R Evans, Genesis in Context - 6
← Index of Genesis in Context by Bro Roger Evans, 2021
6. Priesthood in Exile
| NB: not integrated into wiki |
With their demotion, dismissal from service and eviction from the Garden, the priestly couple enter upon a secular life. Sexuality is enhanced, in keeping with the secular blessing of Genesis 1 to “be fruitful and multiply”. Eve is told that her desire will be to her husband, her fecundity will be greatly increased, and that she will have pain and toil in childbearing. Adam, meanwhile, is told that he must work the ground and that he will have pain and toil in producing food; until death finally overtakes them in due and natural course. In the birth of children is the one glimmer of hope: that a descendant of their line, though wounded in the heel by the serpent, will trample its head. In this future child is the implied promise of redemption.
With Eve’s enhanced fecundity, and the absolute certainty of personal death, Adam names his wife (Ishah) a second time, calling her Eve (chavvah, Life): “the mother of all living.” Coming immediately after the sentencing, this appears to be an acknowledgement of their changed relationship as a consequence of their punishment. Life is no longer a possession to be held by individuals, but a quality to be passed on through progeny.
In context, this clearly is not a reference to all living things. Nor is it necessarily a statement that she is the mother of all living human beings. In the context of their new role, it is an affirmation of the change from man and wife, to father and mother. It marks the beginning of parenthood, the commencement of the Godly lineage bearing the seed of promise, the transfer and preservation of life and hope through successive generations, and the expression of ultimate redemption through a future descendant.
The easy life, the childhood in Eden, is over. Adam and Eve are now adults: the people of God in a secular world, His representatives in exile. They have a moral and practical knowledge of right and of wrong, and a changed but continuing relationship with God, signified by their continued use of the YHWH Name.
The first mention of Adam having a sexual relationship with his wife (4v1) possibly defines their first physical union: at least it defines their first fruitful union. Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore a son, Cain. Mindful of the promise of the descendant who will come, she joyfully proclaims at his birth: “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” Soon after, she has another son, whom she names Abel.
The two names epitomise both hope and fate. Cain means spear, with an allusion to a related word meaning to acquire: hence “I have gotten a man from the Lord”. However it was the principal meaning, of being a tool of death, which was to prove more accurate: rather than being fatal to the serpent, he was to be fatal to his own brother. Abel means vapour, or vanity: the same word used by the writer of Ecclesiastes to proclaim “vanity of vanities, all is vanity”. He was to pass as a vapour at the hand of his brother. The third son, Seth, born later, was to be, as his name declares, a substitute for his two brothers: one lost to death, the other to sin. The names of all participants: Adam (man), Eve (life), and those of the three children are eponymous of their roles in the family narrative.
The first two brothers chose different occupations. Cain followed in his father’s footsteps as a tiller of the ground. Abel chose the novel occupation of shepherd; while sheep were not on the menu, (Gen.1:29) they provided the essentials of skin for clothing, and the essential of sacrifice. No command is recorded as having been given for blood sacrifice, but the shedding of blood was essential to obtain a sheepskin covering. While God had made skins to cover Adam and Eve, the only way men could obtain new skins for garments was to take them from living animals. Thus sacrifice became synonymous with covering, both in a practical and a spiritual sense.
In time both brothers brought an offering to God. The word for offering, minchah, indicates a present, or an offering, voluntary or, but not necessarily, obligatory. The same word is used later in Genesis to define Jacob’s propitiatory offering to Esau (Gen.32:18, 20, 21); in this latter case it was a voluntary gift presented to engender a favourable response.
Abel brought an offering of the firstborn of his flock, and of the best, or fat, portions. Cain brought simply an offering of the fruit of the ground. God accepted the offering of Abel, but had no regard to the offering of Cain. Why?
The apostle Paul implies the favourability of a blood sacrifice, yet also confirms the voluntary nature of the offerings. Hebrews 11:4: “By faith Abel offered a better sacrifice (thusea) than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts (doron). The Greek word thusea indicates the sacrifice of life, whether obligatory (Luke 2:24) or voluntary (Romans 12:1. Ephesians 5:2); doron signifies a spontaneous gift.
In the absence of precedent or of a command for obligatory sacrifice, it seems that Cain and Abel’s offerings were, essentially, free-will offerings.
Abel recognised the principle of blood-shedding, and the principle of giving the best, when he brought firstlings and fat, or prime, portions. Of Cain’s offering we are only told that he brought “of the fruit of the ground”, without distinction.
Perhaps Cain’s voluntary offering was rejected because the sacrificial aspect was lacking. Perhaps the rejection of Cain’s offering was because be brought not the best of his fruits, or his first fruits, but seconds. Perhaps the lack of acceptance lies, in the spirit of the prophet Malachi, in Cain’s attitude rather than in the nature of his offering. This seems to be implied in God’s response, which is not condemnatory of his offering (or lack of it), but cautionary in terms of his attitude. God is more interested in our character than our sacrifices.
Now Cain was intensely angry, and his face downcast. He was furious. God approaches him in this frame of mind, and reasons with him.
- “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast (fallen, naphal)?”
- “If you do well (yatab: good, glad, pleasing) will you not be exalted (seeth: raised up, cheerful)?
- But if you do not do well (yatab), sin is crouching at your door:
- Its desire is to you, and you must master it”.
God’s response to Cain is nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of his offering; but it is all about attitude, and how attitude can affect behaviour. There is a great lesson packed into these words.
First and foremost is the confirmation that Cain had an attitude problem. In a double entendre God proclaims two things: If you do right will you not be well regarded by God? And also: if you have the right attitude, will you not be cheerful?
God is giving Cain a chance to reconsider his attitude, before his anger and jealousy develop into sin. In the second part comes the warning:
- If you do not do well, sin is reclining (rabats, lying passively) at the door:
- Its desire is to you, and you must be its master”.
The somewhat cryptic meaning of the warning becomes clear when we realise that these words are an inverse reiteration of a part of the sentence upon Eve:
- “Your desire will be to your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Apart from an inversion of sense, the Hebrew phrase is identical:
- “Its desire will be for you, and you will rule over it”.
What God is declaring to Cain is this: that sin is passively waiting at the door, ready to submit to him. If he does not do well, and sins instead of changing his attitude, sin will move in to become his helper and companion; and he will be partner to and lord of sin- not in the sense of overcoming it, but in the sense of loving it, being married to it, and ruling it. Sin does not control us, like a cat aggressively pouncing on its prey; it rubs against our legs, and seduces us into “owning” it.
However, instead of heeding God’s warning, Cain does not forsake sin, but broods on it, and his enmity focuses on Abel, who he considers has supplanted him in God’ s favour. In a scenario resembling the envious act of the Serpent in Eden, he takes his brother aside, leads him into the field on false pretences, and in a premeditated, cold-blooded act of jealous revenge, slays him. When confronted by God, his response is one of surly unrepentance coupled with an outright lie: “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Here again is evidence of a moral code implicit in creation. No command was given regarding the taking of life, before Cain’s sin. God warned him to be careful, but did not explicitly prohibit the deed that He knew was in Cain’s heart. Yet God deems the murder of Abel a transgression, and Cain is punished for that deed.
This moral code, seen also in the words of the Serpent, is confirmed by Paul in Romans 2 v12-15. Moral law is the unwritten sense of right and wrong which is instinctive in the human heart, and which underpins the written Law. Murder is not explicitly forbidden until the covenant of Noah, and subsequently in the giving of the Sixth Commandment.
In punishing Cain, God does not impose a sentence of execution. Nor does he exact “an eye for an eye”, or demand a life for a life. Instead, as He did with Adam and Eve, he mercifully transmutes the sentence to a lifelong penalty. In cursing the productivity of the ground for his effort (a personalised intensification of the sentence passed upon Adam), he strips him of the one thing he loves: his livelihood as a settled agriculturalist; and declares that henceforth he will be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth.
While the penalty does not sever Cain’s ties with God, for God is everywhere present, Cain immediately claims, in an attitude of indignation, that the penalty is too harsh; that his punishment is unfair; that he is being driven from God’s presence, and that somebody will kill him — an ironic claim, considering what he himself has just done to Abel. In response to his claim of persecution, God magnanimously sets upon him a mark of protection, further preserving him from the premature death that would have been a just and due reward for murder — great indeed is the grace of God. Cain’s response to this act of grace is to exile himself from God’s presence.
The exile of Cain
Cain’s fear of human retribution raises an interesting question. Is it likely that Adam or his family would seek to kill Cain, knowing full well that the taking of human life was morally anathema to God? The implication is that it is others in the lands of his exile- that is, the people of the secular world, without Divine law and without moral constraint, who are those who may kill him. Establishing himself in exile, Cain builds a city, which he names after his son. A city is not usually the name for a family dwelling, suggesting that Cain became a leader among a secular population.
It is interesting to note that Cain’s migration into the world is associated with an implied cultural revolution. Cain builds the first mentioned city (echoing the enclave of Eden, but for human rather than Divine ends); and it is his descendants who are said to be the initiators of herd domestication, of music, and of metalcraft. Civilised settlement and technological advance are by implication triggered by the entry of the priestly offspring into the general populace — make of that what we will.
| See also → | |
| Primordial Incest | |
It is after Cain leaves the presence of the Lord that first mention is made of his wife. Where did Cain’s wife come from? One option is that he married one of his own sisters, which would be an act of incest. Alternatively, it is likely that in his exile, he married one of the daughters of the secular population. His descendants were godless, an attitude arrogantly epitomised in the oath of Lamech: that “if Cain be avenged for murder seven times, then Lamech seventy seven times”.
This still leaves the question of where Seth obtained his wife. Other than incest, the remaining option would be that he too took one of the secular daughters, but that he taught her the ways of the Lord — perhaps the first conversion. It was after his son’s birth, we are told, that men began to call upon the name of the Lord: suggesting an effort of preaching and of witness among the wider creation. However, of course, all of this is speculation.
The naming of Adam, and the confluence of humanity
| See also → | |
| "adam" the common noun | |
Throughout the second account of Creation, the Hebrew text does not refer to Adam by name (although I have done so in the above discussion). It simply refers to him by use of the common noun (adam), as the man, or man. While the Hebrew text in two instances could be read as a personal noun (3:17, 21) scholars conclude that the first unequivocal use of the personal noun (Adam) is in 4:25, with the siring of Seth.
The use of the impersonal noun seems to indicate that the man is representative rather than specific, that all of humanity in its relationship to God is bound up and represented in this singular personage.
If we take the instance of the equivocal use of a personal noun as signifying his naming (3:17), then it is when this person sins, that he, with his wife Eve, takes on a specific personal identity. In this first instance, Adam becomes a named individual with the sentencing for sin, emphasising his personal identification with wrongdoing.
If we defer to the first unequivocal usage, Adam’s singular personal identity is first introduced — not when he sires Cain, or Abel, but when he sires Seth, commencing a line of descendants linked to the worship of Yahweh (4:25):Adam knew his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth . . .
Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh.
At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord.
In this case, Adam’s identity as a named individual is bound specifically to the naming of his third son and grandson, to the commencement of the holy lineage, and to an association with the Name and worship of God, emphasising a personal identification with reconciliation and with righteousness.
The point at which the man (adam) ceases to become a human representative, and is specifically named as a personal individual (Adam) in the Hebrew text, whether it lies in the commission of sin, or in the commencement of the lineage of righteousness, provides some food for thought. However from 4:25 onward Adam is clearly and unequivocally a personal individual, a father and a grandfather among men, progenitor of the Godly line and ultimately of our Saviour.
The account concludes with one critical passage, in chapter 5v1. This is another of the toledot links which connect one section of the narrative with another. In this particular link, the account through Adam is deliberately blended with the account of Genesis 1, indicating the intermingling of the priestly and secular lineage, to segue into the continuing story of the genealogy of mankind:“This is the written account of Adam’s family line.
- When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them ‘Man’ when they were created.
When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own image and likeness. . . ”
The account starts with the singular priest-man, Adam (personal noun); it then recalls the creation of humans, male and female together, made in the image of God, and collectively named Mankind (common noun, used twice). It then reverts to the account of the priest-man Adam (personal noun), who now sires a son in his own image. Thus the singular lineage of Adam is deliberately blended with the general lineage of mankind.
The omission of Cain from this genealogy indicates that it is the Godly lineage that is of interest, in contrast and conflict with the secular population. This moral conflict of outlook — Divine versus godless — becomes the focus of the next narrative section.
If this passage (Gen 5v1) is read as proof that Adam was the first man created on day 6, then all of the usual obstacles of reconciliation between the two creation accounts must be hurdled, in order to affirm this conclusion.
However, if we accept the alternative proposal of two separate creation accounts, and, that this passage is a deliberate blending of the priestly lineage of Adam into the secular creation (a blending reinforced in the account of the duties conferred upon Noah in 9v1-8), then these issues do not arise. The genealogy of Adam instead becomes a genealogy of the priestly line in a secular world, leading from the first King-Priest and specially created son of God, Adam (and his companion Eve, formed during an induced sleep), to the ultimate King-Priest and son of God, the Divinely provided “last Adam”: Jesus Christ, (and His companion-bride, born to life through his brief death: Luke 3).
A third possibility is that the two creation accounts were written as completely separate narratives with an entirely different focus — the one establishing the working week and Sabbath, the other defining the God-man relationship — that there was no intended correspondence between the two accounts; and that these two accounts are ultimately drawn together in this one verse through editorial process. However this also leaves some questions unanswered, such as who Cain married and who he feared; questions that are not addressed in the text but elided as irrelevant to the overall narrative. In this case the question of whether incest, prohibited in later contexts, was acceptable in a primeval context, remains to be discussed.
Was Adam real? The answer depends on whether we interpret the genre of the account as literal or allegorical, and becomes a matter of personal conviction. Nevertheless, in a spiritual sense he is the eponymous ancestor of all who are responsible to God. He is the ancestor and prototype of Christ, the first man under commandment and answerable to God. As the first to commit sin by breach of divine command, he is the cause of, and necessity for, the coming of our Saviour. Through a chain of natural descent, Christ comes to us as the son of Adam, and the son of Eve, to redeem the past.
Conversely, the serpent (literal or allegorical?), as the first being to oppose God, becomes the primeval “father of lies”; while Cain, who followed its example, becomes the allegorical and archetypical “murderer from the beginning”. Both are a metonymy for the devil, that selfish human nature within us which, incited from within or from without, causes us to sin.
The inestimable value of the second Creation account lies not in whether it is literal or allegorical, but in the fundamental truths it teaches about the nature of our relationship to God.
One final word of caution. Although the existence of two creation accounts can be read as making allowance for modern concepts of anthropology, this would not have been the original purpose of the text.
The intent of the original author(s), writing in terms of contemporary polytheistic creation contexts, would have been to proclaim God as the singular Creator: firstly as the Originator of all things, and secondly as the One to whom all men are ultimately responsible.
This has to be borne in mind: both in our assessment of what understandings God intended to communicate to the original audience by presenting two differing creation accounts; and in what secondary implications and inferences we subjectively draw from these ancient accounts in terms of modern scientifically-informed contexts.
