Open Notes on Genesis 4
• Is Eve arrogant, gloating? She remarks how she made this child, Cain, with some help from God.
• Cain must have been, to some extent, a good man. It seems that he took the initiative to bring his sacrifices to God. He initiated the first worship service on record.
• The reason for God’s response is not completely clear. What is clear is that he gave preference to Abel’s worship over that of Cain.
Is this where differences in “worship styles” began? I think not. The difference seems to have been more substantive than mere style.
• This is definitely the first “worship war.”
• Cain’s emotional response to God’s choice are understandable. We have all known envy and jealousy when someone else was chosen over us, and we, in fact, were rejected.
• God questions Cain, “What is the problem? Why are you so downcast?” This is a relational God. He seeks to restore a good relationship with this man.
• When God asks, are we to assume it is a rhetorical question? If we bring no theological presuppositions, on the face of it the question might be real. Is it possible that God does not know?
• The first death in the Bible is a death by violence. The murder grows out of religion, worship, and the first full-blown expression of human emotion.
• Abel seems to have been and done right in God’s eyes, but God does not protect him from violence. Being good and doing right obviously is not enough. Why did not God intervene on behalf of the man whose worship he was pleased by?
• After the death of Abel, God again appears and questions Cain for his brother’s whereabouts. Rhetorical or substantive question? Is your answer based on a theology established much later, and accepted by you based on some authority?
• Cain is given the opportunity to tell the truth. God does not hold a “kangaroo court.” He is allowed to testify on his behalf. Evidence is presented.
• The evidence against Cain is the blood of his brother that cries out against him–the testimony of the only witness.
• Cain is given a way out, an escape from the sin that crouches at his door. His future is open if he does well. If. That indicates choice, possibility.
• Even in his punishment, God is gracious and merciful. The “Mark of Cain,” is given for his protection.
• From Cain’s descendants the first city is built. Is there any possible link–indirectly--between religious conflict, envy, jealousy, and murder and the building of a city?
• Is this whole creation, especially the image of God creation, working out as God intended it to?
• Is God in control? What does that mean? What kind and what degree of “control,” whatever that is.
• When the United States Senate held hearings about the Watergate Scandal in the early 1970s, Senator Baker from Tennessee asked each involved party, “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” That is an appropriate question to ask in this, one of the earliest narratives of an encounter between God and his human: What did God know, and when did he know it?
• Does Cain have a real choice about doing well and avoiding the sin that crouches at his door?
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I don’t know the answers. I do know the theologically correct answers. I do know what the conventional wisdom has to say. I don’t know the answers. I don’t think we can find easy answers.
Maybe you can. Maybe you have. Maybe you know the answers.
Reread Genesis 4. It gives us things to think on, to meditate on, to pray about, to discuss with each other.
About Me
- WRoark
- Texas, United States
- Professor of Christian Studies and Philosophy for more than thirty years. Author of Think like an Octopus: The Key to Becoming a Good Thinker. Now the blogosphere is my classroom. I am a contrarian, challenger of the status quo, a voice from a differing perspective. When I retired, I took off my watch, my shoes, let others answer the phone, and refuse to hurry, unless life is at stake.
2 comments:
You noted that God asked Cain what was wrong. I've often wondered why we pray and why we share prayer requests at church if God already knows what's going to happen. If he already knows the future, then the result is essentially pre-ordained and our prayers do nothing.
I have come up with only two justifications, one for each. First, we pray more to change our hearts than to change God's plans. (Maybe this is why God asked Cain, rather than telling him, what was wrong: so that Cain would recognize it himself.) Second, we share prayer requests for the social function it serves, forcing congregants to get to know each other, to share each other's burdens and worries, and to take time from our own burdens and worries to consider others'.
So: could the answer be not that God doesn't know what's wrong, but either (a) that he wanted Cain to recognize it himself or (b) that God wanted to express to Cain that the relationship continues, that God wants to help him carry his burden?
such fascinating questions! i plan to ponder them in the next few days but a couple things struck me immediately:
the cause and circumstances of the first death. i had never considered it before but in light of your comments it seems that killing is a religious act and thats quite an unnerving way to understand the matter. yet it was likewise a religious act of murder that brought both justice and redemption to our murderous hearts.
have i a far-fetched grasp of the matter?
the second idea may require a good bit of further study. gods mercy in judgment toward cain does not seem to translate into gods mercy in judgment toward 'the lost' at the culmination of all things when we are told that "if anyones name was not found written in the book of life he was thrown into the lake of fire."
thats somehwat less merciful - or so it seems. have you an understanding of the lake of fire that might reveal gods mercy in it?
thanks for sharing your thots.
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