Scripture Daily

Context No. 804 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 4:1-8: in context

1The man knew Eve his wife. She conceived, and gave birth to Cain, and said, “I have gotten a man with the LORD’s help.” 2Again she gave birth, to Cain’s brother Abel. Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3As time passed, Cain brought an offering to the LORD from the fruit of the ground. 4Abel also brought some of the firstborn of his flock and of its fat. The LORD respected Abel and his offering, 5but he didn’t respect Cain and his offering. Cain was very angry, and the expression on his face fell. 6The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why has the expression of your face fallen? 7If you do well, won’t it be lifted up? If you don’t do well, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is for you, but you are to rule over it.” 8Cain said to Abel, his brother, “Let’s go into the field.” While they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.

The first children born into the world are Cain and Abel, and the first murder follows almost at once. Both brothers bring an offering to God, Cain from the fruit of the ground, Abel the firstborn of his flock and their fat, the best of what he had. God has regard for Abel's offering and not for Cain's, and Cain is furious; his face falls. And here, before anything terrible happens, God does something merciful. He speaks to Cain in his anger. Why are you angry, he asks, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And then the warning, in one of the oldest and truest images in the Bible: if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.

Sin is pictured as a predator crouched at the threshold, waiting, wanting him. But God does not tell Cain he is doomed. He tells him he can master it: you must rule over it. There is a gap, a moment, between the anger and the act, and in that gap God stands and warns him and tells him the thing at the door can still be ruled. Cain does not rule it. He says to his brother, let us go out to the field, and there he rises up and kills him. The murder was not inevitable. It came after a warning, in a moment when the crouching thing could have been mastered and was let in instead. The distance between a fallen face and a dead brother is exactly the space where God said, you can still rule this.

God warned Cain that sin was crouching at his door and told him he could still rule it, before he ever raised his hand. What is crouching at my door right now, some anger or resentment I am feeding, and am I ruling it, or about to let it in?

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