Genesis 4 - Cain & Able - Part 1

As we move into Genesis chapter 4, we hit the story of Cain and Able. One of the first things we can meditate on is any repeated words or phrases that we encounter in the story as well as any high-level themes or movements that we can find. Here are a few to note and reflect on:

• The word “brother” appears 7 times.
• In verse 4:7 we see an echo of a phrase we saw in the previous chapter where it states “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
• Cain’s punishment is exile…similar to what happened to Adam and Eve. We see another instance in which there is a movement “east of Eden” (in other words even further away from it). Exile seems to continue to be eastward.
• We have echos of the curse of the ground.
• Generally, we see that broken relationships as the result of sin have now extend beyond man and God, husband and wife to brothers and eventually to others external to family (as we see in verse 23 & 24 with Lamech). A good meditation on this is to reflect on how this relates to what Jesus says in Matthew 22:37-40.