Genesis Diaries: 4:10-15

Sometimes we look at the Bible and see something that isn’t there.  Our brains are information gathering and pattern recognizing machines par excellence.  I say that at the outset here because I’ve noticed something in the narrative with Cain and God’s punishment of him and I’m not sure if it means anything at all.  What I do know is that if God was speaking to Cain in Hebrew or Cain was hearing it in Hebrew…however that works…he would hear precisely and unmistakably a regular refrain that would tear his heart out.  Like hammer blows of conviction, it would tear him up inside with precisely the right combination of words that he would realize his guilt.  

We begin in verse 10 of chapter 4.  God says, “What have you done?  The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.  And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.  When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength.  You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth”.  

This seems perfectly straightforward at the outside.  You did a terrible thing, and here is your punishment.  There seems to be wordplay going on here, however.  

The two most repeated words in this section are “blood” and “ground” and they both are related in the Hebrew.  Ground is “adama” and “blood” is “dam” both words that find their origin in the name of Cain’s father, Adam.  Adama, because Adam was made from the ground and dam because of the color red.  Presumably Adam was named such because the mud he was made from was red.  Dam also refers to blood specifically on the face and head, which matches with the injuries sustained by Abel in this account.

God repeats derivations of Adam’s name, echoing how all is connected.  

“The voice of your brothers ‘dam’ is crying out to me from the ‘adama’.  And now your are cursed from the ‘adama’…to receive your brother’s ‘dam’ from your own hand.  When you work the ‘adama’…”

Blow after blow, how could Cain not realize or remember that his father would find out, his father would discover, and seek punishment and vengeance?  

There was plenty to be upset about apart from that.  God tells Cain that he was now cut off from his life’s vocation.  He spent years of his life cultivating plants, learning the secrets of planting, watering, pruning, and it must have given him not only joy but purpose.  He’d given the fruits of his harvest to God and in the past he’d accepted them.  There must have been some proper pride in that job well done.

With this closer reading, it stings on two levels now; it’s a greater punishment than Cain feels he can bear.  He is cut off from the ground, the ‘adama’, and cut off from his father, Adam.  Neither will be lending them their “strength” anymore.  Later in chapter 5 the mini-creation narrative tells us that God named both Adam and Eve “Man/Adam” as a whole, the way we use “mankind” in the English.  Both his mother and father could be understood by him to be the other layer of “adama” that he is being cut off from.

Cain sees this punishment as greater than he can bear, cut off from the “adama” and he knows he will be hidden from God’s face.  This is not the position of a man who is simply regretful that he got caught.  This is deep grief…that sadly accepts the punishment and doesn’t seek repentance nor forgiveness.  I’ve mentioned before elsewhere that the first time we get any written account of someone realizing their sin and seeking repentance is Pharaoh in the book of Exodus.  Equally interesting, if memory serves, I believe it’s Pharaoh in the account of Abraham and Sarah who is the first person recorded that recognizes his sin and guilt quite independently of God directly telling him of it.  Granted the diseases are always a big red flag.  

Back to Cain, however…he grieves his being cut off from the ground/family as well as being hidden from the face of God.  His fear is that anyone who finds him will kill him.

And who especially would Cain fear finding him and killing him?  Was this some generalized fear that he’d walk into any town and be mowed down just because he’d been cursed?  Or was it a more particular fear?  Like his own father?

No matter how I read this account, with the idea that there are a bunch of people on the earth at this point or just Cain and his parents, it seems to indicate Cain is afraid that his father would be the one to fear this reaction from.  And of course Adam would.  

Imagine that you don’t know death.  Even pregnancy and giving birth was a shocking process that took a while to sink in.  And then these little things that came our of your wife, out of the act of love with her, start growing in a process completely foreign to you.  Heck, they have little belly buttons that you don’t.  It’s so weird.  Over time they become more like you.  They grow and you show and teach them things, and you tell them stories about how good life was in the garden.  Maybe you take them on a trip and show them from afar the lush green landscape of your once upon a time home and point out the flaming swords.  The two boys you love.  You can see Eve’s eyes on one of them and it shocks you.  She smiles and points out one of them has your unruly hair.  You teach them the ways of the LORD and are there when you introduce both of them to Yahweh.  And you believe the only thing that you have any reference for…that life goes on forever.  You know the death of animals of course.  You know that God had postponed something He called “death”.  But you’d never seen it in humans.  Perhaps old age would bring it but do you even have a concept of old age?  Regardless, the idea of murder likely wasn’t a concept you’d even imagined possible.

Your boys grow and have their rivalries, wrestle a bit, but you separate them and teach them and as they grow you love them all the more, recognizing them as a very special part of you and your love, Eve.  They grow into their talents and invest their lives in their areas.

Imagine that you go seeking them.  Neither is in their living place.  You wander from place to place shouting for your sons, and then you see one of them laying down in the field.  You continue to call, and he lays there. Napping?  What else could he be doing.  And what’s Abel doing in Cain’s field anyway?  You approach and then you see what you have never seen.  

The face is broken.  The head caved in.  Red is everywhere, that stuff that’s supposed to stay in the body is out and in such an amount that the earth around your baby boy is soaked with it.   The violence could have been a wild animal, or so you think until you see the blood covered stone nearby.  You look from the stone to your child, your grief welling up in you as you seen his mangled once beautiful face.  How?  Why?  It wasn’t supposed to be this way.  He was so young.  You don’t even have words for the feelings since this is the first time the unimaginable has become a brutal reality.  How would you tell Eve?  How would you stand to watch her cry, scream, and dry heave as she realizes that what was once living in her body is now dead and gone.  

And then you realize that you’ve never seen any animal use a tool.  So it can only be one person; one terrible act that couldn’t be an accident.  All you know is that a great wrong has occurred, life was stolen from your boy and the deep seated human impulse for justice has from that day to this has hardly been about mercy.  Anger crowds out grief and metastasizes into rage, and would require nothing short of a mark of protection from God to stop you.