In the depths of his suffering, guilt, and despair at being cut off from the land, his family, and the Lord, Cain grieves. He declares that he is now condemned to be a vagabond and a wander, and whomever finds him will try to kill him because of what he has done.
There is a parallel here with the Garden of Eden narrative that could be easily skipped past. Cain has done a great evil, he has sinned, and even he agrees that what he has done is deserving of death. His punishment is to be cut off from the land and leave the safety of the Lord’s presence. He is keenly aware that whomever he meets will try to cause his death. Adam and Eve deserved death for their sin and were driven out from the garden into a hostile world, and yet God made a way to delay the punishment of death and show HIs great compassion and mercy.
God assures Cain that none will kill him. He gives Cain a mark and promises that if anyone kills Cain then He will have vengeance on them sevenfold. Notice that this is not the work of an angry, uncaring, and solely wrathful God. This is the work of a Father. Cain did the horrible thing. Cain is even unrepentant in sin. He hasn’t even asked for forgiveness for his crime. There is a harsh punishment. There is also a loving gesture of preservation.
I can’t help but note that God’s preservation leads to a far more harrowing experience for Cain. There will be no early release from grief and pain, the knowledge of what he has done. He will spend the rest of seven hundred and thirty years of his life with the ghost of Abel haunting his mind and dreams. He will have a wife and children, and grandchildren. He will see young brothers fighting with one another. He will catch a glimpse of his father’s attachment to the young boys that will come later, and fully understand what he stopped short and robbed his parents of.
Now, whether he views all of this with a repentant heart or with bitterness as he lives through centuries is a question left up to speculation only. What we know of Cain from the point of the mark is that he “went away from the presence of the LORD and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.”
Like his parents before him, Cain faced away from Eden and moved further away. He settled in the land of Nod which means “wandering”. Cain had a wife and bore a son named Enoch. He built a city and named it after his son.
One of the things that I’ve probably mentioned before but I continue to find amazing is that according to the Genesis narrative, we were not originally nomadic in nature. From the earliest days we farmed and raised livestock. We tended the garden of the LORD and then, outside of that garden, we created and maintained our own recognizing that the flourishing of plants, trees, and animals was something that our Father did and so should we.
We maintain this even today in our modern society. Is there a person who doesn’t have a plant in their house or at the very least a pet to tend? Who isn’t interested at least in theory desirous of having green things to plant, water, and grow? Even atheists feel this on a fundamental level. The most crowded urban settings we create parks and rooftop green spaces, we turn empty lots into community gardens. We seek to cause things around us to thrive, regardless of our relationship with the Creator.
Cain slept with his wife and bore him Enoch. Interestingly it is from the line of Cain, specifically from the sons of his great-great-great-great grandsons Adah and Zillah (sons of Lamech), that we get nomadic herding, music, and smithing.
Adah’s first son, Jabal, is the father of those who dwell in tents. The second son, Jubal, is the father of those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah’s boy Tubal-cain was the father of all forgers of bronze and iron.
Personally, I’m not sure what to do with this. Further on Adam sleeps with eve again and she bears a son they call Seth. Seth is born one hundred and thirty years after his father’s “birth”. The line of Seth is not much known for anything in the way the line of Cain is. Cain’s descendants are the fathers of great technological and cultural advancements. Lamech is known for being the first to have two wives and particularly murderous claiming to be even greater than Cain. The only significant thing around the time of Seth was that at the time of his son, Enosh, “People began to call upon the name of the LORD.”
So what does it mean that people called upon the name of the LORD? Well, the interpretation that I favor is that this is a hidden way to say that the son’s of Seth were the “fathers of those who” sought God. Exiled from the Garden, Grandpa Adam and Grandma Eve must have told stories of what it had been like, what caused them to fall, what brought them out into the wilderness East of Eden, and what happened with Cain and Abel.
The human heart cannot hear of the True things of the Lord and not have their hearts and imaginations kindled. We cannot experience the things of Him and not long to return to him. Anger, bitterness, and foolish obstinacy can cause us to act out against Him, but even that is an admission of His existence and our desire; that we know something is wrong on an emotional level. We can better see the result of this familial return to the LORD, this crying out for Him, in the seven generation when along comes Enoch.
All men die. Adam, the first of all humans, lived for 930 years and then returned to the dust from which he came. As did his son. As did his grandson. So on and so forth, until Enoch. There was something fundamentally special about Enoch. The pattern of life, death, life death, is broken for the briefest moment.
The scriptures say this in the fifth chapter, verse twenty-four, “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.”
If he had died as the rest of his forefathers then it would simply say that he died. But this phrasing “walked with God” indicates not simply talking a walk and praying as he does. The specific phrase tells us he had an intimacy with God that was unique. God was more than some figure in his family stories. He was someone Enoch sought after, and walked with. He desired and sought the presence of God and it was granted to him. It was granted even to the point that God brought him into His presence in Heaven.
Only two other figures have been moved physically into heaven; Elijah and Jesus and each was on an amazing level of intimacy with God.
This is my encouragement for you today: Seek God with your whole heart and your whole being. We know form so many scriptures that if we seek Him then He will make Himself found by us. If we want a relationship with the creator of the entire universe, the most powerful being in all existence then guess what…He wants a relationship with you as well. There is no bottom, no end, no stopping point to that relationship with God. It can only get deeper and deeper because His very depth is eternal. And yes…it is possible to be so close to God that He asks if you want to come over to His place.
Finding Narnia 
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