A brief note about chronology

The story of Cain and Abel is a difficult one, raising questions that the text does not answer. How is it that they bring their offerings? Why does God favor one brother’s offering over the other’s? While the story does not satisfy our curiosity about those questions, it does show us this: Cain and God were still in conversation, although Cain’s offering wasn’t the best: and indeed, that conversation continued after Cain decided to ‘even things up’ with his brother by murdering him.

One of the things God said to Cain was this: “Sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7) – this is a verse we would all do well to memorize. The struggle between ourselves and our sin is one of the major themes of the whole Bible. Occasionally the problem is that we just don’t know right from wrong; but mostly the problem is that knowing right from wrong isn’t sufficient: we know that what we feel like doing is the wrong thing, but it’s what we want, and so we go ahead and do it. Wretched souls that we are: who will deliver us?

The story mentions some advancements in human culture: the domestication of animals, the development of musical instruments and metalworking (4:20-22). But along with that we read of a development in the cycle of sin and vengeance. Some unnamed young man injured Lamech in some way, and Lamech responded not by mastering his sin, but by killing the young man.

Then, rather than denying any knowledge of his crime, as Cain had done (4:8-9), Lamech boasted of the murder he has committed: “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged seven-fold, truly Lamech seventy-seven fold” (4:23-24). This desire for escalated vengeance is, perhaps, the history of human strife in a nutshell.

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We want to get even, O Lord, for the sins committed against us: yet we always seem to press to make our vengeance a little more severe than just getting even, and the result is pain and bloodshed and feuds that last for generations. Teach us the path of peace. Teach us to master our sins. Give us your grace, that we may be your people.