Genesis 4

Genesis 4:1-5

Subdivision 2. (Genesis 4:1-26; Genesis 5:1-32.) The Seeds.(Division of the waters, second day.) The breach shows itself in the contrasted seeds in the world at large, and in the strife of good and evil within the saint, of which this is the type. The breach now shows itself as division among men. There is at the very beginning of the world what answers to the seed of the serpent among men; and there is (but only through grace) the seed of the woman also. The natural outcome of fallen man we see in Cain, -man, as sin and the devil have made him. Cain is therefore the elder; for “first” we have “that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” But the natural has first possession of the earth, and throughout man’s day keeps it. “Cain” is therefore “acquisition,” a name expressive, in the first place, of his mother’s natural joy, but which stamps his and the natural man’s character. Gain is what he seeks, and seeks to hold; and though in the land of vagabondage, builds a city, and adorns and furnishes it. His descendants are for that period the world’s great men.

Morally, lust and violence mark them as out of the presence of God, although, after their own sort, religious too. The name of God -El -in the names of his descendants testify for this. Abel stands out every way in contrast. His name is “exhalation, vapor,” as his life is. He is not a success on earth. And of Seth’s seeds who continue the line of the bruised heel, their history in the world is a blank: they but live and die, although God numbers these apparently barren years of theirs; they are something in His account. Out of this line too Enoch goes to heaven without dying, before the flood; and Noah goes through the flood, safe to the world beyond. Thus they fill heaven, and at last earth also. That this is the picture of “man’s day” upon earth is plain. It is the “world that now is” in contrast with the “world” that is “to come.” And a deeper look confirms this fully. Here Cain is the type of the self-righteous Jew, the Pharisee who brings his gift to God, knowing nothing of faith’s way of acceptance, or of a lost condition, and who, after the death of Christ (the Offerer of the only acceptable sacrifice), at the hands of His people, was cast out from the land in which God had made known His presence, into vagabondage (Nod), though marked for preservation nationally. The type is here, one would say, too manifest for doubt. But within the individual saint there is the same breach realized, and Cain and Abel have here also their representatives. Cain gives us the “flesh” in its spiritual significance, -self-righteous, Christ-rejecting, and away from God, yet marked as not to be slain by human hand. Abel, on the other hand, is that which is of God in us, as new born, but as known in experience simply, -a thing very important here to note. The new nature which we have of God, of course cannot die; but in our experience, ere yet we know God’s way of power for us, it is just the lesson of death that we have to learn, and to cry, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” The hopelessness of mere effort to produce fruit from the new nature is seen in the death of Abel; the flesh, unchanged in evil to the last (Romans 8:7), is traced in Cain’s descendants, Tubal-cain the last son of this line, being but (according to the name) “Cain’s issue.” Then in the third section comes Seth, and Abel is replaced by one who is really fruitful for God. “Seth” means, according to Eve’s words, “set” (in the place of Abel). He represents to us Christ, and the man in Christ. This realized is that “law of the Spirit,” which is the law “of life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:2) which “delivers us from the law” -the practical dominion -“of sin and death.” The man in Christ is never a matter of experience, but only of faith. Seeing ourselves in Christ, we are lifted out of ourselves. We find a new self in which without pride we can glory, while in ourselves we do not glory, save in our infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon us. (2 Corinthians 12:2; 2 Corinthians 12:5.) Self-occupation is exchanged for occupation with Christ, and “we all, with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Lord the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18.) Faith and its blessed effect are here pictured. Seth’s issue is thus Enosh -“frail man” -the opposite of the Cainite Lamech, the “strong man” and then men begin to call on the name of Jehovah. Here is the full typical expression of the apostle’s words, “We are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” (Philippians 3:3.) All self-confidence, though in the saint, is confidence in the flesh. Thus, in the genealogy following, we have no Cain nor Abel, but Seth and his issue only, and the image of God again appears. The fourth section (Genesis 5:1-32) pictures the fruit that follows, though our eyes may be dim to trace it. \