Genesis 4--The Curse of Cain

Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?"

And he said, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?"

He said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to Me from the ground. Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you. You will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth."

Cain said to the LORD, "My punishment is too great to bear! Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground, and from Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me."

So the LORD said to him, "Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold "

And the LORD appointed a sign for Cain, so that no one finding him would slay him.

2 things to note from the dialogue here:

1. The same rebellion in Adam and Eve's response to God's questioning of their actions manifests itself in Cain's initial response to God--except that Cain's response is more openly hostile, while his parents' responses simply amounted to fearful (and rather ill-conceived) attempts to distract God's attention from themselves. Therefore, God's response to Cain--depriving him of home, soil, and livelihood--is far more harsh than his response to Adam and Eve.

Apparently, in Israeli culture, there were degrees of rebellion. We will explore what these degrees may have been at greater depth later, but for now, it is important for us to observe that to God, the attitude of the heart is more important than the words of the mouth.

2. This is the second example we find in the Torah of human beings attempting--and failing--to hide their sins from an all-powerful, and all-seeing God, and it will not be the last. The ancient culture that produced the Torah understood the importance of educating its children to fear and respect God--and how better to do so than by reciting, in as many variations as possible, the methods and creativity applied by various individuals to the project of deceiving God? As we have seen, however, even God's questions (such as "Where are you?" in Genesis 3 and "Where is your brother?" in this chapter) are leading questions--God's way of allowing the perpetrators of sin a chance to come clean.

Unfortunately, the postmodern era in which we live seems as likely to heed the warnings of the Torah in this regard as the ancient Israelis were 3000 years ago.