Murder He Wrote

Did you ever get into an endless, eventually tiresome discussion about the Adam and Eve story? To me, it doesn’t make sense that they coulda sinned since they didn’t know good from evil until AFTER they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil…and then you get into the whole thing about how if God is omniscient snd all powerful, He knew all along this would happen….it’s truly exhausting, I always hate me for getting sucked into it again.
So,let’s move on to Genesis 4, which I never thought about half as much. The first murder, Cain’s fratricide.
God is still walking around on Earth, talking face to face with all 4 members of the Adamses. Cain, Eve’s first son, the first human to be born on Earth, hd taken up farming, and his younger brother Abel has taken up shepherding. They both make offerings to God, but He doesn’t like the veggies and Cain can see that. He gets disgruntled. God speaks to him and says, if you do well, shall you not be accepted? But if you don’t, sin waits at the door, it wants you, but you must rule it. But God doesn’t tell Cain what he’s doing wrong, why He favors Abel.
So, as you know, next time they were alone together, Cain killed Abel.

Now here’s the part everybody knows: God comes to Cain and says where’s your brother? And Cain: “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” That remark seems to be popularly regarded as the real sin of Cain, that callous disregard—although you can certainly understand why he’d be a tad touchy about it.

God says: The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforward yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.
Now Cain knows the jig is up, God saw what he did, but Cain is not at all contrite, expresses no remorse for the murder. All he does is whine about his punishment. “Greater than I can bear…everyone that findeth me shall slay me.”

But why does God then make a protective mark on Cain, and swear vengeance “sevenfold” on anyone who slays the murderer? Why doesn’t God strike Cain dead on the spot, or say, “that’s right, everybody WILL try to kill you, and it serves you right!” Is it because he wants Cain to live on to experience the punishment?
Cain doesn’t thank God for His mercy, he just heads off east of Eden and founds a city. Man’s first city! We arent told how long Cain lived (at this point, everybody seems to be living about 850 years) but he does have many descendants, and his descendants give us pastoralism,(Jabal) music (Jubal) , and metallurgy (Tubalcain).

So are those supposed to be bad things?

And the final person to be named in Cain’s line is Tubalcain’s sister, Naamah. Why? Right after this in Chapter 5 we get the genealogy of the line of Cain’s baby brother Seth, right on down to Noah (whose descendants we all must be) and no women are mentioned.
Now, in the Flood, all the descendants of Cain and all of the descendants of Seth (except Noah)were destroyed. But, the Bible doesn’t tell us the name of the mother of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s 3 sons from whom we are all descended.

And early Jewish sources say she was Naamah, Cain’s descendant. That’s why she is listed by name.

Cain, as well as Seth, is the great to the nth degree grandpa of us all!

So, curiously, it doesn’t look like Cain fared too badly. A long life, wealth, many descendants, are the blessings God usually confers on His favorites in the Old Testament.

Why do you think God protected and prospered Cain the fratricide?