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Geneses
4:1-26
BIRTH OF CAIN AND ABEL.
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Verse 1. Eve said, I have gotten a
man from the Lord--that is, "by the help of the
Lord"--an expression of pious gratitude--and she called
him Cain, that is, "a possession," as if valued above
everything else; while the arrival of another son
reminding Eve of the misery she had entailed on her
offspring, led to the name Abel, that is, either
weakness, vanity (Ps
39:5), or grief, lamentation. Cain and Abel were
probably twins; and it is thought that, at this early
period, children were born in pairs (Ge
5:4) [CALVIN].
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Verse 2. Abel was a keeper of
sheep--literally, "a feeder of a flock," which, in
Oriental countries, always includes goats as well as
sheep. Abel, though the younger, is mentioned first,
probably on account of the pre-eminence of his religious
character.
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Verse 3. in process of
time--Hebrew, "at the end of days," probably
on the Sabbath.
brought
. . . an offering unto the Lord--Both
manifested, by the very act of offering, their faith in
the being of God and in His claims to their reverence
and worship; and had the kind of offering been left to
themselves, what more natural than that the one should
bring "of the fruits of the ground," and that the other
should bring "of the firstlings of his flock and the fat
thereof" [Ge
4:4].
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Verse 4. the Lord had respect unto
Abel, not unto Cain, &c.--The words, "had
respect to," signify in Hebrew,--"to look at any
thing with a keen earnest glance," which has been
translated, "kindle into a fire," so that the divine
approval of Abel's offering was shown in its being
consumed by fire (see Ge
15:17; Jud 13:20).
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Verse 7. If thou doest well, shalt
thou not be accepted?--A better rendering is, "Shalt
thou not have the excellency"? which is the true sense
of the words referring to the high privileges and
authority belonging to the first-born in patriarchal
times.
sin lieth at the
door--sin, that is, a sin offering--a common meaning
of the word in Scripture (as in Ho
4:8; 2Co 5:21; Heb 9:28). The purport of the divine
rebuke to Cain was this, "Why art thou angry, as if
unjustly treated? If thou doest well (that is, wert
innocent and sinless) a thank offering would have been
accepted as a token of thy dependence as a creature. But
as thou doest not well (that is, art a sinner), a sin
offering is necessary, by bringing which thou wouldest
have met with acceptance and retained the honors of thy
birthright." This language implies that previous
instructions had been given as to the mode of worship;
Abel offered through faith (Heb
11:4).
unto thee shall
be his desire--The high distinction conferred by
priority of birth is described (Ge
27:29); and it was Cain's conviction, that this
honor had been withdrawn from him, by the rejection of
his sacrifice, and conferred on his younger
brother--hence the secret flame of jealousy, which
kindled into a settled hatred and fell revenge.
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Verse 8. And Cain talked with Abel
his brother--Under the guise of brotherly
familiarity, he concealed his premeditated purpose till
a convenient time and place occurred for the murder (1Jo
3:12; Jude 11).
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Verse 9. I know not--a
falsehood. One sin leads to another.
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Verse 10. the voice of thy
brother's blood crieth unto me--Cain, to lull
suspicion, had probably been engaging in the solemnities
of religion when he was challenged directly from the
Shekinah itself.
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Verse 11, 12. now art thou cursed
from the earth--a curse superadded to the general
one denounced on the ground for Adam's sin.
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Verse 12. a fugitive--condemned
to perpetual exile; a degraded outcast; the miserable
victim of an accusing conscience.
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Verse 13, 14. And Cain said
. . . My punishment is greater than I can
bear--What an overwhelming sense of misery; but no
sign of penitence, nor cry for pardon.
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Verse 14. every one that findeth me
shall slay me--This shows that the population of the
world was now considerably increased.
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Verse 15. whosoever slayeth
Cain--By a special act of divine forbearance, the
life of Cain was to be spared in the then small
state of the human race.
set
a mark--not any visible mark or brand on his
forehead, but some sign or token of
assurance that his life would be preserved. This sign is
thought by the best writers to have been a wild ferocity
of aspect that rendered him an object of universal
horror and avoidance.
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Verse 16. presence of the
Lord--the appointed place of worship at Eden.
Leaving it, he not only severed himself from his
relatives but forsook the ordinances of religion,
probably casting off all fear of God from his eyes so
that the last end of this man is worse than the first
(Mt
12:45).
land of
Nod--of flight or exile--thought by many to have
been Arabia-PetrÃ|a--which was cursed to sterility on his
account.
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Verse 17-22. builded a city--It
has been in cities that the human race has ever made the
greatest social progress; and several of Cain's
descendants distinguished themselves by their inventive
genius in the arts.
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Verse 19. Lamech took unto him two
wives--This is the first transgression of the law of
marriage on record, and the practice of polygamy, like
all other breaches of God's institutions, has been a
fruitful source of corruption and misery.
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Verse 23, 24. Lamech said unto his
wives--This speech is in a poetical form, probably
the fragment of an old poem, transmitted to the time of
Moses. It seems to indicate that Lamech had slain a man
in self-defense, and its drift is to assure his wives,
by the preservation of Cain, that an
unintentional homicide, as he was, could be in no
danger.
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Verse 26. men began to call upon
the name of the Lord--rather, by the name of the
Lord. God's people, a name probably applied to them in
contempt by the
world.
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Copyright Statement
These files are a derivative of an electronic
edition prepared from text scanned by Woodside Bible
Fellowship.
This expanded edition of the Jameison-Faussett-Brown
Commentary is in the public domain and may be freely
used and distributed.
Bibliography
Information
Jamieson, Robert,
D.D. "Commentary on Genesis 04". "Commentary Critical and
Explanatory
on the Whole Bible".
<http://www.studylight.org/com/jfb/view.cgi?book=ge&chapter=004>.
1871.
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