, and if so, whether those books have survived intact. But rather than try to settle the impossible here, I refer you to this source on the subject. I’ve read the books called Enoch 1 through 3, but 2 and 3 are so much lower in quality and substance as to be easily dismissed. That leaves us with 1, but we have to be careful whether we have the one deemed authentic
. Even so, I found nothing in it to give me the impression that it contained hidden or secret knowledge, or that it supplied information vital to our understanding of the things of God. It may be an interesting historical book, if accurate, but I see no justification to force it into the Biblical canon.