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Chapter 2
Reading a Text from a Local Context
Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, "I have produced a man with the help of the LORD." Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. The LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it."
Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us go out to the field. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" He said, "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?" And the LORD said, "What have you done? Listen; your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth." Cain said to the LORD, "My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me." Then the LORD said to him, "Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance." And the LORD put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the LORD, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and named it Enoch after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael the father of Methushael, and Methushael the father of Lamech. Lamech took two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the ancestor of those who live in tents and have livestock. His brother's name was Jubal; he was the ancestor of all those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah bore Tubal-cain, who make all kinds of bronze and iron tools. The sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.
Lamech said to his wives:
"Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold."
Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, for she said, "God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, because Cain killed him. To Seth also a son was born, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to invoke the name of the LORD. [1.]
A Reading of Genesis 4
By the end of Genesis 3 earth creature Adam and companion Eve have joined the real world. It is the world as we know it, a mixture of blessing and curse. Cursed in the experience of disruption to God's original dream and continuing risk thereto: relationships break, crops fail - as we soon find out - and violence terrorises. Blessed in its potential for good inter-connected earth-based living because we are assured that the God who dreams life into being continues to care.
So we are not to wallow in the error of Eden. It is hard labour outside Eden and even the land finds it costly to sustain life. But the first verse of Genesis 4 alerts us that the original blessing of the life-giver. "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen 1:28) still holds. Conception and birth make their first appearance: two new lives, Cain and Abel.
In adulthood Cain and Abel represent two ancient - and modern - ways to live off the land: Abel, the keeper of sheep, and Cain, the tiller of the soil; stock and crop; animals and plants. In the course of time these two people naturally take a look at the results of their labours to assess their achievements. It seems it has not been an easy year (which year is?). We are not told the lambing percentage but it was probably not a good one; we sense that the yields of grain and seed are poor in quantity or quality or both, a hassle to harvest and hard grind to clean ready for use as food or as next season's seed. But in the nature of stock farming you can always select out your best from the flock and be proud of it even in a poor season, because you will be sure to have some prime lambs. It is the overall picture rather than the specifics that is worse than in the (perhaps mythical) good year. However, with plant crops, it shows up in the whole crop that then has to be assessed for use at a lesser grade.
"It's not fair," says Cain the agriculturalist. "Abel's better off than I am." (Doubtless if there were a dairy farmer within range, that one might have been keeping very quiet about even better fortunes!) Now in a good year there would be no issue. When everyone is prospering, all can feel positive and confident of their worth as a farmer. But in poorer years, envy, self-pity and self-doubt are inclined to enter the scene - "sin is lurking at the door" (v.7)
"But you must master it" says the voice of wisdom (v.7). God is trying to get Cain to face the reality of life outside Eden. He needs to focus on finding good life where it can be found, turn his efforts to recognising the blessings that do exist instead of getting hung up on the problems. But Cain cannot get the point. He reacts in what proves to be the way of least resistance, then and now: lashing out. It seems it is easiest to set himself apart from the world around him but, by doing that, he cannot help sensing everything he has separated himself from as antagonistic towards him. All he can do therefore is take a swing at the world that is not pleasing him.
When God moves in to raise questions about the violent act that ensues, Cain dismisses God's first question with a bit of a joke: does my brother, a keeper of sheep, need a keeper? In fact, this sums up his error of denying any connection between himself and his brother; he is proving himself to be no brother to Abel. But there can be no escaping the consequences of such a disconnected, uncaring act. With Abel's blood poured into it, the earth itself - the very topsoil that gives life if care and labour are given to it - cries out against the murder. Cain's act of violence is so contrary to God's original vision of life as an interconnected giving and receiving from earth and from human companions that Cain cannot now return to normal life. Violence has knocked him out of the web so he becomes a placeless person, a constant wanderer, with no roots and no base.
And yet God's care continues. The mark of Cain is an ancient expression of God's commitment even to the vagrant, indeed to all outsiders of any society's norms and systems. There is therefore no need to fear what is perhaps the ultimate fear, namely the fear of being totally alone, disconnected and unwanted. Perhaps that was Cain's problem: perhaps he feared rejection most of all. He thought he had been rejected because his farming efforts were not as good as Abel's, and he therefore disposed of his competition. If only he had known what he found out when it was too late to make a difference, after violence had taken over. If only he had known that he was not in competition for God's favour. God would always be there for him because there really is no competition for God's blessing.
- Is this a fanciful reading of the text of Genesis 4?
Perhaps the word 'creative' might be permitted, or 'interesting'. But it has to be granted that it is relevant. It relates to lived experience that can be vouched for: it arose directly out of interaction between text and a specific context. The context was March 2002 in Mid-Canterbury, New Zealand (i.e. harvest time) in the worship of a congregation with actual crop farmers sitting beside actual stock farmers, some who are both, with farmers enjoying the boom in dairying also present. What is more, after a number of years of poor returns, sheep and beef farmers were at last feeling good about themselves and their prospects. Crop farmers, however, were battling through another difficult season, with anxiety over getting crops in during the short spells of fine weather, dressing out the rubbish caused by disease and weeds, and realising financial returns that would justify their efforts.
But is this a valid interpretation of an ancient text that has echoed with its warnings and wisdom, its connotations and conflicts in the likely thousands of years since it was first shared as a tale? Eccentric, interesting, but ...
- Is it legitimate to tell the story this way? Is it true to the text?
How Little the Text Says
This calls for us to return to the 'bare' text and notice how little it says and how much we bring to it from past interpretation and our own past experience of life. It seems this text has been used to tell many 'eccentric' stories. As a drama in its own right it tells of sex between two people, the birth of two sons, their action as adults of offering their respective life and work to God, a good response for one and not the other, God's advice for dealing with negative reactions, Cain's rejecting the advice and killing Abel, God's accusation and remedy, followed by the continuation of life in both constructive and destructive ways among Cain's descendants and a new start with a third son called Seth.
The text does not give reasons for the divine approval of Abel and disapproval of Cain for the sacrifices they brought. It says nothing about one being a better than the other, their sacrifices or their intentions being of different quality, nor that their occupations were the point of difference in God's favour.
How Much the Text is Heard Saying
Yet the text in its vocabulary and its narrative structure can be heard to speak a great deal. The Earth Creature and the Mother of all Living put their new knowledge into action, and a child, or rather a "man" (ish), is born. The woman (not the man as in Genesis 2) names him qayin, one she has acquired or perhaps even created in cahoots with YHWH-God. Soil (adamah) and YHWH create adam in Genesis 2; Woman (ishshah) and YHWH create ish in Genesis 4. By the end of the chapter she is giving birth for a third time, but her speech is much more subdued with creative power all attributed to YHWH. Something seems to have happened in between. But back with the joyful announcement of the first-born, we are then informed that she gives birth to a second, "Cain's brother" named hebel. Nothing more needs to be said for one whose name means "a breath of air", perhaps something, perhaps nothing, the source and sign of life but oh so transient. The legacy of the previous chapters is clearly shown in these blessings of continuing life but also in the curse of the soil. The adamah proves not just hard labour but a face-collapsing disappointment in what it produces. When things go wrong, even worse than they went wrong in the garden, and murder happens, the soil gains a voice to make known the truth and shuts itself off entirely as a source of livelihood for the one who was previously dependent upon it.
A Text That Travels
That's some of the things the immediate words can stir in the minds of readers. Beyond the immediate Genesis 4 has also held literary conversations with a wide range of other texts, in Hebrew Scripture, the New Testament and Inter-testamental literature. For example:
1. Finding livelihood from the soil will be the renewed task for Noah and his family after the Flood.
2. The major prophetic theme of right action rather than sacrifice perhaps betrays links with editors of the Genesis text located in exilic and post-exilic Israel.
3. Similar editorial connections show up in a Wisdom theme of good counsel in at least inchoate form within Genesis 4, and memories of Cain, the acquired one, and Abel, the whiff of air, could in turn bring a new slant to Qohelet's life of acquiring knowledge only to reach ultimate absurdity (Ecclesiastes).
4. The Inter-testamental book, Jubilees, retells the story as a lesson in God's judgment.
5. Hebrews sees faith as the core issue (11:4), and Abel's death a sacrifice that speaks, although Jesus' blood speaks better (12:24).
6. Matthew assumes righteousness in Abel (23:35).
7. Jude condemns Cain's way as that of irrational animals, knowing by instinct and acting only for gain (Jude 10-11).
This is indeed, as Judith McKinlay puts it, "a text that has travelled" [2.].
At multiple times and places the story of Cain and Abel has spoken and been spoken to. It travels and speaks whenever the drama and genealogy it contains interact with a context that takes an interest in it, whenever it presents itself as a response to the issues that predominate in a particular time and place, with potential answers to pressing questions.
Let the text of Genesis 4 settle for a moment right in the middle of your current context:
- What issues do you and the text have in common?
- What new thoughts come to mind?
Footnotes
[1.] Genesis 4:1-26, New Revised Standard Version, Oxford University Press, New York: 1991