Genesis 4 – Let there be kids

Breakdown:

• First child born – Cain.
• Second child born – Abel.
• Abel was keeper of the sheep.
• Cain was a tiller of the ground.
• Cain brought fruit as an offering to God.
• Abel brought the firstlings of his flock and of the fat to the land. 1
• God gave respect to Abel and not Cain.
• Cain was very wroth and his countenance fell.
• God confronts Cain and warns if his countenance continues, sin will prevail and it will rule over him. 2
• Cain went to Abel in the field, rose up and slew him. 3
• God asked Cain about his brother. His blood crieth from the ground and now art cursed from the earth which hath received his blood.
• God told Cain, when thou tillest the ground you shall not gain strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in earth.
• Cain excepts his punishment.
• Lord said whoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold and a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. 4
• Cain left and dwelt in the land of Nod.
• Cain had a wife and kid: Enoch.
• Enoch built a city and named it after himself.
• Enoch begat Irad who had Methusael who begat Lamech.
• Lamech had two wives Adah and Zillah. Adah begat Jabal and Jubal. 5
• Zillah had Tubal-Cain and Naamah.
• Lamech realized that his family bares the curse of Cain – Cain death sevenfold – Lamech will be seventy and sevenfold.
• Adam and eve had another son Seth to replace Abel. 6
• Seth had a son named Enos.

1 – Both Cain and Abel brought offerings to God. This is the first time any mention of offerings of any kind given to God. At this time, there is no reason for the offerings. As read, God has no problem with the offerings and seems to welcome them. What he does with them or why he would want them is unclear. Since he could create anything he desired, I at this time, don’t see the need for giving offerings to God.

2 – Sin is mentioned for the first time. While from my own experiences and from what I have been taught, sin is disobeying the word of God and an evil act. But with the way it’s worded: “sin will prevail and rule over him,” This seems to take a different meaning.

– When looking up the definition of sin I came across a sub definition of the term: “An action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible.”  I think a different way to look at sin is not just as going against God’s word/will, but also a sin could be an extension of ones conscience. Most people, after doing something that is felt as wrong by normal moral standards, our conscience does tend to prevail and rule over us until we try to make it right.  Even going the other way, if one does something that is normally morally wrong and their conscience is not effected, they are still ruled over by their lack of conscience. So to sin could be to attack ones own conscience.

3 – The first murder. How could I not say something about this, since most everyone knows about the first murder. Since there is so much, I won’t say nothing more on the subject.

4 – Whenever Cain dies, He’d feel the pain seven times worse then he normally would feel, straight forward. But if using our current understanding of life/age. For someone to be old enough to recognize Cain, none the less be of a knowing age to commit a murder of another human, you would be looking, reasonably, eighteen years old. Saying Cain was eighteen himself when he committed murder, Cain would be at least thirty six years old by the standards of how we calculate age.

– This is brings up the question of: did God create other humans besides Adam and Eve. It seems to only way anything else would work. Because Adam and Eve were the first, the Bible covers them and probably doesn’t seem it worthy enough to talk about other men and woman created since they are not the first. This has to be, otherwise, Cain going to the land of Nod and having a wife would not be.

– The whole incest thing, I don’t see it. Mostly because I don’t recall ever hearing that Adam and Eve having a girl. I maybe wrong, it maybe mentioned. Even if they did, a couple things have to work to near impossible odds. If I go off the assumption Cain was eighteen when he murdered. With knowing the next child born was Seth, we have to add two years from when Seth was conceived since it’s nine months per child, so two years is a good estimate. If we say fourteen as the age  of puberty and she could get pregnant. That would make Cain thirty four years old. Now it’s not an unreasonable age to have children. But Cain must know she exists, they must find each other, and have no fertility issues. Also, add to the fact that we have to assume Cain is still alive. It’s not mentioned, but I’m sure there was still sickness and infections and with no medicine, Cain could have died beforehand. So I think there is too many odds to happen for the whole incest theory that were are only from Adam and Eve.

5 – Lamech had two wives. No mention if he had them at the same time or not. If he did, maybe they were the first to have a threesome. But this could be the first sign that one can take another wife after losing a wife, either through divorce or death.

– Although there is no setup to taking a wive. So it seems if a man and woman wish to be together, they are man and wife without the ceremony. Lamech found two woman in his lifetime he took to be his wife.

6 – I mentioned earlier about Seth, the next child of Adam and Eve. Also the son of Seth, Enos. With them being quickly mentioned at the end it seems like the writer had some A.D.D issues. He goes on talking about Cain and his family line, the oh yeah, Adam and Eve had another son and he had a kid.

Final Thoughts:

Offerings were of food and animals, so much better than human virgins. Murder will weigh on ones conscience. At some point God created other humans, and either forgot to tell us or we didn’t deem it important enough to put that info into the Bible. A.D.D. has apparently been an issue for a very long time and were only becoming more aware of it.