Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, "I have gotten a manchild with the help of the LORD."
Genesis 4 begins a transition from the archetypal narrative of humanity's "fall" from utopia to the narrative of Israel's departure from the God of the Torah (and its eventual self-destruction) . . . but as we will see, the "transition" is not synonymous with a "stop." Remember that the book of Genesis was part of a 5 book encycylopedia of what it meant to be an Israeli 3000 years ago--and as we will see, a defining characteristic of this book is the lineage (or genealogy) it presents. In this case, Genesis 4 begins with the first birth of a new human being--a promise of hope which Eve must have clung to after the events of Genesis 3.
Indeed, with the birth of every new generation, there seems to be a new sense of hope that a culture or time period will become better, that much-needed changes will occur. Genesis 4, however, establishes clearly what almost anyone older than 25 can readily understand at a passing glance--that far from bringing new hope and promise, each new generation seems to excel at creating new ways of inflicting pain.
These words were written at the beginning of a week when my wife and I were preparing to move from Texas to South Carolina, and they have even more relevance for both of us today than they did 12 days ago.
