My Brother's Keeper

In one fateful moment, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, violence invaded the human condition. That's where we were last Sunday. Cain rose in rage; Abel fell in blood. As succinctly as that, the Bible's given us our first murderer – and our first martyr. Now, of the two brothers who for decades had grown together, lived together, feasted together, one lies dead in body on the unforgiving earth, the other stands with a dead soul and bloody hands. The deed is done. There's no taking it back now, no healing or reversal, no holding out hope to wake from the nightmare. Cain's hope instead is that, when “someone is found slain, fallen in the field,” then often “it is not known who killed him” (Deuteronomy 21:1). Perhaps he tries to cover his tracks further, digging up the dirt to bury the body underneath, or letting a river wash it away downstream; maybe he convinces his parents Abel was just so good he moved back to the garden.¹ Whatever measures he takes, Cain has handled death; he's unclean (Numbers 19:16). Yet he has no fear of the danger posed in the land by “innocent blood” (Deuteronomy 21:9).

It's unclear how much time passes from verse 8 to verse 9. After all, a shepherd could be away from his family for quite a while – not unlike a trucker today. But at some point, Abel's absence has to become conspicuous. At that point, God renews his attempted dialogue with Cain. And that's pretty remarkable, come to think of it. In the midst of Cain's death-impurity and the guilt of his monumental sin, the reaction of God is not to drop him like a hot potato. It's not to instantly pour out fire from heaven, or open up the mouth of hell beneath his feet, or send a whirlwind to sweep him away. God's reaction is to move in personally and engage Cain.²

“And the LORD said to Cain: 'Where is Abel, your brother?'” (Genesis 4:9). God opens the dialogue, just like a couple verses before (Genesis 4:6), with a question. It's not a question God asks because he's mystified, as if he just can't piece together the puzzle and needs Cain's help. God is asking the question to get Cain to respond. And as we eavesdrop on this conversation, we should keep in front of our eyes a conversation from the chapter before it.³ There, too, a sin was committed – in that case, theft and consumption of forbidden fruit. And in the wake of the sin, God asked a question: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). It's not that God didn't know Adam's coordinates. The question meant, why isn't Adam where he's supposed to be, rejoicing unashamed before the LORD? What has happened to put Adam out of his joyful and rightful place? Now, after another misdeed, God asks Cain not where he is but where his victim is. Why isn't Abel here where he belongs, Cain? What explains his absence from his rightful place? What, Cain, is preventing Abel from standing in the flesh before his Lord? What can you say?⁴

And in asking, God doesn't content himself to say, “Where is Abel?” He adds that cutting extra word: “your brother.” God highlights, by this word that's the climax of the question, the family ties that bind Cain and Abel as one flesh, one blood, one house.⁵ And with that simple word, barely two syllables, God effectively “presents him with the enormity of the crime, that he has killed a brother.”⁶ Over and over again in this chapter, Genesis hammers it home.⁷ Scarcely can Abel's name be heard without an immediate reminder that he's Cain's brother. Seven times overall is the word 'brother' attached to their relationship. What's happened between them is meant to horrify us. But Genesis is saying that this horror, Cain's fratricidal bloodshed, is the natural consequence of Adam and Eve's gluttonous gaffe in the garden: from wrongly bit to wrongly hit, 'til Abel's kicked the bucket.⁸

So God asks Cain the piercing question, the natural question: “Where is Abel, your brother?” Why does he ask it? Because “God, who is merciful..., desired to provide for Cain, as he had for Adam, an opportunity for repentance and confession,”⁹ to “give him an occasion to repent and explain.”¹⁰ For “if he repented, the sin of murder that his fingers had committed might be effaced by the compunction of his lips.”¹¹ That is always how Christians have read this moment. Nothing Cain can do or say can give Abel his life on earth back. But Cain is not beyond the reach of forgiveness. If Cain confesses, he can be made clean. That's not to say there won't still be consequences for what he's done. Forgiveness doesn't mean no consequences. But it does mean there's hope for reconciliation, and for a day when those consequences fall away. Cain can be free from bloodguilt, today and alway.

It's not so much the crime, then, that matters; it's the response. When we're caught in our sin, how do we deal with what we've done? How do we regard it: as something to hide, or as something to own and expose? In this case, one saintly bishop of old said that God's sensitive questioning “should have brought [Cain] to his senses and to a cessation of his folly, admitting what had happened, showing his ulcer to the physician and accepting the remedies he had to give. But for his part, he aggravates the wound and renders the spread of the ulcer more serious.”¹² Cain chooses, you see, the wrong path of response, making his wound of sin all the worse.

We remember, as we listen in, the response Adam gave when God asked him where he was: “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:10). It was, at the very least, an explanation – one which Adam bungled further by trying to shift blame onto his wife (Genesis 3:12). What we find here is that Cain, on every score, manages to be worse than his parents. If Adam merely evaded and dodged, Cain is deliberately dishonest.¹³ “He said: 'I do not know.'” (Genesis 4:9). Cain claims to have no knowledge of Abel's whereabouts. He claims he's as mystified as anybody why Abel isn't where he belongs – as if Cain were no part of that explanation. It's an answer “at once foolish and arrogant,”¹⁴ “doubling his sin, as though he could render God ignorant.”¹⁵ The very man who murdered Abel, the one who could with ease lead a search party to the body, now blatantly and knowingly lies to God's face, “as if he had a mind to controvert the point and maintain his guilty cause against the great Searcher of Hearts.”¹⁶

Cain lies, he lies with an attitude of defiance and arrogance and selfishness, he lies in the face of whatever scrap or tatter may be left of his putrid conscience.¹⁷ But isn't that sort of denial under questioning just “so typical of an offender who knows very well what he has done and is attempting to evade punishment?”¹⁸ It's common in any court, in any jail, in any nation, in any home; and apart from these individual cases, light or heavy as they be, “all kinds of ideologies try to justify and disguise the most atrocious crimes against human beings.”¹⁹ We think that, through insistent denial, we can deceive and elude the justice of earth. But, as Philo put it, “everyone who thinks that anything escapes the eye of God is an outlaw and an outcast.”²⁰ That's the mark of a wicked person, to sin and even murder and say in one's heart, “The LORD does not see” (Psalm 94:7). But “he who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?” (Psalm 94:9). “Do you suppose, O man..., that you will escape the judgment of God?” (Romans 2:3). “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). There is no deceiving the justice of heaven; there is no hoodwinking God, who not only foreknew the crime but has now taken a witness statement from Abel's blood (Genesis 4:10).

All the more foolish, then, that Cain refuses to speak to God with any sense of honor and decorum. Here many readers have seen a further hardening of his heart in sin, given how grave it is “so audaciously and irreverently to answer the omniscient God.”²¹ But Cain isn't done making a mess of things. How could he be? To further deflect from the contrast between his guilty truth and his convenient lie, he pushes back with a question of his own, the first question the Bible pictures a creature asking the Creator. His tone is mocking and defensive, “an arrogant retort that shows utter contempt for God and complete indifference to the crime that has taken place.”²²

“Am I my brother's keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). That's what Cain asks, the sarcasm spilling from his lips. Here, for the first time, Cain openly acknowledges Abel as his brother. But he admits their brotherhood as a physical fact only in the process of denying its social and moral relevance for establishing a relationship between them. Cain thinks that a brother is just a born rival, a chief competitor smuggled within hearth and home.²³ Just because the womb they started in is the same, just because they about half their DNA in common, just because they've known each other so long, why – Cain asks – should that make him Abel's keeper?

That word, 'keeper,' is an interesting choice on Cain's part. It's a common one in the Bible, and literally has the sense of being a 'watcher' or 'observer.' It's used in Judges to refer to spies sent out on a reconnaissance mission, sent to just observe and report back what they see (Judges 1:24). A military camp would post 'keepers' in the sense of watchmen, lookouts, to observe the camp and its surroundings (Judges 7:19). But from there, the word takes on a sense of someone who watches over something to guard it, protect it, defend it from trespass or harm. A city had 'keepers,' roving watchmen during night patrol who stood on the walls or strolled the streets, who not only observed what went on but personally intervened to set it right (Isaiah 62:6; Song of Songs 5:7). Similarly, the Levites “keep guard over the tabernacle of the LORD” (Numbers 31:30); palaces likewise had 'keepers,' security personnel who prevent unauthorized trespass (1 Kings 14:27). And an Old Testament phrase for a bodyguard was “the keeper of my head” (1 Samuel 28:2), and every “shepherd keeps his flock” (Jeremiah 31:10). To be a 'keeper' means “watching over someone or something, providing sustenance and security.”²⁴

In the beginning, Adam was put in the garden “to work it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). But now they live outside the garden, where Cain is “a worker of the ground” (Genesis 4:2). Is there anything for him to 'keep' outside the garden? Cain seems awfully certain what he's not on this earth to keep: his brother.²⁵ So Cain “said that he was not his brother's guardian to keep watch over his person and his actions.”²⁶ In Cain's rhetoric, being Abel's keeper would mean putting Abel under 24/7 surveillance, investing all his energies in Abel's protection, feeding Abel like a little baby and not a grown man.²⁷ Cain's a farmer, not a shepherd, so how much less should he be a shepherd's shepherd?²⁸ It's ludicrous to Cain that he should be Abel's babysitter, Abel's full-time keeper, so he treats it as absurd of God to ask him to explain Abel's absence. Through the rhetorical power of the false dichotomy, Cain reasons that since he can't take full custody of Abel, he therefore has no responsibilities to or for Abel at all.²⁹ So Cain “declares that the care of his brother is a matter of no concern to him.”³⁰

In all this, Cain illustrates our own “intuitive desire to repudiate responsibility for others..., the desire to live, to some extent, aloof, alone, regardless of others, indifferent to their claims,” as one English preacher put it.³¹ We excuse that desire in all sorts of ways. We appeal to our liberties, refusing to be shackled by someone else's needs or wants. We blame others for their misfortunes, saying they'll have to learn at the school of hard knocks. We dismiss their sufferings as a brute fact of life, an unalterable law of nature in which it would be pointless or wrong to intervene. We make up somebody supposedly more important who'd be hurt if we help those we already dislike. We claim it isn't our place to care, that we have no right to concern ourselves in what our brother does or endures. So maybe we shake our head or shed a tear, but we cross the road, keep to ourselves.

That old preacher said that “so many individuals... do nothing, repudiate their responsibilities, and take sides with Cain the murderer, as they self-protectingly ask, 'Am I my brother's keeper?'”³² And still as this last century closed, it was said that in hearing Cain's words, “we cannot but think of today's tendency for people to refuse to accept responsibility for their brothers and sisters.”³³ Cain sounds as modern and timely as we could fear. He also sounds, if I dare say it, American. A hundred years ago this week, an Australian paper lamented that “no country [other] than the United States... has... so consistently adopted the 'Am I my brother's keeper?' attitude.”³⁴ Whether you hear Cain as a plain conservative – “If Abel wants to be here, then he'll just have to pull himself up by his bootstraps and tough it out” – or in a more liberal accent – “Oh, it's not for me to judge Abel, Abel can be where he wants, let's be tolerant, it's really no business of mine” – Cain sounds too familiar.

The heart of Cain's question, as St. Ambrose saw, was that “Cain shirks his duty to be his brother's keeper as if this were beyond the bounds of nature's laws.”³⁵ But in spite of his best efforts, Cain actually does raise a real question. By the bounds of nature's laws, how are we supposed to relate to each other? What do we owe each other? What does it mean to be a brother? And who is our brother, anyway?³⁶

But Cain's question also has a darker sense still, one which becomes more visible as we read more of the Bible. Later in the Bible, we start to hear about God as the 'Keeper' of his people. “Your Keeper will not slumber!” promises the psalmist. “Behold, He-Who-Keeps-Israel will neither slumber nor sleep! The LORD is your Keeper!” (Psalm 121:3-5). “Lest anyone punish it, I keep it night and day,” he says (Isaiah 27:3). We hear that “the LORD keeps the simple,” that is, he preserves them and takes care of them (Psalm 116:6), and similarly that “the LORD keeps the sojourners” (Psalm 146:9), that “he will keep the feet of his faithful ones” (1 Samuel 2:9), that “the LORD keeps all who love him” (Psalm 145:20). In that hope, Israel's priests said constantly, “the LORD bless you and keep you” (Numbers 6:24). After all, “unless the LORD keeps the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1) – human keeping avails nothing without divine keeping.

So when Cain asks God, “Am I my brother's keeper?” (Genesis 4:9), hear the question he's insinuating: Isn't that your job?³⁷ “You interrogate me,” says Cain, “as if I were Abel's keeper. But I call God to the stand! Aren't you supposed to be Abel's keeper? Don't you, God, owe an account to me for my brother? As his keeper, weren't you watching him? As his keeper, why weren't you defending him, protecting him, guarding him from all harm? Where were you, God, when a hand lifted itself up against him? Where were you, God, when Abel yelped in pain? Where were you, God, when Abel was bleeding? And where were you, God, when the lights went out? If you could've stopped Abel from dying but didn't, then shouldn't I conclude his death was simply your unavoidable will – that, at the very least, you didn't care to keep him? And if you don't care, why should anyone? Where are you in the suffering and the senselessness and the sorrow, in the agonies and the crises, in the darkness and violence of a nature red in tooth and claw? Where are you, God, in the waywardness and woe of man? Oh, in the face of evil, evil everywhere, where is God in this silent heaven and this blackened earth?”³⁸

People talk a lot about the 'problem of evil.' And sometimes, in our suffering, we have something to say. Other times, we readily manufacture the problem of evil as a diversion, an attempt to distract attention from our own derelictions of duty, by pointing the finger at God. But if God picks up on Cain's confrontational charge, Cain's insinuation that God must render an account to man, God doesn't dignify that claim, no more than he explains himself to the lamentations of Jeremiah or the oozing tears of Job. For God is not obliged to sit as defendant in any court of human esteem. God owes no explanation; in the gracious dark of night, he simply sends salvation. Here, conversing with the Cain who's at last found something to say, God responds with a cutting outcry of horror, a question that refocuses things back where they belong: “What have you done?” (Genesis 4:10).³⁹ “In the face of evil, evil everywhere, where are you, O man? Where are you, man, in the waywardness and woe of your brother? Where are you, man, in his suffering and in his sorrow? Are not your hands guilty? Are not you the one red in tooth and claw? What is it you've done? And where does that, O man, now put your brother?”

The error of Cain is at once called to account – in him and in us. Who, exactly, is our brother? The Law of Moses is clear that brotherhood is more than the literal children of your mom and pop. In the Law, given to a nation which acted like a loose federation of tribes at best, every Israelite is treated as a brother to all the others. God refers to “your brothers, the whole house of Israel” (Leviticus 10:6), with no regard for tribal boundaries, for privilege of office, for any other consideration. Carrying this forward, Christians are defined, from the very first moment, as simply “the brothers” (Acts 1:15). Paul constantly writes to various churches as “my beloved brothers” (1 Corinthians 15:58), and Peter reminds Christians about “your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:9). Every Christian is a brother or sister to every other Christian who was or is or will be, thanks to the grace of God.

But that grace is completing what's naturally there already. Paul reminds us also that God “made from one every nation of mankind to live on the face of all the earth” (Acts 17:26). Only those born again in Christ are brothers and sisters in Christ by grace, but all people are brothers and sisters in Adam by nature. It's not just those nearest in your family tree, or the people of your state or color or country. It's just a scientific fact that all people belong to “our interconnected human family.”⁴⁰ The Adam family may be billions big these days, but, however distant, in it we find every man our brother, every woman our sister.

And that makes every person relevant to you and to me. Four centuries ago this year, there was an English poet who was very sick. And as he lay in bed, he was close enough to the neighborhood church that, every time they rang the bells for a funeral, he could hear it clear as day. Even unsure which neighbor had died, he felt it deeply. He wrote meditations from his sickbed, explaining why he couldn't ignore the message of those bells.

All mankind is of one Author, and is one volume... No man is an island, entire of himself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thy own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.⁴¹

Think about that: if mankind is one family, one book, one natural body, then what happens to any member has an impact on all. Killing Abel doesn't make Cain bigger; it makes Cain smaller, because Cain – whether he likes it or not – is involved in mankind, same as Abel. And that's why our brothers and sisters – every human, of whatever age, whatever race or nation, whatever belief or persuasion or habit – cannot help but be our concern. We are natural members of the body of humanity, where “if one member suffers, all suffer together,” whether we know it or not (1 Corinthians 12:26). To that end, it's been said that we must be “placed here on earth to be keepers of each other. Is it not one of the laws of nature that we look to each other for counsel and protection? And is there not a monitor within which tells us, 'Watch over thy brother for his good?'”⁴²

What do we, then, owe to our brothers? We owe them whatever's for the common good. We owe them what they need in order to get to where they ought to be in life. And where, then, ought our brother be? Flourishing, alive, in community with us, before the face of the Lord, that's where.

What we owe our brothers is to do no injustice to them, no harm to them. If “you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor,” as the Law says (Leviticus 19:16), how much less may we stand against the life of a brother! And yet how often brothers in Adam harm each other to death! Israelis and Palestinians, Russians and Ukrainians, to say nothing of the bitter battles within so many countries – and so many neighborhoods. So far should we be from harming a brother that we should defend a brother: stick up for, speak out for, stand in the gap for our brother under threat, whoever he may be, for “a brother is born for adversity” (Proverbs 17:17).

What we owe our brothers is to never exploit them in their hardships. God's people were warned seriously that if their brother fell on hard times, they could not buy his labor at unfair wages, could not treat him like a slave (Leviticus 25:39), could not charge him interest on loans (Leviticus 25:36-37; Deuteronomy 23:19), in general that they could not treat their brother's loss as a source of gain. Would that someone would preach this to our nation, which so loathes to forgive, which cannot dream of a day without profit, which institutionalizes the exploitation of brother by brother! So far should we be from exploiting a brother that we should provide for a brother. “You shall not see your brother's ox or his sheep going astray and ignore them; you shall take them back to your brother” (Deuteronomy 22:1). The New Testament takes it a step further: “If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?” (1 John 3:17). “We ought to lay down our lives for the brothers!” (1 John 3:16).

What we owe our brothers is to not divide them from our unity, to not drive them away, to not mislead them or abandon them. Paul tells us that “it is good not to... do anything that causes your brother to stumble” (Romans 14:21) – something that pressures or persuades your brother to turn toward sin. “Sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak,” the Apostle says, “you sin against Christ” (1 Corinthians 8:12). So, he says, “decide never to put a scandal or hindrance in the way of a brother” (Romans 14:13). So far should we be from scandalizing a brother that we should appeal to our brother. “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness” (Galatians 6:1). “Whoever brings a sinner back from his wandering will save his soul from death” (James 5:20). So “exhort one another every day... that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13).

And in this, Cain's question is resolved. God is our Keeper, and he chooses to keep us through our watchful and protective and provident love of one another. For in the sense of helping, defending, providing, seeking good for them, “every human is every other human's keeper, to the extent our own circumstances and abilities will allow.”⁴³ How much more for us who claim to know the grace of the God Who Is Love? A hundred years ago, a preacher lamented: “We, we Christians, ought to be aflame with the desire for righteousness, consumed with a passion to recover the fallen, to save the slipping, to bind up the broken, to save souls alive; and yet constantly we confine our spiritual and our physical energies just to ourselves and to an immediate circle, and when the claims of the outcasts, the outsiders, the fallen, the down-and-outs are pressed upon us, we cry, 'Am I my brother's keeper?'”⁴⁴ How often all our excuses and rationalizations and self-justifications boil down to that question. But St. Augustine reminds us that “one who keeps Christ in his heart does not say what Cain says.”⁴⁵

For Christ, God the Son, eternally the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, elected in time to adopt himself into the human family, and “that is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers” (Hebrews 2:11). The Bible says it: Jesus looks at you and sees his little brother, his little sister. And “he had to be made like his brothers in every respect,” sharing our flesh and blood, “so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17). Christ could not be any less like Cain. Not only did he choose humans as his brothers and sisters, he became our royal-priestly-prophetic keeper, insisting that he “lay down his life for his friends,” for his whole human family in each of its members (John 15:13).  That's just what the heart of Christ is: love that knows no limit, neither life nor death.  If you would simply keep Christ in your heart and in your life, “concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love... all the brothers,” all your brothers in all the world (1 Thessalonians 4:9). Amen.

The Murderer and the Martyr

The firstborn son, alas! he scarcely grew
to man's estate, ere he his brother slew;
and that first crime of murder, done by Cain
before the altar! There was Abel slain!
Thus man, vain man, born of woman, began
his bloody ritual: – slew his fellow man.
Oh, why for other witness should we call,
to prove the wretchedness of Adam's fall?
No wicked deed e'er wrought by thing with life,
so wondrous wicked as this primal strife.
The crime initial of the race; – for then
began the illustrative acts of men;
and since, their record is one bloody line –
one breach continuous of the Law Divine.¹

When we last left Cain, he was walking through the valley of decision. He and his little brother Abel had each brought an offering to God from the results of their labors, but Abel brought the best in righteousness while Cain brought the average in unrighteousness. God had welcomed Abel and his offering with favor, but seemed to snub Cain and his offering, humiliating him. Cain had fallen into sorrow and anger, so God spoke with him, correcting his reaction and warning that he was where two pathways diverged. One pathway, that of doing good with his passions, would lead to an uplifting result. Taking the other pathway ran the risk of being bitten by a voracious beast called sin, which he needed to master by taking dominion over it, dominion over himself. But the choice was Cain's to make. God swiftly wrapped up his speech, yielding space to answer (Genesis 4:3-7).

After that, we'd expect to read, “Cain said to the LORD” something or other. We expect a dialogue to continue. But we're disappointed. Cain still has nothing he wants to say to God, even when knowingly at the crisis point. Instead, the next words we read are: “And Cain said to Abel...” – that's where we pick up, with an abandonment of the divine conversation for a human one (Genesis 4:8).² How long that switch takes could be immediate, or it could (as some pictured) involve Cain “biding his time” for days, weeks, months, before verse 8 picks up.³

“And Cain said to Abel...” – everywhere else in the Bible, that phrase introduces what's said. But here, at least in our surviving Hebrew text, there's just a suspicious blank.⁴ Needless to say, lots of people have tried to fill in the blank! Some filled it in with Cain telling Abel about his conversation with God.⁵ Some filled it in with some kind of personal argument – maybe a quarrel over authority,⁶ or maybe a quarrel over land ownership.⁷ Some filled it in with a theology debate, Cain denying mercy and judgment in the world while Abel defends the ways of God and the hope of things to come.⁸ All the ancient translations have Cain inviting Abel to go out to the field together, and it could be that that's how the original text read and our Hebrew copies just got messed up along the way.⁹ Part of me, though, wonders if this gap in the text isn't a clever ploy on purpose.¹⁰ Cain's made his decision, but without getting to hear what he says, we're on the edge of our seat to watch what he does. His actions will speak so much louder than any words, revealing his heart if we read on with bated breath.

Whatever he says, what we find next is that “they were in the field” (Genesis 4:8). This is the wild country, an isolated flat expanse where animals roam. It's also the kind of place you'd take a flock out to pasture (Genesis 31:4), so it's likely Abel's workplace as a shepherd, somewhere familiar to him.¹¹ But a field could become cultivated as farmland (Exodus 22:5), if it were seized and privatized. And where have we met the field before? From meeting the most cunning of all “beasts of the field,” the serpent (Genesis 3:1). Cain, now seed of the serpent, naturally goes out where the wild things are. There, Cain wants Abel unsupported and unsuspecting.¹²

The trouble is that God's word to Cain – the same word that summoned stars and makes Cain's crops grow – has fallen silent on Cain's petrifying heart.¹³ And so, in the field, “what he pondered, he also did.”¹⁴ “Cain rose up against his brother Abel” (Genesis 4:8). That expression, to 'rise up against' someone, might have the sense of a sneak attack, an abrupt outburst of hostility (Judges 20:5). No wonder ancient readers described Cain here as “full of treachery.”¹⁵ And when Cain attacked, “in the field, there was no one to separate them” (2 Samuel 14:6), no one on the earthly scene to intervene against Cain the brutal brawler's brawn.¹⁶ The result was that “Cain... slew him” (Genesis 4:8). It's the general word for 'killing' or 'slaying' – here it's plainly intentional, not accidental, as when “a man presumes against his neighbor to slay him by cunning” (Exodus 21:14).¹⁷ We hear this combo later from Moses, “a man rising up against his neighbor and slaying him” (Deuteronomy 22:26).

Before, in Genesis 3, we saw Adam and Eve commit a wrong against God; now, in Genesis 4, we're introduced to social sin, whereby both is God offended and are others also harmed.¹⁸ As the Bible unfolds, this verse shows us “the first cardinal transgression by man against man.”¹⁹ There's no deep mystery what these words mean in this verse. Out of nowhere, once Cain and Abel were together in the open field away from prying human eyes, Cain gave vent to his anger, his envy, his hate. He turned on Abel, striking perhaps with a stick or a stone or a tool carved of bone. He bludgeoned or stabbed at Abel. Maybe Abel raised his hands, maybe he tried to urge Cain to stop; or maybe Abel had little time to react, his head battered, his skull dented, his bones cracking. The event was no doubt fast once it started. Before that minute, Abel was walking around, breathing the air of God's green earth. After that fatal minute, Abel's lungs lapsed in their labors, his heart's thumping arrested, his brain's synapses wound down their electric pulsating, his eyes glazed over. All the while, the seething Cain stood over his very own flesh and blood and watched said blood drain into the soil and said flesh cut loose its spirit.²⁰

This, this minute of his choice bearing poisoned fruit, is what we all know Cain for. In what he's done, Cain has not just killed Abel; Cain has killed the soul of Cain, extinguishing his inner life, plunging his soul into dark death.²¹ Cain's course shows us how “departure from the one true God inevitably leads to injustice, and indeed to bloodshed, in human society.”²² Violence has now entered the human world through Cain, “the first murderer.”²³ What Cain has done is unspeakably serious: “homicide... involves the greatest injury to one's neighbor,”²⁴ and so is “the most heinous violation of the social bond between human beings.”²⁵ And by what he's done, Cain has “instructed humanity in the way to commit murder.”²⁶ His horrifying work will echo.

Already in the earlier stretches of the Stone Age, archaeologists find human skulls with head wounds that might have been inflicted through intentional violence.²⁷ In north Iraq, they've found a skeleton showing a knife wound that penetrated the rib and lung, leaving damage that led to death about two months later;²⁸ in Russia, they found a burial of a man killed by a thrown spear.²⁹ From the Middle Stone Age, we've found graveyards full of skulls with blunt-force trauma and arms with defensive wounds.³⁰ By the time we reach a world in the Late Stone Age where farming is a regular human practice alongside mass graves testifying to beheadings, we can plainly see the fruits of prehistoric human society being remade in Cain's image.³¹

Recorded history has hardly been any better than prehistory. Settle anywhere you please along the riverbank of time, and you'll find the ground wetted by blood and tears. The millennia bring brawlings and beatings and battles, mass shootings and massacres, gangs and genocides, abortions and holocausts – a woeful litany of man's inhumanity to man. And our own area has hardly been exempt. The other night, I watched a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet, itself a tale of the aftermath of one brother's murder of another. I was there to see a good friend of mine, whose fourth-great-grandfather was hanged in Lebanon in 1880 for having drowned an old man in an insurance scheme.³² Six years later, in Reading, an argument over some misplaced money led a youth to fire four shots from his revolver into his big brother's body, then two more into himself; the victim lingered long enough to marry his fiancée before swiftly leaving her a widow.³³

A week and 126 years ago, the president of a Lancaster bank was blown away by a tenant he was evicting, inches in front of a deeply traumatized constable.³⁴ In Schuylkill County, 1903, a grown man in a rage turned his repeating rifle against two brothers, gunning both down; finally caught, all he could say was, “I am bewitched!”³⁵ And in the 1930s, one of the families now tied to our own church nearly took Cain's dark road: while feasting and drinking after a hunt, two brothers fought over a cigarette, and the father intervened, striking and evicting one of the quarreling sons; that son, minutes later, returned to fire a 12-gauge shotgun into the family shack, injuring his father and two other brothers.³⁶

This very past Wednesday, as a crowd gathered in a West Philadelphia park to mark an Islamic holiday, two groups of young men got into a shootout, ripping the event to pieces.³⁷ Thursday night, in North Carolina, a two-hour window brought multiple shootings across the city of Durham, leaving a 16-year-old high school student dead; according to his mother, he and his little brother had both survived being shot just last Sunday.³⁸ On Friday in Australia, a man carried out a mass stabbing at a shopping mall, killing six and wounding seven others, including a mama and her baby.³⁹ That night in Pakistan, gunmen held up a bus, abducting and fatally shooting nine men from the 'wrong' province.⁴⁰ Meanwhile, in the West Bank, an Israeli shepherd boy's sheep wandered home without him; his body turned up yesterday, by which time Israeli rioters had beat and burned and shot their way through several Palestinian villages.⁴¹ Cain has his fingers in so very many pies. Cain is active in every nation. Open the news, and you're seeing Cain-world in operation. Sometimes that world unfolds in the mirror, too. Talk about “one breach continuous of the Law Divine!”⁴²

Faced with it, what does the Bible tell us? Listen: “We should not be like Cain, who was of the Evil One and murdered his brother. … Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:12, 15). Make no excuses for Cain. Watch out for Cain. Refuse room for Cain in your hands, in your head, in your heart. But realize that those who have walked the way of Cain have still a prospect for redemption, for forgiveness, for recovery, for victory over the sin that has mastered them.

Here, though, is another layer to the story we mustn't miss. We've spoken so much of Cain, Cain, Cain. What set this all in motion? What was the spark? Worship. Abel was a righteous man and a true worshipper of God. It was because Abel worshipped God truly and effectively that Cain envied and hated him. Cain was bitterly opposed to Abel's worship and its fruit. Cain couldn't stand the thought that Abel's worship pleased God. Cain himself was acting out of his own perverted worship, a corrupted religious sensibility that sought to win favor through bloodshed,⁴³ as though offering Abel as a human sacrifice.⁴⁴ Cain wasn't just any type of murderer; his attack on Abel, “the first religious war,” was an act of religious persecution.⁴⁵ So Abel wasn't just any type of victim. He died precisely for his worship, for his religion, for his love of the LORD.

Blessed Abel is persecuted for righteousness' sake (Matthew 5:10). Abel “suffered evil for a good cause,” and so, “by dying patiently for the sake of righteousness, he made good use of that evil” that Cain did to him.⁴⁶ During a violent persecution in the third century, one Christian leader pointed to Abel as “the first one to inaugurate and dedicate martyrdom,” since Abel “didn't resist or struggle against his brother... but, in humble and gentle patience, allowed himself to be killed” for the Lord.⁴⁷

That's what martyrdom means: “It is essential to the nature of martyrdom,” said one great theologian, “that a man [or woman] stands steadfastly in truth and justice against the assaults of persecutors.”⁴⁸ That's precisely what Abel did, what he was first to do; and that act certified “holy Abel,” in the eyes of some, as the very first member of the Church which “has been present on earth since the dawn of humanity,”⁴⁹ which “began with Abel and extends to all who... will believe in Christ to the very end.”⁵⁰ Even Martin Luther thought of Abel as “the first among all the saints..., the first to be freed from sin and from the misfortunes of this world, and throughout the entire later church, he shines like a brilliant star.”⁵¹

Israel, at her best, was a national Abel: “For your sake,” they lamented to God, “we are slain all day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered” (Psalm 44:22). When seven Jewish brothers laid their lives on the line for God and his Law (2 Maccabees 7:1-40), their mother urged them to stay steadfast, reminding them how their late father “used to read to you about Abel, slain by Cain” (4 Maccabees 18:11). And Jesus himself recounted history as “all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel” on down (Matthew 23:35); and he warned that when he sent out “prophets and apostles,” some would be subjected to violence and even killed (Luke 11:49). Stephen was stoned to death by an angry mob (Acts 7:54-60). One James was executed by the sword (Acts 12:1-2), while James the Just, leader of the church in Jerusalem, was shoved off a platform, stoned, and finally clubbed over the head in the temple court.⁵² Paul, having survived whippings and stonings, was at last beheaded in Rome, while Peter was crucified there.⁵³ The same emperor who ordered their deaths scapegoated Christians, having them ripped apart by dogs or else crucified and lit on fire.⁵⁴ Many other apostles were ultimately killed in their mission: Andrew crucified in Greece, Thomas speared in India, and so on.⁵⁵

As persecutions ran on, we hear of the martyrs' “nobility, endurance, and love of the Master” when, “clinging to the gracious gift of Christ, they despised the torments of the world.”⁵⁶ Shepherds urged their Christian flocks, in such times, to “imitate... the just Abel, who initiated martyrdoms since he was the first to be killed for justice.”⁵⁷ And martyrdom is by no means a thing of the past; more Christians have been killed for their faith in the past hundred years than in any before it. These aren't passive participants or simple victims. Looking backward and forward from the Middle Ages, wise Christians observed that “of all acts of virtue, martyrdom exhibits most completely the perfection of charity,” and so “of all human actions, martyrdom is the most perfect in kind, being the mark of the greatest love.”⁵⁸ It's not for nothing that the earliest Christians said things like, “We love the martyrs as disciples and imitators of the Lord,” and hoped all Christians could be “partners and fellow disciples with them.”⁵⁹ The Church therefore chose to celebrate those martyrs by name and day, embracing them with love as friends gone to heaven in daring triumph. And to the extent we're their fellow disciples, Abel represents us, standing in this text for every “Christian who cleaves to God” in the face of the world's dark disdain.⁶⁰

God testifies of martyred Abel that “the voice of [his] blood is crying out to me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10), “crying out the wrongs which he has suffered at the hands of a wicked brother.”⁶¹ Jewish reflections on those words imagined Abel's spirit loudly complaining about Cain until Cain's legacy should crumble to dust.⁶² Even the New Testament testifies of Abel that “through his faith, though he died, he still speaks” (Hebrews 11:4) – still speaks, untold millennia after Cain and all his seed are dead and gone, because Abel's blood can't be satisfied until the works of Cain are gone, until “final justice” is rendered to Cain-world.⁶³ Nor is Abel's alone. John says, “I saw under the altar” – where the sacrificial blood would run down – “the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice: 'O Sovereign Lord, holy and true! How long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?'” (Revelation 6:9-10). “These souls of the saints cry out, not with hatred of enemies, but with the love of justice” and with a yearning for resurrection.⁶⁴ As they wait, they receive reward in heaven (Revelation 6:11), which is why Luther says that after Abel dies, “he is in a better state than if he possessed a thousand worlds with all their goods.”⁶⁵

And that's fitting, because Abel symbolizes more than just martyrdom. Early Christians explicitly said that “Abel who is likewise slain” was a foreshadowing of “the mystery of the Lord.”⁶⁶ Abel the shepherd was a window onto the coming “Good Shepherd” (John 10:11), “the Great Shepherd of the Sheep” (Hebrews 13:20). Both were objects of hatred from their brethren: Abel by Cain, Jesus by all brothers Jew and Gentile. So Abel died to “symbolize the One,” Christ, “who was killed... by an evil brother according to the flesh,”⁶⁷ “slain in witness to the blood that would one day be shed by the Mediator.”⁶⁸ Not only was Abel “the first to show us martyrdom,” but in giving his life, he “inaugurated the Lord's Passion through the glory of his blood.”⁶⁹  In Abel begins the cross!

We've heard how Abel's “blood cried out from earth to heaven, making accusation because [Cain] killed him.”⁷⁰ Abel's blood wants to be avenged, wants to bring judgment, wants justice against Cain and all those down the halls of time who let Cain live on through them. But the New Testament introduces us now to “the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24). The blood Christ sprinkled onto heaven's altar has more gracious aims than the blood of Abel spattered in earth's dust. Christ shed his blood “in order to sanctify the people through his own blood..., the blood of the eternal covenant” (Hebrews 13:12, 20). “Now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off,” as far east of Eden as you could be, “have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13). The grace his blood speaks is “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20). Though we were guilty as Cain, “the blood of Jesus... cleanses us from all sins” (1 John 1:7). “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God!” (Romans 5:9).

In those days, there were Jews who wrote that God had seated “Abel, whom Cain the wicked killed,” on a throne in heaven “to judge the entire creation, examining both righteous and sinners.”⁷¹ The thought was, every human would be judged first by a human son of Adam (one who had himself suffered violent injustice), and then, only later, would each person receive final judgment from God himself.⁷² To this end, they pictured the exalted Abel as “a wondrous man, bright as the sun, like unto a son of God.”⁷³ You see where this is ending up! What they ascribed to Abel, the Gospels announce is true of the One to whom Abel pointed: “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father” (John 5:22-23). And so God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a Man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).

Jesus Christ is the Man who, displayed in the martyrs from Abel on, judges all things. And to that end, Paul has promised that “if we endure” the challenges of this life, all the way up to martyrdom if it's asked of us, then “we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:12). “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? … Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?” (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). Thanks be to God: Cain-world is due to die away that day! How much better to suffer like Abel for a crown than to live like Cain for any of the goods of this passing world! So let us hurry, brothers and sisters, to put off Cain and to embrace Abel as ably as we can, for the sake of Christ who died, who lives, who judges, who reigns, who longs to raise us up with him! Amen.

Counsel for Cain

When we last left the brothers Cain and Abel, the pair had – whether for the first time in all human history, or in the first case the Bible chooses to show us – brought an offering to God, perhaps at some prehistoric religious festival celebrated in their family. Each brought to God out of the results of his labor. Cain, servant of the earth as a farmer, brought some of the fruit of the ground, a portion of the grain harvest no doubt. Abel, shepherd of sheep, brought God a gift from his flock: not only any sheep, but tender lambs; not only lambs, but the firstborn among them; and not only that, but the tastiest ones (Genesis 4:3-4). This just illustrates, though, how Cain and Abel were set apart by their attitudes in worship and by the way they'd been living up to that point: Cain was unrighteous and is being presumptuous and careless, Abel was righteous and is being humble and careful.

So picture the scene. “The LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering” (Genesis 4:4). God had a positive reaction to what Abel gave, in large part because God had a positive reaction to Abel as the giver, looking on his heart. More literally, it says that God gazed on Abel and on his offering, that God paid them attention. Clearly, God accepted them. And God did so in a way that could be known on earth. Unlike a lot of what we do, they got feedback, maybe by fire from heaven. So somehow, it becomes obvious that Abel's offering was accepted by God. Naturally, if this is a social event, if some sort of celestial pyrotechnics made a big display at Abel's altar, all eyes are going to pivot to the ground-up grains and other veggies Cain has piled up, expecting a similar sign to follow shortly. Seconds tick past on the clock. They turn to minutes, and the minutes pile up. Nothing's happening. Heaven has no reaction to this average grain of convenience. Heaven has no reaction to Cain at all. “Cain and his offering he did not regard” (Genesis 4:5). It feels to Cain as though maybe God forgot he exists.

Cain, at this point, is the center of everybody else's attention, but not in a good way. He's feeling more sheepish than any of Abel's lambs. Cain expected to be the leader, expected to be the example. Cain cast himself as the protagonist and is wondering why he's not even in the script, why he's treated like a vagrant who just stumbled onto the set. He deserves, he reckoned, to be honored as the firstborn, as the founder of sacrifice, as the creative genius, as the hard worker worthy of his wages. He thought all his sweat and tears throughout the year would be rewarded in this one moment, his chance to be crowned with favor, his opportunity to secure approbation, his avenue to dispel all doubt, to prove himself, to store up securities.¹ But heaven snubs him.

As Cain walks away – cue the slow, soulful music out of a Charlie Brown Christmas special – the Bible keeps the camera on him, zooming in on his face. Unbeknownst to Cain the Forgotten, it's actually time for his close-up, his most deeply focused attention. What is going on in Cain's life, in Cain's mind, in Cain's body, in Cain's heart right now? “It burned to Cain very intensely, and his face fell” (Genesis 4:5). That's what the Bible tells us.

First of all, Cain experiences a wave of embarrassment wash over him. His pride is wounded. His expectations dashed, he feels silly. He went out on a limb and was left high and dry. He's been exposed, in his own eyes and in the public esteem, as defective – at least, that's how he sees it. St. Ephrem imagined that, at least the way Cain saw things, “there was laughter in the eyes of his parents and his sisters when his offering was rejected.”² Martin Luther similarly described Cain here as “shamefully disgraced in public.”³ This humiliation hits Cain's core sense of self. It leaves him feeling embattled, vulnerable, anxious, afraid of further judgment that may find him wanting, afraid he'll need to hide more and more of himself to disguise his sudden nakedness.

Then, Cain is also made deeply sad. He grieves the loss of honor he suffered. He grieves a wasted opportunity to nab God's blessing. He grieves the course that events took. Cain is wrapped up in sorrow. That's part of why his face has fallen: he's distressed, he's disappointed, he's despondent, he's despairing, he's down in the dumps. Cain's emotional stability, his inner equilibrium, has been disrupted; his walls are breached by advancing gloom.

But more prominent than even the shame and sadness are what they birth together: anger. Anger in the Bible is the natural response to some sort of wrongdoing, real or perceived; and that's true of Cain's anger here.⁴ It's a hot sensation, something burning like a fire in his nose, reddening his cheeks, boiling his blood. Cain is ignited with anger; you can practically see the steam blowing out his ears. His anger, first of all, targets God. To Cain, God has done something wrong. God has snubbed him. God has dishonored him. God, if Cain tells the story, has done Cain an injustice, an injury. How dare God refuse Cain's gift? How dare God account Cain as a drop in the bucket? How dare God breach Cain's trust and fail to perform on schedule? Cain's anger burns at God; Cain's faith is therefore rocked. He is, in one ancient reader's words, “disenchanted with providence.”⁵

Cain is also “angry because the offering of his brother had been accepted.”⁶ Abel's success only throws into relief Cain's failure, underlining it, drawing attention to it. It would've been one thing if both offerings had been rejected. Maybe then it could've been a silly idea they could laugh at later. Or maybe then it could've been a shared injustice that would deepen their bond. Instead, it divides between them, isolating Cain. And this totally upends everything Cain thought about this relationship, in which he'd always been the doted-on firstborn son, the wonder child, while Abel had always been the addition, the appendix, the afterthought. Now, as one Jewish scholar puts it, “for Abel to receive any attention completely disrupts Cain's world; for Abel to receive exclusive attention is utterly devastating.”⁷ The reason this is so devastating is because Cain believes life is a competition, a zero-sum game, so Abel's advancement must come at Cain's cost.⁸ So Cain burns passionately to make things right again in his own eyes. He's “very angry,” or, as it's been said, “extremely vexed and terribly agitated.”⁹

Add all this up, and Cain is “drowning in the waves of his annoyance.”¹⁰ (Ever have that feeling?) He's a case study of intense emotion – the natural blossoming of the shame and fear Adam had at the approach of God in the garden. The immediate result of all this sorrow and anger is a pivot toward resentment and bitterness. In his fury, in his depression, in his bitter jealousies, Cain is deeply disaffected with and alienated from everyone and everything, and that bitter taste poisons his moment-to-moment experience, growing as it unfolds.¹¹ Have you ever felt that? I know I have.

“And then the LORD said to Cain...” (Genesis 4:6). Let's not breeze past those words. If God said anything at all to Abel, we don't know it. But Cain – the man who counts himself cast off completely, the man convinced he's getting the silent treatment – now hears the word of the Creator.¹² Cain isn't forgotten, Cain isn't ignored, Cain isn't left to rot. All this time, God has been trying to communicate with him, not lock him out! “The loving-kindness of the God of All is shown to be unmatched in dealing with the fallen: far from allowing them to reach the depths of sin, he prompts them to come to their senses and be converted to virtue, as happens also in this case with Cain.”¹³ So said one early Christian who read this story. God is a God who reaches out!

In this case, God's got some questions for Cain: “Why are you angry? And why has your face fallen?” (Genesis 4:6). “What are you so upset about, Cain? What's gotten you this hot under the collar? Where'd you find that frowny face you're wearing?” God interrogates Cain's emotional crisis, prodding him to reflect on it in reason.

Now, it's important for us to hear what God's not saying. God is not saying that emotions like anger or sadness are intrinsically evil, bad, or improper. God created human nature to include emotions – a whole lot of them! That's part of what it means that we're akin to animals and not just to angels. Living in the material world, we have these impulses which naturally and properly react with anger, with sadness, with other feelings, in certain kinds of situations. They're just part of us. As Lactantius put it, “emotions are a sort of natural exuberance of souls.”¹⁴ Just because you feel sad, it does not mean you are broken. Just because you feel angry, it does not mean you are damaged or sinful. The mere fact that Cain feels these feelings he feels is not an indictment. Nor is it a categorical indictment on all human embarrassment, fear, sorrow, anger, and so forth.

But just because these types of emotions are natural, that doesn't mean that every token of them is well directed or appropriate. Lactantius added: “It is good to be emotionally moved in the right direction, and bad in the wrong direction.”¹⁵ So, for example – pay attention, Cain – “anyone given to anger can exercise his anger on someone he shouldn't or at an inappropriate time.”¹⁶ Though even here, our initial emotional reactions to things – even if they're inappropriate – usually aren't immediately under our control. They're movements that get set in motion before you can reason your way through them or make a willful choice about them.¹⁷

Okay, so what is God saying to Cain? First, God is hinting that Cain should pay attention to the reason behind his emotions. What is it that set all this off? Who is it that caused Cain grief and pain? Abel has shown zero malice or aggression toward Cain. The offering of a gift imposed no obligation on God whereby God would owe Cain any particular response, so God did nothing unfair. What really causes Cain's pain are Cain's choices.¹⁸ One rabbi put it this way: “The core of his problem lay entirely in the choices Cain himself was making, in the nature of the relationship he was building with God.”¹⁹ His anger is misdirected at its root.²⁰

Second, Cain's particular anger and particular sadness are inappropriate in his situation, and that's Cain's choice too. “Insofar as the passions are subject to the control of reason and will,” it's been said, “moral judgments do apply to them.”²¹ When they're willfully out of place, then “feelings which one may correctly exercise become vices.”²² Cain toward Abel, Jonah toward Nineveh – both had anger that was willfully out of place (Jonah 4:4), since “a person's possession of the good is by no means diminished when another comes or continues to share in it.”²³ Because Cain doesn't think that, his emotional reaction is misguided. He ought to feel humbled by the correction; he ought to feel charitable toward Abel; he ought to feel happy that, if not by himself then at least by someone, God has been glorified. But Cain chooses to abide elsewhere, wallowing in “unrighteous anger.”²⁴

God wants Cain to realize that his emotional reactions aren't productive. It's doing Cain no good to be sad with a sorrow that does nothing but bring him down. It's doing Cain no good to be angry with a rage that's burning him up inside. It's doing Cain no good to stew in his shame. It's definitely doing Cain no good to be infected with bitterness or to think resentful thoughts. Why build a house in the swamp? Why not just pass through, move along?

Note, by the way, that God didn't show up to monologue all this at Cain. God sits down at the table for a dialogue with Cain. What would be productive, what would maybe help Cain move on, is to talk about it. And God is saying to Cain, “Hey, I'm here. I'm listening. You're not abandoned, you're not forgotten. You are loved in the midst of your pain, of your depression, of your upset. Tell me what you're going through.” If Cain needs a therapist, God has officially applied for the job. Maybe if Cain opens up, he'll realize how silly his feelings are when he has to explain them. Or maybe he'll vent to God and achieve a sense of catharsis from no longer bottling it up inside.²⁵ Or maybe Cain's begrudging dialogue will create space for God to answer back and teach him – if only Cain will just engage. But now Cain is the one who is silent. Cain has nothing to say to God.

What God is trying to get Cain to see – and all of us to see who've ever felt anything like Cain feels – is that Cain's emotional reactions aren't wholly beyond his control. For one, they stem from decisions Cain is free to revise. For another, Cain can consciously interrogate his emotions and work to redirect them: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him” (Psalm 42:5). Cain can cultivate the character, the habits, that will dispose him to a healthier emotional life: “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense” (Proverbs 19:11).

God wants Cain to realize that, in this very abysmally low and seemingly godforsaken point in his life, actually it's the valley of decision he's walking through. Cain's emotions may have him looking back at that sacrifice debacle, and they may have him looking around at his all-hushing gloom and his loud-clamoring ire, which both enslave the present to the past.²⁶ But God aims to yank Cain's focus out of his funk and onto the futures that fork in front of him. Thoughtfully or thoughtlessly, Cain's next step shapes his fate. This is his standing-before-the-Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil moment.²⁷ So God lays out the two paths and invites him to look down each.

One of the paths, as it happens, would actually resolve Cain's problems.²⁸ “Will there not, if you do good, be a lifting up?” (Genesis 4:7). If you do well, Cain, it'll be swell! Even from within this prison of hurt and sorrow and outrage and heaviness of heart, it's possible to begin the right path, to start batting a thousand from here on out. So what good is Cain capable of? For starters, he can fix what went wrong with his sacrifice, either by repairing it or repeating it. His apparent rejection was a reversible judgment, meant to remind Cain that he's settling for too little in his relationship with God.²⁹ Cain “ought surely to have changed his ways and imitated his good brother” by presenting Cain's own best to God; that would be good.³⁰

Cain could also channel his emotions in a healthy way. The same inner assertiveness that generates such fiery anger could also passionately motivate a changed life and a bettered world. He could steer these emotions to appropriate cases, appropriate outlets, and handle himself well. Then, swallowing his pride, he could cheer for his brother's successes. Suppose Cain could say of Abel, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Suppose Cain could aspire to greatness, not by competing with his brother, but by serving him (Matthew 20:26). Suppose Cain made it his mission to congratulate Abel, rejoice with Abel, encourage Abel to even better things. So, too, it would be good for Cain simply to marvel at the wisdom of God, to make peace with it, to embrace it.

Then, God's saying, there could be a lifting up! His sacrifice would be lifted up to God's presence in acceptance at last.³¹ Cain's fallen dignity will be lifted up, exalted.³² Cain's past misdeeds will be lifted up off of him in gracious forgiveness.³³ Cain's fallen face will be lifted up, because if he just does something good and helpful, it'll break him out of his cycle of self-pity, and that breath of fresh air will gladden his heart.³⁴ And, as the Bible reminds us, “a glad heart makes a cheerful face” (Proverbs 15:13). By lifting up his brother Abel in charity, Cain's relationships will be strengthened, Cain's community will prosper, and they say a rising tide lifts all boats – for St. Augustine pointed out that “goodness is a possession that spreads out more and more widely insofar as those who share in it are united in undivided love.... The more he is able to love the one who shares it with him, the greater he will find that his own possession of it becomes.”³⁵ Plus, Cain will be lifted up within the ways of God himself. “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding” (Proverbs 14:29).

But God also talks about the other path, the one where Cain does not do good. And that, God warns, brings its own dangers. For that's where sin lives – that's the dwelling place of error, misdirection, failure. This verse is so grammatically bonkers in Hebrew that ancient rabbis and modern commentators alike despair of making heads or tails of it.³⁶ The Greek translation has barely anything in common with it. On one reading, sin is “couching at the door,” like some kind of predatory beast lounging right outside your house. Any false move could rouse it suddenly and abruptly into vicious action. On another reading, there's a rabitsu at the door – a demon-like spirit that Israel's neighbors thought lurked in gateways to seize the guilty for judgment.³⁷ These dark-angel deputies or bailiffs, pagans said, were sent out by the gods to whip earthlings into shape; originally good or bad, they were later seen as evil spirits ambushing victims with disaster where they least expected.³⁸

This stretch of Genesis is so fond of double entendres, words that can be read two different ways, that I'd bet both senses are in view.³⁹ There's a predatory beast lounging around like a sleeping lion, a resting snake; there's a demon-deputy sent out to punish wrong, waiting in ambush where you least expect. Whatever's out there, it's active and passive, it's animal and spiritual. There's something dangerous and unsavory, and it has a hankering for Cain. “His desire is for you,” God warns Cain (Genesis 4:7). It looks at Cain the way Eve looks at Adam on the days they'll tell their marriage counselor about later. Behind this image, some suggest, is the Genesis 3 serpent: that's the beast, that's the demon, lying in wait to seduce and snack.⁴⁰ The Old Serpent wants you, Cain – he aims to slither his way in through any door you're careless to leave open; he longs to grab you by those potent passions of yours, all the better to steer you with; he's ready to bite your heel, to pump into you his venom until you're all poison, until you're just like him.⁴¹ Sin wants to master Cain. Sin wants to master us.

To even set out on the road of persisting in inappropriate or untempered anger, to set up a caravan where our passions run free, is a dangerous proposition. That's why Jesus preached that “everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:22) – the active or passive cultivation of anger opens wide this door to the dark path, and to the companionship of “this indwelling beast that broods on the unfairness of life.”⁴² The next stop on the dark path is foolishness. “He who has a hasty temper exalts folly” (Proverbs 14:29), and “when a man's folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the LORD” (Proverbs 19:3).

Next stop: envy, the sick sort of sorrow we aim, not at anything bad that actually happens to us, but at good things happening to others as if it were a bad thing to us.⁴³ Envy in itself is a horrifying thing. St. Cyprian put it like this: “What a plague of one's thoughts, how great a rust of the heart..., to turn the good things of another to one's own evil, to be tormented by the prosperity of illustrious men..., to apply (as it were) hangmen to one's own heart... You are the enemy of no one's well-being more than your own.”⁴⁴ The Bible says, more succinctly, that “envy makes the bones rot” (Proverbs 14:30). In Cain's case, it'll be even worse than that, “the diabolical envy that the evil feel toward the good simply because they are good while they themselves are evil.”⁴⁵

Plus, the Bible says, “where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:16). The next stop on the dark path is hatred, an utter contempt where anger's potential good desire to restore order through justice becomes nothing but pure rejection. Cain's diabolical envy has to lead here, to “hate one who is blameless” (Proverbs 29:10). Hatred of people, in this sense, is never healthy.

The dark path that covers anger and hatred won't stay safe inside. It's written that “a hot-tempered man stirs up strife” (Proverbs 15:18). “Pressing milk produces curds, pressing the nose produces blood, and pressing anger produces strife” (Proverbs 30:33). So too, “hatred stirs up strife” (Proverbs 10:12). Now all that anger and envy and hate become interpersonal, leaking out in words or gestures or other outward signs. Suddenly strife poisons relationships – and that makes everything unpleasant for everybody (Proverbs 17:1). “While there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly and walking according to man?” (1 Corinthians 3:3).

Nor will the dark path necessarily stop there. The Bible warns that this swirl of emotions inside us, stoked by the conflict between what life is and what we think it ought to be, can be a source not just of arguments but of violent outbursts and forceful assaults (James 4:1-2). It's the next horrifying step in the natural course that Cain and his anger will take if burning has no imposed limit. Once Cain gets here, sin will “reign in his mortal body, to make him obey its passions,” to the extent that he'll “present his body parts to sin as instruments for unrighteousness” (Romans 6:12-13). And so the Serpent will be master. If this is where Cain will go, then John's right: “We should not be like Cain” (1 John 3:12), “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (James 3:15).

But God's last words to Cain are good news for us, too, even if we feel overwhelmed by passions and tempted to follow this darker path of least resistance. Even before Cain's circumstances or his feelings change, it is genuinely possible for him to gain the upper hand. Sad and bitter as he is, ashamed and angry as he is, Cain is not helpless or hopeless or defenseless. Cain is a human being! Cain is an image of God, made for dominion! “You have it in your power,” God tells Cain and tells us, “to be weaned away from sin.”⁴⁶

What Cain's got to do is learn how to manage his passions, his emotions – not to surrender control to them, not to obliterate them, but to rule over them (Genesis 4:7). As Aquinas put it, “passion leads one towards sin insofar as it is uncontrolled by reason, but insofar as it is rationally controlled, it is part of the virtuous life.”⁴⁷ That is, if it can be well-ruled, it's actually what will make Cain a good person with a good life. For “whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit is better than he who takes a city” (Proverbs 16:32). Cain may think he'll be great if only he can conquer Abel. Actually, the only way for Cain to be truly great is for Cain to conquer Cain – for Cain to rule his passions. Tame that beast, and it'll be a useful guardian for your heart, assertively protecting you from real injustice and allowing you to fulfill your mission.⁴⁸

If Cain can do that, then he'll have victory over sin, victory over darkness, victory over the Serpent. And that's very important for Cain to do – to “be angry, and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no place to the devil,” as Paul puts it (Ephesians 4:26-27). “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Hold strong the mastery over these passions and temptations, and victory awaits the patient.

Now, verse 7 leaves off, and Cain hasn't yet chosen a path. He's neither surrendered to nor mastered this demon beast. As God finishes speaking, the decision remains in Cain's hands. Only in verse 8, which we'll hear next week, will Cain collapse the paradox, determine his direction, seal his destiny, to see whether God's words to him will heal his heart or harden it.⁴⁹ But God's words to Cain are even better for us to hear. For even though we didn't do good, God's mercy still provided the promised lifting up: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth,” said the Lord, “will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). Lifted on the cross and then into heaven, Jesus poured back down the Spirit of “a wisdom that comes from above,” which is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere” (James 3:15-17). If we abide in Christ's grace, then “sin will have no dominion over you” (Romans 6:14). Christ is Master.. So “refrain from anger, forsake wrath..., be still before the LORD, and wait patiently before him” (Psalm 37:7-8). Amen.