Genesis 4

1. And the man knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD. And again she bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door: and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain told Abel his brother.

The Book of Genesis, having thus explained the existence of sin on the earth, proceeds to tell of its ravages—murder in the first family—violence overspreading the Old World—a generation of the ungodly swept away by the deluge—sin in Noah’s family immediately after the flood—sin in Sodom and Gomorrah—sin in the families of the patriarchs—sin in Canaan, and sin in Egypt—sin in the dwellers in cities, and sin in the dwellers in tents. To multiply gods, to make idols, to dishonor parents, to kill, to commit adultery, to steal, to lie, to covet—the beginnings of all these sins are found written in Genesis. D. F.

Not less brightly did “the heavens declare the glory of God,” after the Fall, than they did before. For nine hundred and thirty years did the human eye which had first gazed on Paradise in its primal freshness, and the ear which had there listened to the opening burst of its melodies, continue to be regaled by the same music and the same vernal beauty. Even the “thorn and the thistle” (3 : 13) did not less eloquently speak of the perfections of God, because they served at the same time as memorials of the sin of man. “He left not himself without witness,” in that man still found himself in a world, not of mere coincidences, but of speaking signs; a worshipper in a temple whose every object and event possessed a symbolic value, and where the service paused not day nor night. And thus “the invisible things of God from the creation of the world” continued to be “clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and God-head.” The illuminated volume of natural theology continued to invite the attention of mankind till the flood came and quenched in death the eyes that should have read it. J. H.

1. She bare Cain. The more generally received doctrine is known as Creationism. Each soul is an immediate work of the Creator: he is perpetually creating souls out of nothing, and infusing them into bodies. He creates each soul at the moment when the body which is destined for it enters really and properly on its inheritance of life. Creationism recognizes that sense of the immateriality of the human spirit which expressed itself falsely in the doctrine of a pre-existence, and which is so seriously compromised by Traducianism. Personal spirit, it is asserted by the Creationist, cannot be transmitted from one created life to another, like animal vitality. Yet Creationism recognizes the truth for which the Traducianists contended against the advocates of the soul’s pre-existence, when it maintains that the soul and body are strictly contemporaneous in their origin, and that they have profound and ineffaceable relations to each other. H. P. L.

Here the first husband and wife become father and mother. This new relation must be deeply interesting to both, but at first peculiarly so to the mother. Now was begun the fulfilment of the intimations she had received concerning her seed. She was to be the mother of all living. And her seed was to bruise the serpent’s head. Her feelings are manifested in the name given to her son and the reason assigned for it. She “bare Cain and said, I have gained a man from Jehovah.” The gaining or bearing of the child is evidently the prominent thought in Eve’s mind, as she takes the child’s name from this. Prompted by her grateful emotion, she confesses her faith. She also employs a new name to designate her maker. In the dialogue with the tempter she had used the word God (Elohim). But now she adopts Jehovah. In this one word she hides a treasure of comfort. “He is true to his promise. He has not forgotten me.” M.—The term Jehovah thus employed had special reference to the memorable promise regarding “the seed of the woman,” and may indeed be said to originate in the announcement of mercy then made. The name Jehovah had thus a special relation to redemption and the agent through whom the promised deliverance should be accomplished. This is further confirmed by the fact that it is at special epochs in the history of redemption, or in connection with such promises, that it comes most prominently into view; as in the case of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac, and in the deliverance of Israel from Egypt (Ex. 3 : 14), when the import of this name was so fully revealed. In Eve’s case there can be little question that it was in the belief that the previous promise was realized in the birth of Cain. D. M.

2. His brother Abel.** Abel means breath, vanity. Does a sense of the vanity of earthly things grow in the minds of our first parents? Has the mother found her sorrow multiplied? Has she had many daughters be tween these sons? Is there something delicate and fragile in the appearance of Abel? Has Cain disappointed a mother’s hopes? Some of these thoughts may have prompted the name. M.—Two of the children of Adam and Eve are alone mentioned: Cain and Abel. Not that there were no others, but that the progress of Scripture history is connected with these two. For the Bible does not profess to give a detailed history of the world, nor even a complete biography of those persons whom it introduces. Its object is to set before us a history of the kingdom of God, and it only describes such persons and events as is necessary for that purpose. A. E.

2. When the two had grown to be men, they chose their callings in life—Cain turning to agriculture; Abel to a pastoral life. No interval of “utter degeneracy” is sanctioned in the Scripture account of the first men; no dismal age of living on roots and shell-fish, or the produce of the chase, as naked savages; they begin in Eden, to work it and watch it; after the Fall they turn to the tillage of the field and the rearing and tending of sheep; occupations from which an advance to other forms of civilization was easy. Geikie.—In the occupation of these two sons of Adam, we trace the two great branches of productive industry pursued by men in an early stage of society. “Abel was a keeper (or feeder) of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.” Here are the beginnings of the pastoral and agricultural modes of life. P. S.—Man in his primitive state was not a mere gatherer of acorns, a hunter, or a nomad. He began with horticulture, the highest form of rural life. After the fall he descended to the culture of the field and the tending of cattle; but still he had a home and a settled mode of living. It is only by a third step that he degenerates to the wandering and barbarous state of existence. And only by the predominance of might over right, the selfish lust of power, and the clever combinations of rampant ambition, comes that form of society in which the highest state of barbaric civilization and the lowest depth of bondage and misery meet. M.

3. In process of time.** As there was a worship appointed before Jehovah’s presence, there was also a special sacred time appointed for it; so that in his cares in tilling the ground and his weariness from having to eat his bread “in the sweat of his brow,” the worship should not be neglected. “At the end of days,” says the Hebrew, Cain and Abel brought their offerings. When it is remembered that already the seventh day had been ordained of God, even before Eden: that we find the division of time into periods of seven days universal, though there is no mark in nature, as in the case of days and months and years for such division; and that subsequently the seventh day was thus specially reordained of God, there is no room left for doubt that this “end of days” was the end of the week—the Sabbath day—on which Adam had taught his sons to come for special worship before Jehovah. An offering unto the Lord. Unless man had been expressly taught to worship God by sacrifices, why should they have presented themselves before God, each with his offering? What should have induced Cain to bring his “offering,” even of the fruits of the earth, unless some Divine order had established the offering as an ordinance of worship? S. R.—The cherubim were located in a particular spot, on the east of the garden of Eden; and as the symbols of God’s presence were there, it was only natural that the celebration of divine worship should there also have found its common centre. Hence the two sons of Adam are said to have “brought their offerings unto the Lord”—which can scarcely be understood otherwise than as pointing to that particular locality which was hallowed by visible symbols of the Lord’s presence, and in the neighborhood of which life and blessing still lingered. P. F.

Cain, the fruit of the ground. 4. Abel, also the firstlings of his flock. A gospel had been preached in Eden of a coming Redeemer. A worship had been instituted—a time and place of worship—even before the cherubim and the ineffable brightness at the barred gate of Eden, just as afterward the church worshipped before the cherubim and the brightness upon the mercy-seat. The two sons have been reared under that gospel worship. And now, as representatives of the two great classes into which the race is to be divided—the believers and the unbelieving—they present themselves before Jehovah to worship. There is no wide chasm, ostensibly separating the worshippers any more than in our day between the worshippers according to faith and the worshippers according to reason. Abel, in accordance with his training in the faith, brings his lamb. The apostle declares that it was “by faith” Abel offered the sacrifice and received therein testimony that he was righteous. And Jesus calls him expressly the “righteous Abel;” for he, of all sinners, received the visible assurance of his justification from God. Cain comes also as a worshipper of the same Jehovah at the same time, and, to a large extent, worshipping in the same manner, for in the ritual of worship afterward instituted in the Church, such offering of fruits or corn-sheaves were made a part of the service. Wherein then, the great difference? Just the wide difference that lurks still between the spiritual worship of faith and the worship of rationalism which seems so much the same. The important element in all worship was wanting, the recognition of the great fact of a fallen humanity and of a mediator and atonement for sin. Cain was the first rationalist. Not feeling any burden of sin, not recognizing any fall, he can see no need of any offering of atonement for sin. S. R.

Considered merely as eucharistic offerings, Cain’s fruits, the products of his own tillage, were not less appropriate than the firstlings of Abel’s flock. The only inference is, that the reason of the Divine preference of Abel’s sacrifice lay in its piacular nature; that Cain, though sinful like his brother and needing forgiveness, ignored the awful fact of his guilt, and thus converted his professed homage into an act of impenitence and insult. J. H.—“By faith Abel offered unto God.” Now the simplest idea of faith, the one element always present in it, is bowing to God’s authority with implicit confidence in his word. But in this case bowing to God’s authority implies that God had given some word in reference to bloody sacrifices—the offering of a lamb by shedding its blood upon the altar. And if God had given any such word of command, it is certainly to be presumed that he had also given at least this general idea, that the blood of the innocent lamb took, in some sense, the place of the blood of the guilty offerer, so that the sacrifice would imply the confession of guilt, and also faith in a bloody substitute of the Lord’s own providing. H. C.—“A more excellent sacrifice than Cain,” or as Wicklif’s translation with more literal exactness renders it, “a much more sacrifice,” i.e., a more full or complete sacrifice. Here by declaring the offering of Abel to have been made by faith, the writer teaches by necessary implication that Cain’s offering was not made by faith, and hence undoubtedly it is that the sacrifice of Abel is said to have been more full, complete, and excellent than Cain’s. It was distinguished by a principle which the other lacked. Bush.

Cain’s was only a sacrifice of acknowledgment offered to the Creator: the meat-offerings of the fruit of the ground were no more, and might have been offered in innocency: but Abel brought a sacrifice of atonement, the blood whereof was shed in order to remission: thereby owning himself a sinner, deprecating God’s wrath, and imploring his favor in a Mediator. H.—The fruit of the soil offered to God is an acknowledgment that the means of this earthly life are due to him. This expresses the barren faith of Cain, but not the living faith of Abel. The latter has entered deeply into the thought that life itself is forfeited to God by transgression, and that only by an act of mercy can the Author of life restore it to the penitent, trusting, submissive, loving heart. He slays the animal as a victim, thereby acknowledging that his life is due for sin; he offers the life of the animal in token that another life, equivalent to his own, is due to justice if he is to go free by the mercy of God. Such a thought as this is fairly deducible from the facts on the surface of our record. M.—Cain is presented to our view as a child of nature, not of grace—as one obeying the impulse and direction only of reason, and rejecting the more explicit light of faith as to the kind of service he presented to his Maker. His oblation is an undoubted specimen of what man could do in his fallen state to originate proper ideas of God, and give fitting expression to these in outward acts of worship. But unhappily for the advocates of nature’s sufficiency in the matter, it stands condemned in the inspired record as a presumptuous and disallowed act of will-worship. Abel, on the other hand, appears as one who through grace had become a child of faith, and by faith first spiritually discerning the mind of God, then reverently following the course it dictated by presenting that more excellent sacrifice of the firstlings of the flock, with which God was well pleased. P. F.

Here, at the threshold of the development of mankind, we come upon the mystery of 4000 years—the institution of SACRIFICES. What was their origin, and whence the strange accord by which sacrifices are the central point in the religion of all ancient peoples? Manifestly the Biblical record does not give us light on this subject, but at the same time it seems to imply that God had given instructions concerning, and that He had instituted, this ordinance. K.

If we admit that when God had ordained the deliverance of man, he had ordained the means: if we admit that Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; what memorial could be devised more apposite than that of animal sacrifice?—exemplifying, by the slaying of the victim, the death which had been denounced against man’s disobedience: thus exhibiting the awful lesson of that death which was the wages of sin, and at the same time representing that death which was actually to be undergone by the Redeemer of mankind; and hereby connecting in one view the two great cardinal events in the history of man, the FALL, and the RECOVERY: the death denounced against sin, and the death appointed for that Holy One who was to lay down his life to deliver man from the consequences of sin. The institution of animal sacrifice seems then to have contained all the elements of religious knowledge. The adoption of this rite would imply an humble sense of unworthiness of the offerer; a confession that death, inflicted on the victim, was the desert of transgression; a reliance upon the promises of deliverance, and an acquiescence in the means for its accomplishment. The sacrifice of Abel was an animal sacrifice. This sacrifice was accepted. The ground of this acceptance was the faith in which it was offered. Scripture assigns no other object of this faith but the promise of a Redeemer: and of this faith the offering of an animal in sacrifice appears to have been the legitimate and consequently the instituted expression. The institution of animal sacrifice, then, was coeval with the fall, and had a reference to the sacrifice of our redemption. And thus SACRIFICE appears to have been ordained as a standing memorial of the death introduced by sin, and of that death which was to be suffered by the Redeemer. Magee.

As the promise to Eve was the first dawn of gospel light in prophecy, so the institution of sacrifices was the first hint of it in types. The giving of that promise was the first thing that was done after the fall in Christ’s prophetic office; the institution of sacrifices was the first thing by which especially Christ exhibited himself in his priestly office. For the sacrifices of the Old Testament were the main of all the Old Testament types of Christ and his redemption; and it tended to establish in the minds of God’s visible church the necessity of a propitiatory sacrifice, in order to the Deity’s being satisfied for sin; and so prepared the way for the reception of the glorious gospel, that reveals the great sacrifice in the visible church, and not only so, but through the world of mankind. For from this institution of sacrifices all nations derived the custom of sacrificing. Edwards.

That sacrifices were not of human invention, but of Divine institution, appears morally certain from such considerations as these: 1. It is not antecedently probable that God would leave man in ignorance of the manner in which he should acceptably worship Him; and yet the first act of acceptable worship which we find man performing is that of animal sacrifice. 2. This improbability is greatly increased by the fact that God had not only inspired man with hope by the language of promise, but had even condescended to instruct him to clothe his body with a skin-vesture; and surely He who thus condescended to meet man’s bodily wants would not abandon him to his own inventions respecting the cravings of his higher nature. 3. The universality of expiatory offerings proves man’s deep consciousness of such a want; and yet, if they were not divinely appointed, no provision was made to meet the exigence. 4. If God had left man uninstructed, it is not likely that man would have so early devised any settled method of his own for approaching God; yet here we find the first members of the first family coming before the Lord with offerings as their familiar, established, and only mode of worship. 5. Of all methods of worship, that of shedding blood—of sacrificing an animal—is one of the least likely to have originated in the human mind; and yet here we find a member of the first family—one who had probably never slaughtered an animal for himself—rejecting the more simple and natural oblation of fruits and flowers, and confidently calculating on pleasing God by putting an animal to death. 6. The Divine acceptance of the first sacrifice on record confirms the conviction that the rite was not a human invention, but a Divine appointment. These considerations are confirmed by the significance or symbolical nature of sacrifice. The fundamental idea of sacrifice cannot be that of a gift merely, as an expression of gratitude. Before Adam sinned he was himself an offering, and hence had no need of an offering. But the union of man’s will with the will of God no longer existed; sin had dissevered it. The only offering which could now be relevant was one in which man might plead guilty to his disturbed relationship with God, and earnestly aim at reparation. Hence the idea lying at the foundation of all sacrificial worship was that of self-surrender, by substitution, and in the hope of pardon—a deep consciousness of having merited the death inflicted on the vicarious animal, and an intense desire that the insulted Deity would accept the immolation as a means of compensation. It was an acted deprecation, for a reason. Springing from the requirements of holiness in the Divine nature, it responded to the cries of conscience in the human nature. The two natures could not be satisfied with less. Deep called unto deep, “without the shedding of blood is no remission of sins.” And, hence, the purest sacrifice was preferred, not only as the most worthy of the recipient, but also as the furthest removed from the guilty condition of the offerer, and most condemnatory of it; and the costliest sacrifice, as most expressive of the fact that there was nothing which he had not forfeited, and which might not have been demanded; and the most voluntary, as that alone which could express the idea of self-abnegation—of the offerer “divesting himself of his own subjectivity” and surrendering his “innermost” to God;—all vividly denoting the idea which forms the essence of true religion—the offering up of self—the readjustment once more, by subordination, of our will to the Divine will, and the consequent recovery of a Divine life. Subjectively, then, the institution of sacrifice finds its reason in man’s deep consciousness of guilt and desire of reunion with the Supreme will; and, objectively, in a Divine appointment of holiness and mercy which made such restoration possible. J. H.

4. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.** Herein are the true footsteps of grace discovered; the person must be the first in favor of God—the person first, the performance afterward: for though it be true among men that the gift makes way for the acceptance of the person, yet in the order of grace it is after another manner; for if the person be not first accepted, the offering must be abominable; for it is not a good work that makes a good man, but a good man makes a good work. The fruit does not make a good tree, but a good tree bringeth forth good fruit. Abel then presented his person and offering, as shrouding both by faith under the righteousness of Christ, which lay wrapped up in the promise; but Cain stands upon his own righteousness and so presents his offering. Abel therefore is accepted, both his person and offering, while Cain remains accursed. Bunyan.

Thenceforth, sacrifice presented after the manner of Abel’s might be regarded as of divine authority. Whatever uncertainty might hang around it during the brief space which intervened between the fall and the time of Abel’s accepted offering, it was from that time determined to be a mode of worship with which God was well pleased. We might rather say the mode of worship; for sacrifice, accompanied with words of prayer, is the only stated act of worship by which believers in the earlier ages appear to have given formal expression to their faith and hope in God. When it is said of the times of Enos, that “then men began to call upon the name of the Lord,” there can be little doubt that they did so after the example of Abel, by the presentation of sacrifice. That sacrifice held the same place in the instituted worship of God after the deluge we learn from the case of Noah, who offered burnt-offerings of every clean beast and fowl, from which the Lord is said to have smelled a sweet savor. From the time of Abel, then, downward through the whole course of antediluvian and patriarchal history, it appears that the regular and formal worship of God mainly consisted in the offering of sacrifice with the known sanction and virtual appointment of God.

For us, who from the high vantage-ground of a finished redemption can look back upon the temporary institutions that foreshadowed it, there is neither darkness nor uncertainty respecting the prophetic import of the primeval rite of sacrifice. We perceive there in the germ the fundamental truth of that scheme of grace which was to provide for the complete and final restoration of a seed of blessing—the truth of a suffering Mediator, giving His life a ransom for many.

5. Cain was wroth.** The practical religion generally corresponds with the creed. The amiable offerer of fruits and flowers, with his more gentle conceptions of God, could, notwithstanding, get very wroth. So experience has taught the world since. The natural amiableness that demands a soft and soothing view of God, as too good to punish, can yet grow very wroth when the issue comes between its creed and the gospel creed of an atonement. S. R.—What then was the occasion of this capital malice? Abel’s sacrifice is accepted; what was this to Cain? Cain’s is rejected; how could Abel remedy this? O envy, the corrosive of all ill minds, and the root of all desperate actions: the same cause that moved Satan to tempt the first man to destroy himself and his posterity, moves the second man to destroy the third. It should have been Cain’s joy to see his brother accepted; it should have been his sorrow to see that himself had deserved a rejection: his brother’s example should have excited and directed him. Could Abel have stayed God’s fire from descending? Was Cain ever the further from a blessing, because his brother obtained mercy? Bp. H.—That envy is most malignant which is like Cain’s, who envied his brother because his sacrifice was better accepted, when there was nobody but God to look on. Bacon.

6,7. God is here reasoning with Cain, to convince him of the sin and folly of his anger and discontent, and to bring him into a good temper again, that further mischief might be prevented. It is an instance of God’s patience and condescending goodness, that he would deal thus tenderly with so bad a man in so bad an affair. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Thus the father of the prodigal argued the case with the elder son. And God with those Israelites, who said, The way of the Lord is not equal (Ez. 18 : 25). God puts Cain himself upon inquiring into the cause of his discontent, and considering whether it were indeed a just cause, Why is thy countenance fallen? Observe, that God takes notice of all our sinful passions and discontents. There is not an angry look, an envious or a fretful look, that escapes his observing eye. H.

7. Sin coucheth at the door.** That is to say, the Divine warning to Cain is, that while he is nursing his angry jealous thoughts, Sin, like a ravening beast, as crafty as it is cruel, is crouching outside the door of his heart, only waiting for the door to be opened by any touch of passion to spring in; and he is admonished to keep the door shut lest he be overcome of evil. Cox.—Sin lying at the door is an Eastern figure. Ask a man who is unacquainted with Scripture, what he understands by sin lying at the threshold of the door; he will immediately speak of it as the guilt of some great crime which the owner had committed. Roberts.—“Sin lies in ambush, like a wild beast, at the door of thy dwelling, that it may spring upon thee when thou goest forth.” When the inward declension from God has taken place, an opportunity only is required in order that “lust, after it has conceived, may bring forth sin;” and so the sinful desire may break forth into the sinful deed. Gert.—Sin past, in its unrequited and unacknowledged guilt; sin present, in its dark and stubborn passion and despair; but, above all, sin future, as the growing habit of a soul that persists in an evil temper, and therefore must add iniquity unto iniquity, is awaiting thee at the door. This dread warning to Cain, expressed in the plainest terms, is a standing lesson for all mankind. Let him who is in the wrong retract at once, and return to God with humble acknowledgment of his own guilt, and unreserved submission to the mercy of his Maker; for to him who perseveres in sin there can be no hope or help. M.—There is no inexorable destiny, as some falsely assert, which constrains us to anything evil, so long as we do not ourselves will it; temptation comes no further than the door, if we do not with our own hands remove the bolts. Van O.—If sin be harbored in the house, the curse waits at the door, like a bailiff, ready to arrest the sinner whenever he looks out. It lies as if it slept, but it lies at the door where it will soon be awaked, and then it will appear that the damnation slumbered not. Sin will find thee out (Num. 32 : 23). H.—God talks with Cain as with a sullen child; unriddles to him what slumbers in his heart, and like a beast of prey is lurking at the door. The near approach of sin could not be more truly or more fearfully pictured. And what God did with Cain, that he does with every one, if he will but give heed to his own heart, and to the voice of God. Herder.

The moment we let down the standard of Christian action, the moment we mingle with the world as those impelled by no higher and holier purposes, the moment we perform our duties with no thought of their relation to God, that moment we are exposed to fall. The love of gain, an unholy ambition, a selfishness that tramples under foot the rights of our neighbor, or some other of the passions that lie in wait for the defenceless citadel may come in and usurp our best affections, and drive religion from its throne. The true remedy for inconsistent, unfaithful Christians is an immediate and active engagedness in all the duties of religion. If sin has gained possession of thy soul, the only way to drive him from thee is by engaging in those duties of which he shuns the sight; and feeling “how awful goodness is,” he will shrink away and trouble thee no more. Homer. — He who warned Cain that the croucher was at his door, would have helped Cain to repel him. He who warns us that sin is our subtle and implacable antagonist, will help us to detect its wiles and to withstand its assaults. It only needs that Christ show himself on our side, and evil will not court another overthrow. Behold He stands at the door—the door so often opened to the croucher—and knocks: and if any man hear his voice, and open the door, He will come in, treading in the steps of the croucher, and with his pure and blessed feet obliterating the foul tracks of evil, making our purified hearts temples not all unmeet for his presence and service and praise. We have only to bid Him enter, and the victor over sin will give us the victory. Cox.

And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, 9 and slew him. And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I 10 know not: am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy 11 brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now cursed art thou from the ground, 12 which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a wanderer 13 shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I 14 can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the ground; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth; and it shall 15 come to pass, that whosoever findeth me shall slay me. And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD appointed a sign for Cain, lest any finding him should smite him. 16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east 17 of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a 18 city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch. And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat 19 Lamech. And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the 20 name of the other Zillah. And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents 21 and have cattle. And his brother’s name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle 22 the harp and pipe. And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-cain, the forger of every cutting instru-

23 ment of brass and iron : and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. And Lamech said unto his wives :

Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech :

For I have slain a man for wounding me, and a young man for bruising me :

24. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.

8. Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.** The murderous deed of Cain affords a terrible illustration of the words in which the Lord Jesus has taught us, that angry bitter feelings against a brother are in reality murder, showing us what is, so to speak, the full outcome of self-willedness, of anger, envy, and jealousy. A. E.—When they were in the field, and therefore out of view, he rose up against his brother and slew him. The deed is done that cannot be recalled. Selfishness, wounded pride, jealousy, and a guilty conscience were all at work. Here, then, is sin following upon sin, proving the truth of the warning given in the merciful forbearance of God. M.—Of a creature, come fresh, living, and pure from the beneficent Creator’s hands, the least we can think is that there must have been in his soul the principle of all kind affections,—all benevolent sympathies ; a disposition to be happier for the happiness of a kindred being ; a delight in promoting it ; a sense of reciprocal right,—of benevolent justice ; no tincture of a wrongful selfishness ; a state of feeling that would have been struck with horror at the thought of inflicting suffering. Yet in this original family, in the very first degree of the descent, malignity and slaughter began. Men may argue and quibble as long as it will amuse them against our notion of “the Fall."—Here was Fall enough !—and demonstration enough—how deep ! J. F.

This is the first triumph of Satan ; it is not merely a death that he has introduced, but a violent one, as the first-fruits of sin. It is not the death of an ordinary person ; but of the most holy man then in being : it is not brought about by the providence of God or by a gradual failure and destruction of the earthly fabric, but a violent separation of body and soul : it is not done by a common enemy, but by the hand of a brother ; and for no other reason than this, the object of his envy was more righteous than himself. Alas ! how exceeding sinful does sin appear in its first manifestation ! A. C.—The first man that ever was born is represented as a murderer ; and the first person that ever died, as murdered. These were the effects of Adam’s transgression. The guilt of it was manifested in his first-born, and its destructive consequences in his second. Bp. Conybeare.

As Abel leads the van in the noble army of martyrs, so Cain stands in the front of the ignoble army of persecutors (Jude 11). So early did he that was after the flesh persecute him that was after the spirit ; so it is now, and so it will be till the war shall end in the eternal salvation of all the saints and the eternal perdition of all that hate them. See what comes of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness ; if they be indulged and cherished in the soul they are in danger of involving men in the guilt of murder itself. Rash anger is heart-murder (Matt. 5 : 21, 22). Much more is malice so ; he that hates his brother is already a murderer before God ; and if God leave him to himself he wants nothing but an opportunity of being a murderer before the world. Many were the aggravations of Cain’s sin. It was his own brother that he murdered ; his own mother’s son, whom he ought to have loved ; his younger brother, whom he ought to have protected. He was a good brother ; one who had never given him the least provocation ; but one whose desire had been always toward him. That which the scripture tells us was the reason for which he slew him was a sufficient aggravation of the murder ; it was because his own works were evil and his brother’s righteous, so that herein he showed himself to be of that wicked one (1 John 3 : 12). In killing his brother he directly struck at God himself ; for God accepting of Abel was the provocation pretended ; and for that very reason he hated Abel, because God loved him. . . . Death reigned ever since Adam sinned, but we read not of any taken captive by him till now ; and now the first that dies is a saint, one that was accepted and beloved of God ; to show that though the promised Seed was so far to destroy him that had the power of death as to save believers from its sting, yet that still they should be exposed to its stroke. The first that went to the grave went to heaven ; God would secure to himself the first-fruits, the first-born to the dead. The first that dies is a martyr and dies for his religion ; and of such it may more truly be said than of soldiers, that they die in the field of honor. Abel’s death has not only no curse in it, but it has a crown in it. H.

Who dare measure God’s love by outward events, when he sees wicked Cain standing over bleeding Abel ; whose sacrifice was first accepted, and now himself is sacrificed? Death was denounced to man as a curse; yet, behold, it first lights upon a saint; how soon was it altered by the mercy of that just hand which indicted it! If death had been evil and life good, Cain had been slain and Abel had survived; now that it begins with him that God loves, “O death, where is thy sting?” Bp. H.—The early death of Abel can be no punishment; he seemed in fact to enjoy the peculiar favor of God; his offering was graciously accepted. We find, therefore, in this narrative the great and beautiful thought, that life is not the highest boon; that the pious find a better existence and a more blessed reward in another and a purer sphere; but that crime and guilt are the greatest evils; that they are punished by a long and wearisome life, full of fear and care and compunction of conscience. Kalisch.

We cannot conceive that the circumstances attending this first infliction of death upon man could have been ordered by providence so as to testify more plainly the great truth of a future state of recompense, had this been the sole purpose for which they were designed. To conceive that a just and merciful God should openly approve the sacrifice of Abel, and yet permit him, in consequence of that very action, to suffer a cruel death, which put a final period to his existence; while his murderer, whom the same God openly condemned, was yet permitted to live; all this is so contradictory to the divine attributes, as to prove beyond possibility of doubt that this event was permitted to take place, partly at least, in order to show that death was not a final extinction of being, but a passage from this world to another where the righteous should be recompensed for their adherence to the will of their heavenly father, in opposition to suffering and death, by a sure and eternal reward. Graves.—The patriarchs before and after Job, and the Israelites before Christ, had a notion of a future state. By sacrifices was plainly shown that a way was open to the divine favor and acceptance; and the favor of God imports happiness; which to Abel, who because he was accepted of God was unjustly slain, could be only in a future state; and dying on account of that faith “he speaketh” an invisible future state of reward. Bp. Taylor.—It is clearly expressed in the Pentateuch that the relation of the righteous to God is not cancelled after death. The blood of the murdered Abel cries to God. The relation into which God entered with the patriarchs continues; for, long after the patriarchs had fallen asleep, he calls himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and

Jacob. “But God is not a God of the dead, but of the living.” To him who has an eternal value for God an eternal existence is assured. O.

9. Where is Abel thy brother? This reminds us of the question put to the hiding Adam, “Where art thou?” It is calculated to strike the conscience. The reply is different from that of Adam. The sin has now advanced from hasty, incautious yielding to the tempter, to reiterated and deliberate disobedience. Such a sinner must take different ground. Cain, therefore, attempts to parry the question, apparently on the vain supposition that no eye, not even that of the All-seeing, was present to witness the deed. “I know not.” In the madness of his confusion he goes further. He disputes the right of the Almighty to make the demand. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” There is, as usual, an atom of truth mingled with the amazing falsehood of this response. No man is the absolute keeper of his brother, so as to be responsible for his safety when he is not present. This is what Cain means to insinuate. But every man is his brother’s keeper so far that he is not himself to lay the hand of violence on him, nor suffer another to do so if he can hinder it. This sort of keeping the Almighty has a right to demand of every one,—the first part of it on the ground of mere justice, the second on that of love. But Cain’s reply betrays a desperate resort to falsehood, a total estrangement of feeling, a quenching of brotherly love, a predominance of that selfishness which freezes affection and kindles hatred. This is the way of Cain (Jude 11). M.—Those are strangely blind that think it possible to conceal their sins from a God that sees all; and those are strangely hard that think it desirable to conceal them from a God who pardons those only that confess. He impudently charges his Judge with folly and injustice, in putting this question to him, Am I my brother’s keeper? H.—We see here, in the sin and in the defiant, hardened state after its completion, as in comparison with Adam’s, the progress of corruption. Gerl.—For this complication of crimes, envy, which led him to murder his brother, and then to attempt to hide it by a lie, and by an insolent rebellious answer to God, Cain is styled in the New Testament, a child “of that wicked one” (1 John 3:12), as imitating his works, who through envy seduced our first parents, and was a “liar” and a “murderer” from the beginning. Hales.

With regard to worldly concerns, men are proud to acknowledge their power over each other; they make it their boast. But go to such a boaster and ask him what he has done for the souls of his fellow-men; whether he has ever communicated one spiritual truth; whether there has been a religious power speaking forth from his life; whether, in short, the world is any better for his living in it; and he will start from you with surprise, and the language you read in his perturbed countenance is, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Homer.

11. Cursed art thou.** The first record of justice that was in the world was a judgment upon a murderer, in the person of Adam’s first-born, Cain; and though it was not punished by death, but with banishment and mark of ignominy, in respect of the primogeniture or population of the world or other points of God’s secret decree, yet it was judged, and was the first record of justice. Bacon.—The curse of Adam’s disobedience terminated on the ground, Cursed is the ground for thy sake; but that for Cain’s rebellion fell immediately upon himself, Thou art cursed. The wickedness of the wicked brings a curse upon all they do, and all they have, and that curse embitters all they have, and disappoints them in all they do. H.

14. From the face of the land.** The home of his childhood and his fathers. From thy face shall I be hid. That is, from the place of God’s special presence, from the seat of his worship, from the habitation of his Shechinah, from the society of his father and family, and consequently from the only church which God then had upon earth. It was therefore a virtual excommunication from the highest religious privileges which could then be enjoyed. If this be the import of the words (and we know of none so probable), it implies that the worship of God was there kept up, and that God was with them. Bush.—Every one that findeth me shall slay me. To the lawless, vindictive Cain, nothing would be more natural than the thought that somewhere in the unknown waste there might be beings like himself, and who might be as malignant to him as he had been to his slain brother. We may say, too, that Cain’s awful guilt gave a preternatural power to his imagination. T. L.

It is clear from the language of the fratricide, that communion with God had been hitherto maintained in a given locality—that in that scene of the Shechinah Cain now expected his complaint to be heard and answered, but that, if exiled beyond its precincts, he should be driven forth beyond the circle sacred to the worship of God, and to the visible displays of His presence. Upward of a century had then elapsed from the hour of the Fall, and numerous children had probably been born meanwhile, and here, during the long interval, God had graciously met with His first human worshippers, ‘from between the cherubim,’ and ‘communed with’ them. J. H.

According to hints gathered from ver. 25, the murder of Abel probably took place just before the birth of Seth, i.e., 130 years after the creation of man. We need not suppose that Cain, Abel, and Seth were the only sons of Adam. From Gen. 5:4, we infer that there were others. Cain, Abel, and Seth are mentioned for obvious reasons; Abel for his piety and his early death, Cain for his wickedness and the worldly wisdom of his posterity, Seth because he was the ancestor of the promised seed. There may then, in 130 years, have grown up a very considerable number of children and grandchildren to Adam and Eve. E. H. B.—Cain and Abel may have had a considerable number of children and grandchildren at this time; and allowing for other possible children of Adam and Eve, there must have been at the time a considerable number of persons in the world—quite sufficient to account for Cain’s dread of being slain for the murder of Abel; and also for his building a city soon after his migration. Kit.

14. Whosoever findeth me shall slay me.** He that feared not to kill his brother, fears now that whosoever meets him will kill him. The troubled conscience projecteth fearful things, and sin makes even cruel men cowardly. How bitter is the end of sin, yea, without end! Cain finds that he killed himself more than his brother. We should never sin if our foresight were but as good as our sense: the issue of sin would appear a thousand times more horrible than the act is pleasant. Bp. H.—And in the remorse and terror that weighed him down and chased him through the land of ‘wandering,’ haunted by the presence of God and the threatening spectral hand of man, and that made him build his fenced city or stronghold, like some medieval robber’s castle, we read by anticipation the vivid pictures of the masters of tragedy and romance, or the facts of actual occurrence. S. C. B.—Mr. Webster, in the trial of the Knapps, described not the extraordinary, but the normal and ordinary workings of conscience in all ages, and for all crimes. ‘He had done the murder. No eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe, Ah, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. True, it is, that, generally speaking, ‘murder will out.’ Every murderer, like the first one, feels that every man’s hand is against him. The guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It must be confessed. It will be confessed. There is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.’ Townsend.

15. We are to bear in mind that God still held the sword of justice in his own immediate hands, and had not delegated his authority to any human tribunal. It is plain that no man has an inherent right to inflict the sanction of a broken law on the transgressor. This right belongs to the Creator, and derivatively only to those whom he has intrusted with the dispensation of civil government according to established laws. The whole dealing of the Almighty was calculated to have a softening, conscience-awakening, and hope-inspiring effect on the murderer’s heart. M.

The Lord declares that if any one should follow Cain’s example, he shall incur a far heavier penalty, as he ought to have been taught by him how horrible the crime was in God’s sight.—Appointed a sign. Not put a mark on him, but He gave him a sign as a pledge of His promise, by means of which Cain gained confidence, and felt himself secure notwithstanding his banishment. Gerl.—Accordingly it is well rendered in the Greek, ‘God set a sign before Cain to persuade him that whosoever should find him should not kill him.’ As to its being a visible mark, brand, or stigma affixed to his person, there is no ground whatever for such an opinion. Bush.

The rejection of Cain and the acceptance of Abel was a rehearsal, in the morning of time, of the final judgment. ‘This (says F. von Schlegel) is the leading subject of primitive history—the struggle between two races—the first great event in universal history.’ It commenced the grand classification of mankind; and implied that all other distinctions are to be merged in the two great classes of the obedient and the disobedient. J. H.

16. Went out from the presence of the Lord. The story of Cain is the story of all ages. Sin, suffering; the one following the other by a law fixed and imperative like that by which pain agonizes a burning hand. So far as the narrative informs us, the suffering of the first murderer was mental suffering. Disease did not blast him, chains did not bind him. He went his way like other men. He had sons and daughters; he built the first city known in history. Tradition says that he founded many cities and became the head of a great empire. Yet Cain lived a life of conscious curse. The serpents coiled within. Cursed in thought and in feeling, cursed in fears and in blasted hopes, cursed in one long despair: such was life to the first man who bore the fruit of the first matured and ripened sin. And such will be the life of the last man who shall go out from the presence of the Lord, bearing the burden of a finished crime unrepented of and unforgiven. Phelps.

16. Went from the presence of the Lord. Signifies going away from the visible symbol of Divine presence in the Cherubim and the brightness as of a gleaming sword, and from the society of the worshippers of Jehovah. In this Cherubim and brightness set up at the east of Eden is the original of the Shechinah of the dispensation of Moses; the symbol of the Divine presence, as seen in the visions of David and Ezekiel, all of which reappear in the visions of John through ’the door opened in heaven,’ where the four living creatures that stand around the throne about which are the four and twenty elders and those countless myriads of worshippers who sing ‘salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.’ It is of special interest, and it throws important light on some of the more intricate portions of the Word of God, to mark this identity of outward worship through the history from the dawn of time onward into the heart of the eternity to come. At the same time this marked identity between the first worship and all succeeding worships reflects light upon this saying: ‘Went out from the presence of Jehovah.’ It shows that it signified a going forth, as an apostate wanderer, from the society that ‘called upon the name of the Lord.’ The conflict began between the two men first born of the earth, according to the prediction, becomes a conflict of races, on through successive generations, till the earth, brought under the dominion of the seed of the devil, all, save a single family, is swept away by the waters of vengeance. S. R.—Cain departed from God and seemed to get on well for a while. He built cities, sought out many inventions, his family prospered in the world: their whole life seemed to show how well man can get on without God. And the end of it was ’the flood came,’ and ’they were drowned.’ An.

17. He builded a city. This furnishes evidence that houses were earlier than tents, towns than encampments, and the settled than the nomad life. The origin of the tent-dwelling life is afterward ascribed to a period long subsequent—the fifth generation from Cain. This is not in accordance with the hypothesis of those who contend that man advanced progressively out of the savage state. In the true record, the first-born man builds a city, and the tent comes later by more than a thousand years. Kit.—The first men were not wandering and ignorant savages, although those who wandered from the parent stock and ceased to have any connection with it, generally fell into a state of barbarism and ignorance. Science, arts, and civilization were confined to those who maintained their connection with the central stock of the first men, or departed in numbers sufficient to enable them to exercise and carry along with them the subdivisions of art and labor necessary to civilized life. R. Forsyth.

19-24. The posterity of Cain follow in the course of estrangement from God on which their ancestor had entered. They invent arts, and they devise the pleasures of life. The Cainite Lamech introduces polygamy, and boastingly confides in his own strength, as in his God. His son Jabal was the ancestor of the nomadic tribes which dwell in tents. Jabal invented stringed and wind instruments, Tobal-Cain was “instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.” These statements, as well as the names of his daughter Naamah (the lovely), and of his wives Adah (ornament, beauty), and Zillah (shade), furnish abundant indications of the peculiar development in the family of Cain. K.

Cain’s tendency to trust in his own wit and strength, rather than in the Divine goodness which even his sin could not alienate, rose to its full height in Lamech and his family; the intermediate steps of the progress being passed over by the sacred historian in the case of the Cainites as in that of the Sethites. Lamech is the seventh from Adam through Cain, just as Enoch is seventh from Adam through Seth; and as in Enoch the characteristics of the line of Seth came to a head, so also the characteristics of the line of Cain came to a head in Lamech and his children. They invent the arts, but they also serve the lusts of the flesh. While the Sethites rise into “sons of God,” the Cainites, despite their grand gifts, sink into mere “children of men.” Cox.

19. Lamech took unto him two wives. The first example of polygamy. The origin of this institution is consequently carried back to the race of the accursed one, and placed at the eve of the Deluge, when “all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.” As Knobel has rightly acknowledged, there is here a formal condemnation of polygamy, just as the words of Gen. 2 : 24 give a divine sanction to monogamy. Lenormant.—He is the first of the human race who had more wives than one. The father of a family of inventors, this was his invention, his legacy, to the human race—a legacy which perhaps the larger half of men still inherit, to their cost and ours. Cox.—Polygamy was an infraction of a natural appointment. The inequality which it produced in the distribution of the sex; the distraction of affection; the domestic jealousies; the degradation of the woman; the prison-like surveillance of her movements thus made necessary; the diminished number of healthy children resulting from such concubinage; and their necessary want of parental education—all proclaim that polygamy is a violation of the domestic constitution. The most favorable circumstances in which such an experiment could be made was in Patriarchal times. But those are the very times which denote that in no case can the Divine arrangement on the subject be departed from with impunity. Indeed, the first reference to the evil, in the fragmentary allusion to antediluvian Lamech, is of a kind ominous of a train of alarming results. J. H.

In Lamech we have only the extreme type of a large class,—men who take the sensuous view of life. These are they who, without intentional or deliberate wickedness perhaps, forget God, or quietly and habitually ignore him; whose real trust is in their own strength and wit; who believe wisdom to be a defence, and wealth a defence, and trained and organized power a defence, and that they need not go beyond these. They are sufficient to themselves, whether in the toil and conflict of life, or in its hours of ease and relaxation. They can find all the delights they need in music, or poetry, or some of the kindred arts which wait to minister at their call; and they never or rarely rise beyond these, never taste the joys of a spiritual communion with God, or look forward with desire to the services and felicities of the heavenly world. Cox.

20. Jabal was the father of such as dwell in tents. A proof that this was not the primitive manner of life. Contrary to the pagan notion, that man commenced life on the earth as a savage, we here see that he has to retrograde in order to approach that condition. Nor, indeed, have we any trace of the strictly savage or hunting condition of life, until after the Deluge. In the conduct of Jabal, however, who introduced or promoted the change from a settled to a wandering life, we see the way in which a course of retrogradation might easily begin. J. H.—Man had existed thirteen centuries upon the earth before the nomad life began. In Jabal’s time men were taught to cast off the restraints of living in towns and villages, and to betake themselves wholly to pastures, dwelling in portable habitations, and removing from place to place for the convenience of pasturage. This is a mode of life frequently brought under our notice in the Scriptures, being essentially that of the patriarchs whose history occupies the greater portion of the book of Genesis, Kit.

21. Jabal appears as the ancestor of those who handle the stringed and wind instruments. It is remarkable how far back in antiquity we encounter musical instruments, and that too in great variety. We cannot find their origin, but they meet us in the full stream. Egypt furnishes both the oldest and most abundant exhibition. “Paintings on the tombs of the earliest times” exhibit their fondness for instrumental music, which blossomed out into a singular variety of instruments. They had their drums, their tambourines of three kinds, clappers, cymbals and trumpets, flutes of reed, wood, bone and ivory, single pipes with three and with four holes, double pipes, and stringed instruments of much greater variety in form and number of strings than are in modern use. Thus the stringed and wind instruments of music antedate all other history than that of the Pentateuch.

22. The third of this family group, Tabal-Cain, was “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron,” or as most modern scholars render it, substantially, a “forger of all tools (or implements) of brass and iron.” Here we strike the origin of metallurgy, especially the working of brass—or rather bronze or copper—and iron. It is noteworthy that early researches bring us very little of pure copper; but the main supply of metallic implements is of bronze, a compound of copper and tin. Copper is comparatively fusible and malleable, and is found in combinations much more manageable than iron, and is abundant in the region of Armenia and the neighboring countries. Bronze abounds in Egypt from the earliest times, a cast cylinder bearing the name of Pepi of the sixth dynasty. However far back of the confines of all recorded history except this Pentateuch we go, we encounter bronze coming down from beyond in comparative abundance as one of the very earliest forms of metallurgy, and in the very regions to which it is assigned, and where it is still to be found. S. C. B.

A rarely gifted family this, a family to which all the world owes an enormous debt to this very day; and yet a wicked family—forgetting God, and relying on their own great wit and strength. We need to remember that, and to learn from it that there is no necessary connection between gifts and goodness. But we should also mark how frank and honest a book the Bible is. It brands the children of Cain as the ungodly race; but it tells us how splendidly they were endowed, how much we owe them. Let us mark, too, how even ungodly men may serve their race and be God’s instruments for good, inventing arts which in purer hands become most helpful and ennobling. Cox.—The scope of this notice of the Cainite race seems to be to represent them as advancing in all worldly arts and arms, and becoming exceedingly prosperous on earth; but unconnected with the worship of Jehovah. The race are never named after this chapter. Alf.

23, 24. The song of Lamech. It is in connection with the later development of evil in the Cainites that Lamech’s song is introduced, and with special reference to that portion of his family who were makers of instruments in brass and iron—instruments chiefly of a warlike kind. It is only by viewing the song in that connection that we perceive its full meaning and its proper place, as intended to indicate that the evil was approaching its final stage. He means apparently, that with such weapons as he had now at command he could execute at will deeds of retaliation and slaughter. So that his song may be regarded “as an ode of triumph on the invention of the sword. He can provide more amply for his own protection than God did for Cain’s; and he congratulates his wives on being the mothers of such sons. Thus the history of the Cainites began with a deed of murder, and here it ends with a song of murder.” (Drechsler.) P. F.

In this is uttered that Titanic haughtiness of which it is said (Hab. 1: 11) that his strength is his God, and (Job 12: 6) that he carries his God, namely his sword, in his fist. Delit.—As it was a sword-song, so was it a blood-song, an utterance of “titanic insolence” and ferocity. It well illustrates how polygamy and cruelty, lust and fierceness go hand in hand, and how the antediluvian chivalry that could name its women, “Shade” and “Beauty” and “Pleasantness,” and sing to them poetic strains, could summon them to witness its ruthless revenge.

In it lay already the expression of the spirit that soon filled the world with violence, and called imperatively for that later edict of God, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” S. C. B.

This short ode has all the characteristics of the most perfect Hebrew poetry. Every pair of lines is a specimen of the Hebrew parallelism, the second member reiterating with emphasis the first. The line of Cain is traced only to the seventh generation, and thus far in order to point out the origin of the arts of life. M.

From the whole narrative it may be confidently inferred, that the descendants of Cain were endowed with a superior genius, and were the first who made themselves celebrated by the discovery and improvements of arts and sciences. Superior genius, united with extraordinary attainments, are, in themselves, valuable gifts; but when they are dissevered from the fear of God, nothing tends more powerfully to intoxicate and corrupt the heart. These envenom it with pride, supply the sophistry which supports impiety, and extend the means and enlarge the capacity of doing mischief. They have a peculiar tendency to produce that confidence in human reason, that reliance on arms of flesh, which indisposes man to seek after God. R. Hall.

Every step in material civilization was a step onward in evil. Not, indeed, that this was a necessary result; but just because that material progress, instead of being put under moral control, was placed in antagonism to it. The “fruit of the vine” became the means of intemperance. The fine arts, as far as they were practised, pandered to the passions; and even if they refined them, procured for their indulgence softer names than before, under which they might be followed with greater impunity. The products of a new territory ministered to luxury, and led to wars for its possession. Wealth became equivalent to vice; and power to oppression. And thus, after ages of growing degeneracy, the antediluvians illustrated the truth, so often exemplified since, that, in the absence of moral principle, it is not only possible, but certain, that people will reach the highest point of material civilization, and the lowest point of social demoralization at the same time. J. H.

It is no uncommon thing in our day to hear extravagant eulogies of a certain materialistic civilization—of inventions, of arts, of material wealth and luxury—which is to sweep before it all inferior civilization, and whose “manifest destiny” is to reign supreme all over the continent. It is, however, curious, as well as sad, to see how precisely this civilization seems to run in the line of the high civilization of Cain’s family; how as it advances it becomes more godless; how it learns by the logic of Lamech to reason away all fear of the penalty of sin; how it loses sight of all the profound truths taught directly by Jehovah, when of old its ancestry stood yet in the presence of Jehovah; and how in its impious effrontery and giant wickedness it provokes the Almighty to sweep it off the earth as a filthy nuisance. Now let it be borne in mind that all civilizations that “go out from the presence of God” are not such as suit the true interests of man the sinner. His civilization is divinely ordained to him. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” S. R.

It is very remarkable that we perceive in the Cainite race those very things which afterward formed the characteristics of heathenism, as we find it among the most advanced nations of antiquity, such as Greece and Rome. Over their family-life might be written, as it were, the names Adah, Zillah, Naamah; over their civil life the “sword-song of Lamech,” which indeed strikes the key-note of ancient heathen society; and over their culture and pursuits, the abstract of the biographies which Scripture furnishes us of the descendants of Cain. And as their lives have been buried in the flood, so has a great flood also swept away heathenism—its life, culture, and civilization from the earth, and only left on the mountain-top that ark into which God had shut up them who believed His warnings and His promises. A. E.

4 : 25 And Adam knew his wife again ; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth : For, 26 said she, God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel ; for Cain slew him. And to Seth, to him also there was born a son ; and he called his name Enosh : then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.5 : 1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the 2 likeness of God made he him ; male and female created he them ; and blessed them, and 3 called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image ; and called his name 4 Seth : and the days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight hundred years : and he begat 5 sons and daughters. And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty 6 years : and he died. And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enosh : and 7 Seth lived after he begat Enosh eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and 8 daughters : and all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years : and he died, 9 And Enosh lived ninety years, and begat Kenan : and Enosh lived after he begat Kenan 10 eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters : and all the days of Enosh 11 were nine hundred and five years : and he died. And Kenan lived seventy years, and 12 begat Mahalalel : and Kenan lived after he begat Mahalalel eight hundred and forty years, 13 and begat sons and daughters : and all the days of Kenan were nine hundred and ten years : 14 and he died. And Mahalalel lived sixty and five years, and begat Jared : and Mahalalel 15 lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters : 16 and all the days of Mahalalel were eight hundred ninety and five years : and he died. 17 And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two years, and begat Enoch : and Jared lived after 18 he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters : and all the days of 19 Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years : and he died. And Enoch lived sixty and 20 five years, and begat Methuselah : and Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah 21 three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters : and all the days of Enoch were three 22 hundred sixty and five years : and Enoch walked with God : and he was not ; for God 23 took him. And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech : 24 and Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat 25 sons and daughters : and all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine 26 years : and he died. And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a 27 son : and he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us for our work and 28 for the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed. And 29 Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and 30 daughters : and all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years : and 31 he died.32 And Noah was five hundred years old : and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

4:25. For God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel. He is to be instead of Abel, and God-fearing like Abel. She receives this gift from God, and in faith expects him to be the seed of God, the parent of a godly race. Her faith was not disappointed. His descendants earn the name of the sons of God. As the ungodly are called the seed of the serpent, because they are of his spirit, so the godly are designated the seed of God, because they are of God’s Spirit. The Spirit of God strives and rules in them, and so they are, in the graphic language of Scripture, the sons of God (6 : 1). M.—Now first, the law of primogeniture—so often afterward set aside by the Divine choice of a younger son—was disparaged in the rejection of the first-born, Cain. The adoption of Abel and of Seth in his stead was the Divine inauguration of character to the highest distinctions in the kingdom of God. J. H.

The brief notices of antediluvian history are evidently framed for the purpose of exhibiting the antagonistic state and tendencies of these two seeds, and of rendering manifest the mighty difference which God’s work of grace was destined to make in the character and prospects of man. The name given by Eve to her third son, with the reason assigned for it, bespoke the insight the common mother of mankind had now obtained into this mournful division in her offspring. Cain seems now to her view to stand at the head of a God-opposing interest in the world; and God is seen mercifully providing another in its room. P. F.

26. To Seth was born a son.** Seth is the ancestor of a family, which, continuing in the faith, become heirs of the promise, and whose aims, character, and tendency are in direct contrast to those of Cain. The separation of the race into Sethites and Cainites was not stopped by the circumstance that Adam begat many other sons and daughters. According to their respective tendencies, these would join either the one or the other party. K.—From the creation of man to the destruction of men by the Flood the current of human history flows in two main streams, streams which run apart for seven generations, and then commingle only to fall and be lost in the cavern of a common doom. On the one hand, we have the Cainites, that is, Cain and his descendants, busily occupied with the arts and inventions of life; and, on the other hand, we have the Sethites, that is, Seth and his descendants, who remain “upright” in the Biblical sense, and do not seek out inventions, who hold fast their allegiance to God, and live the simple orderly life He ordained for primitive man. Cox.—Nothing can be more natural or probable than the difference of character and development in the descendants of Cain and Seth respectively. In the former we see the children of this world wise in their generation, rapidly advancing in art and the acquirement of riches, but sensual, violent and godless. In the latter we find less of social and political advancement, but a life more regulated by the dictates of conscience and by faith in the Providence and Grace of God. E. H. B.

Especially does this vital difference between the two races appear in the words which follow upon the notice of Enos’ birth: “Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah.” It cannot be supposed that before that time prayer and the praise of God had been wholly unknown in the earth. Even the sacrifices of Cain and of Abel prove the contrary. It must therefore mean, that the vital difference which had all along existed between the two races, became now also outwardly manifest by a distinct and open profession, and by the praise of God on the part of the Sethites. A. E.—This expression refers to the first institution of the regular, solemn, public worship of Jehovah. K.—Growing man now comprehends all that is implied in the proper name of God, Jehovah, the author of being, of promise, and of performance. The new form of worship attracts the attention of the early world, and the record is made, “Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah,” that keepeth covenant and mercy. M.

An altar of stones or of turf, on which the gifts from the field or from the sheepfold were deposited, and beside which stood the father of the family as priest, setting forth with reverence the majesty and the glory of God; the household around him listen to the narrative of the marvels of creation, the blessedness of paradise, the origin and the result of sin; and then perchance their lips send forth a song of praise,—see here the outlines of the first worship of God, not instituted, but born of the inmost impulse of the heart. The calling on the name of the Lord, of course not with the lips alone, but with a heart turned toward him; adoration and thanksgiving with a heavenward glance, in which nothing less than the whole soul is placed; mutual fellowship, in which he is himself the living centre; see here the characteristics of the worshipper such as the Father seeks. Van O.—Now, that Cain and those who had deserted religion had built a city and begun to declare for impiety and irreligion, and called themselves the Sons of men; those that adhered to God began to declare for him and his worship, and called themselves the Sons of God. Now began the distinction between professors and profane, which has been kept up ever since and will be while the world stands. H.

5 : 1-3. Both Adam and Eve are associated with this seed of blessing. “And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth;"—as if his progeny before this were not to be reckoned—the child of grace had perished, and the other in a spiritual sense was not. Adam, therefore, is here distinctly placed at the head of a spiritual offspring—himself, with his partner, the first link in the grand chain of blessing. And the likeness in which he begat his son—“his own image”—must not be limited to the corruption that now marred the purity of his nature—as if his image stood simply in contrast to God’s. It is as the parental head of the whole lineage of believers that he is represented, and such a sharp contrast would here especially be out of place. P. F.—God in His infinite grace now opened to man another path. He set before him the hope of faith. All who rejected this hope would naturally choose the world as it was; and, satisfied therewith, try to establish themselves in the earth, claim it as their own, enjoy its pleasures and lusts, and cultivate its arts. On the other hand, one who embraced the promises would consider himself a pilgrim and a stranger in this earth, and both in heart and outward conduct show that he believed in and waited for the fulfilment of the promise. The one describes the history of Cain and of his race; the other that of Abel, and afterward of Seth and of his descendants. For around these two—Cain and Seth—as their representatives, all the children of Adam would group themselves according to their spiritual tendencies. A. E.

The book of the generations of Adam. This section is the groundwork of all attempts to frame a chronology of the antediluvian period, but is obviously unfitted for this purpose; for it has come down to us in three shapes, of which the Samaritan makes the space from Adam to the flood 1307 years, the Hebrew text in its present form 1656, and the Greek text of the Septuagint 2262 years. Which of these texts is of primary authority, no living scholar would venture to say. The object of the section, besides giving us the genealogy of the Messiah, is to introduce the account of the general corruption of mankind leading on to the flood. R. P. S.

We now enter upon the third of the larger documents contained in Genesis. The first is a diary, the second is a history, the third a genealogy. This chapter contains the line from Adam to Noah, in which are stated some common particulars concerning all, and certain special details concerning three of them. The genealogy is traced to the tenth in descent from Adam, and terminates with the flood. The scope of the chapter is to mark out the line of faith and hope and holiness from Adam, the first head of the human race, to Noah, who became eventually the second natural head of it. M.

3. Here commences the series of genealogical tables, which, though interrupted by the narrative, is continued throughout this book in such a manner as to make up a regularly connected chain. These genealogical tables form the outward framework on which the history is built, and which consists for the most part of mere names, during a period of more than 1500 years. This is all, together with a few fragmentary notices, which remains to us of the history before the flood,—just as in our life the comparatively long period of childhood is lost in oblivion. We have here the genealogical table of the family in which was preserved the pure knowledge of God. Geri.

The genealogy given is that of the Sethites, probably as the line of the promised seed. The genealogy of the Cainites was given much more imperfectly in the last chapter, and with no dates or chronological marks, because, says Keil, being under the curse of God, they had no future. He quotes Baumgarten as saying, that this genealogy was “a memorial witnessing both the truth of God’s promises and also the faith and patience of the fathers.” The chronology of this chapter is very different in the Hebrew and the Septuagint, as will be seen in the following table of the generations from Adam to the flood. E. H. B.

| | Hebrew Text. | | Septuagint. | | | — | — | — | — | — | | | Years before birth of Son. | Whole Life. | Years before birth of Son. | Whole Life. | | Adam… | 130 | 630 | 230 | 930 | | Seth… | 105 | 912 | 205 | 912 | | Enosh… | 90 | 905 | 190 | 905 | | Caluan… | 70 | 910 | 170 | 910 | | Mahalalel… | 65 | 895 | 65 | 895 | | Jared… | 162 | 962 | 62 | 962 | | Enoch… | 65 | 365 | 165 | 365 | | Methuselah… | 187 | 969 | 187 | 969 | | Lamech… | 182 | 777 | 188 | 758 | | Noah… | 500 | | 500 | | | Shem at the Flood… | 100 | | 100 | | | Date of Flood… | 1,656 | | 2,262 | |

[The LXX., or Septuagint, is the name of a Greek version of the Old Testament, supposed to be the work of seventy-two Jews, who are usually called, in a round number, the Seventy, and who made this version at the desire of Ptolemy Philadelphus, about 200 years before Christ. Christ and his Apostles usually quote from this version.]

The brevity of the historical narrative, and the fewness of the generations which cover the space of time, tend to prevent us from realizing with distinctness the great duration of the period between the creation and the flood. But it was a period of great increase of population—of large improvement in the arts—of terrible conflicts—of gigantic crimes—of extraordinary virtues—of miraculous interpositions—all of which are dimly hinted at in the Divine record. Through the whole runs the great fact of the longevity of the generations before the flood—

which connected by so few living links the extremities of this long period of time, and which must have produced conditions of human experience materially different from those which our brief space of existence enables us to realize. Kit.