I have two blond-haired, blue-eyed boys. One is lanky and logical; he can wax eloquent about the wide world of construction trucks, and he loves to give detailed instructions to me, my husband, and his little brother. The other is short and scrawny but strong. He is almost never without a wide grin, and he transforms into no less than five superheroes a day. My oldest shows me affection by snuggling up on the couch or twirling my hair. I can count the times he’s said I love you on my fingers and toes. My little one shows affection by putting a hand down my shirt (he still wouldn’t be weaned if it was up to him), by planting sticky kisses all over my face, and by peppering the phrase I love you, Mom throughout my day. They look the same, but they couldn’t be more different. I don’t know if they’ll always be friends, but yesterday, I heard my oldest tell the youngest, “When I grow up and have a house, you can live with me if you want.”
My two boys love chasing each other in the backyard where they pretend they are superheroes, ridding our sloped hill of evil villains. While my youngest rotates through his cast of characters, the oldest almost always chooses to be Spider-Man, and he has the details of his character down. His web-shooting hand matches Spidey’s fingers exactly, and he lands his jumps in a crouch with one arm touching the ground and the other arm thrust upward. It’s a joy to watch them engage one another and their imaginations in this way.
Other days, one wakes up grumpy or gets told he can’t watch a second television show (usually the youngest); one steals a few goldfish out of the other’s snacks bowl (usually the oldest); and then they are living out the ancient commands of Torah—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The little one hits, pushes, takes a toy, and he receives a smile-shaped bruise in return. No matter how many times my husband and I pull them apart, explaining as calmly as we can that we do not respond to violence with more violence, they look at us with confusion and repeat the same lines. Why not? they ask. He hit me—I hit him back. We try to explain, we try to embody the ethics of Jesus, but we falter because their logic makes sense. If someone hurts me, I instinctively want to hurt them back. As parents, that’s not what we want to teach our children, but it’s been that way since the beginning. Hurt people hurt people.
In Genesis 4, we find the first story about siblings, and it is filled with hurt. After Adam and Eve were driven from the garden, they had two sons. The oldest, Cain, was a farmer—a tiller of the ground. The youngest, Abel, was a shepherd. The first verses of the chapter tell us that both sons brought offerings to the Lord, and we learn that Abel’s offering was accepted while Cain’s was not. Like so many of the early Genesis stories, we don’t know why. In Genesis 2, we aren’t told why God planted a forbidden tree in Eden; in Genesis 3, we don’t know why Eve took the fruit and ate, and here, in Genesis 4, we don’t know why Cain’s offering wasn’t acceptable. I've always been frustrated by this lack of detail, but as I study these stories with a literary eye, I have to grapple with the intentionality of why these details are left out. I wonder how we would read the stories if we knew exactly what happened. Would we write them off as not being applicable to our own situations? Perhaps. As it stands, we can identify with the more general themes—those of greed and shame and vengeance.
When Marty Solomon discusses this passage in the BEMA podcast, he focuses on an aspect I’ve never considered. Perhaps, he muses, Cain was ashamed of what he offered. As we already established, Cain was a farmer while his brother was a shepherd. Abel had an active role in the welfare of his flock—he walked them, protected them, fed them, maybe selected the best pairs for breeding. Perhaps he confidently approached God with his offering, knowing it was his best. As a farmer, Cain’s role in bringing his offering was by nature more passive. Farmers work hard to tend their crops, but more so than a shepherd, a farmer relies on God to provide rain and sun and good soil. Without those things, Cain couldn’t have produced an abundant harvest. We aren’t told what Cain offered, or in what condition, only that Cain and his offering was not acceptable. I’ve always been taught that there was a problem with what Cain offered, but this week I was encouraged to consider that what Cain offered wasn’t the issue. Perhaps how he offered it was the issue. Maybe he was frustrated about a bad harvest, maybe he was ashamed that the crops were not his best, or maybe he feared bringing his best produce out of a scarcity mindset—if he brings his best, he won’t have enough.
Whatever his attitude—fear, shame, anger, we know that Cain doesn’t want to face what’s lurking in his own heart. After God deems Cain’s offering unacceptable, God asks why his face has fallen. If you do well, God says, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it. I think it’s interesting here, at the first mention of sin in the Biblical text, that it is personified. It’s not a verb, something we do. It’s described like an animal—something untamed, waiting to overtake us.
We know the end of the story. Instead of following God’s advice and mastering the beast, Cain rids himself of what he perceives to be the problem. He kills his brother. And don’t we do this same thing today? How many times have we severed a relationship rather than admit we were wrong? How many times have we avoided doing the right thing because we don’t want to be inconvenienced? I can’t help but think of our own country, brother against brother, as the political divide grows ever deeper. My phone is flooded with text messages from politicians making their case, and it is clear that we, as a nation, have ceased to see the humanity in one another. And, honestly, maybe we never have. If we look at our history, we have often ignored or rejected the humanity of our fellow man simply because they look and act differently.
Last night, after my kids had been fighting with each other all day, I told them the story of Cain and Abel. I simplified it a little, and I used the word hurt instead of kill. (I’m generally hesitant to share stories from Scripture that I think are not developmentally appropriate, but it seemed like they needed to hear a story.) My five year old didn’t appear to be listening, but as I was ending the story, he looked up at me expectantly. How do I tie this up? I wondered.
Recently, our pastor had taught the origins of the word repentance. In Hebrew, the word is teshuva, which literally means to turn and go a different way. It’s active imagery. We see God offering Cain an invitation to turn and go a different way, which is what I end up telling my children. How do you think God wants us to respond to one another? I ask. He wants us to turn, but of course, that isn’t how the story ends. Cain chooses to reject God’s offer. Instead of mastering his desire, he lets desire master him. His anger—at God, at his brother—results in the first human death in the Biblical story. The text says that Abel’s blood cried out to God, and God asked Cain, Where is your brother? This is the same where that is used in the fall story, when God is looking for Adam and Eve. He’s not looking for Abel; he is questioning why Abel isn’t in the place he should be. Cain brushes off His question, and God reprimands him. What have you done, God asks. The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. This alone should give us pause; the image is haunting. God continues, telling Cain that he is cursed from the ground, that it will be difficult to cultivate, that he will be a wanderer on the earth.
Cain’s punishment is to wander, to be an exile, presumably of the land of Eden. His family has already been removed from Eden’s garden, and now Cain has been removed from the land itself. But what I find most interesting is what happens next. Chapter 4, verse 16: Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. This theme of wandering, settling, and moving direction will come back up in later chapters. For now, I think it’s worth noting that Cain makes two important choices. First, he rejects God’s first offer to turn, to walk away from his anger. Second, he leaves God’s presence and he settles there. God doesn’t separate himself from Cain; in fact, he promises to preserve his life. Perhaps, if Cain continued to wander, God would have met him in his wandering, as he did with the Israelites in Exodus. Instead, Cain deliberately plants himself, roots himself, outside of God’s presence, in a land called Exile, which is the meaning of Nod. Whether or not Nod is a physical place—the imagery is clear. He is choosing to remain apart from God.
For us today, we would do well to hear God’s wisdom as we go about our daily lives, as we embrace our families, as we engage coworkers and neighbors, as we cast our ballots and make decisions that will affect the direction of our nation. Are we our brother’s keeper? It seems that we are. Just as my children have a responsibility to care for one another, we also have a responsibility to care for our fellow man. Sin is crouching at the door, friends, and its desire is for you, but you must master it.
With love and hope,
Jenica
Ordinary Joy
Words of Jubilee
A interesting quote from the novel Conjure Women by Afia Atakora.
“Cain and Abel were not brothers, not twins. They were... two sides of the same person, good and evil warring against its own inclinations. The same struggle was borne out in every person, over and over, from the very most beginning of time, and you could only answer for yourself which brother would win.”
So good.
A Few Good Things
In case you missed it, my essay “Confessions of An Angry Mom,” in which I detail my own attempts to master the beast, was recently published by Mothering Spirit. You can read my essay here. And there is also a lovely prayer by Emily Mingus that goes along with it.
Recently, I enjoyed reading two pieces by Courtney Martin at her Substack, “the examined family.” An older one titled “Shut up and repair,” which relates to my own topic this week, as well as this recent one, “Ageism and the American presidency,” which offers a wise perspective on the election to come. (I would give it a read regardless of your political viewpoint, because I think it asks some important questions—not just politically, but even about how to structure a life after retirement.)
Here is a midrash on Cain and Abel that I enjoyed reading, even though the perspective is different from my on. It’s fictionalized, but I think it’s fascinating, and I think we would all do well to bring our imaginations to scripture.
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