Genesis 4: Cain And Abel

Cain's parents thought he would be the chosen seed to crush the head of the serpent. Instead, Cain became the seed of the serpent by murdering his own brother and being arrogant towards God. Meanwhile, another brother is born who would be chosen by God.

Transcription:

Welcome to the Beyond the Basics Bible Study Podcast. My name is Dan Snyder. I am your host. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Beyond the Basics where we are going through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, one chapter at a time.

This episode we will be in Genesis chapter 4, the story of Cain and Abel. The famous story where Cain murders his brother. So let's get to it.

So the chapter starts off Adam and Eve, they are now outside the garden. They have a child named Cain and then another child named Abel. Abel was a shepherd. Cain is a farmer and the chapter tells us that both brothers decided one day to bring their offerings to God from their work. And the author tells us that God accepted Abel's offering but rejected Cain's offering.

Now Abel had brought the firstborn of his flock. Cain brought the fruit of the ground is what the text tells us. So there's a difference there between what Cain brought and what Abel brought. And God accepted Abel's offering of the firstborn of his flock of sheep, but rejected Cain's offering of the fruit of the ground.

So Cain became angry. God warned him of the dangers of anger, but Cain ignored the Lord's warning and killed his brother Abel. So God cursed Cain. God tells Cain that the ground will not yield its strength because it received Abel's blood from Cain's strength. In verse 11 it says, "Now you are cursed from the ground which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength."

So by Cain's strength, Abel was dead and his blood was received by the ground, and so now the ground will no longer yield its strength to Cain. That was the first part of the curse.

The second part of the curse is that he will be a fugitive and a wanderer. So he's going to wander the earth. He's in exile. And we see that because he goes further east. East, if you remember from previous episodes, east is symbolic, it is indicative of exile. And so Cain is in exile.

But God places a protective mark on Cain, and then Cain went east to the land of Nod, where he had a son. He named his son Enoch. He built a city and named it after Enoch. And then we get a short genealogy of Cain down to Lamech, who is a descendant of Cain and happens to be the seventh generation from Adam.

As we read about Lamech, we see that he is a murderer. He is a polygamist. He's tyrannical. He is arrogant. He believes he's greater than God, as we'll see as we get deeper into the chapter. Then at the very end of the chapter, we find out that Adam and Eve have another son named Seth. Seth has a son named Enosh.

So Cain is born in verse 1. The name Cain means I've got him. That's what it literally means. She says, "I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord."

And that's why she named him Cain. The implication is that Eve may have thought that Cain was the seed promised by God. He's the firstborn son. God had promised Eve in the previous chapter that there would be a seed through her that would crush the head of the serpent. And so Eve named Cain, I have got him, or I've gotten a man, thinking that I've got the seed, the seed has come. Instead, Cain turned out to be the seed of the serpent.

Then we also have Abel, and Abel means vapor. And the picture is that the vapor, it is gone quickly. It is there and then it's gone. The vapor does not stick around, the vapor does not last along. It goes away quickly, very similar to Abel's life.

So Cain and Abel says: In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering and Abel also brought an offering. So they bring an offering to the Lord. Now, where are they bringing their offerings? The Old Testament, typically we think of people bringing their offerings to the temple or the tabernacle. There is no temple or tabernacle at this point.

So where are they bringing their offerings? It's possible that they're actually bringing their offerings to the door of Eden. And the reason is because in the previous chapter, at the end of chapter 3, there is a cherubim guarding the way to Eden. And when we see cherubim, the cherubim are always guarding the presence of God. We see that in the Ark of the Covenant where the mercy seat is surrounded by cherubim.

We see in Ezekiel 10 in verse four it says: And the glory of the Lord went up from the cherub to the threshold of the house, and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was filled with the brightness of the glo