Genesis 4:17-26

Cain and Abel

Something we didn’t mention yesterday is alluded to again today. Where did all these people come from? Our practice so far in this study of Genesis has been not to get caught up in what is not mentioned. We can only study the text that is in front of us. But the gaps in what we know are enough to make us scratch our heads and wonder. The only people we’ve known about so far are Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel. Then Cain fears being killed by people who will find him, and when he goes to settle in Nod, there’s a wife, and he builds a city, which you would guess has more than the three people mentioned in verse 17. 

But all of this misses the point. As I have said before, Hebrew is a concise language and only uses the words and phrases that are necessary to give meaning to the story. All those extra questions I wondered about in the previous paragraph were not the point of the story. The point of the story was to tell about Cain and Abel and then the aftermath of Cain’s sin. The rest of chapter 4 details Cain’s lineage and tells of Adam and Eve’s third son, Seth. That’s all the story wanted to tell, and so that’s all it told.

Interestingly, Genesis 4:26 says that “people began to call upon the name of the Lord.” This is coupled with Genesis 4:16 from yesterday: “Cain left the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” In the stories of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, they all had a speaking relationship with God. That changes in verse 16 when Cain leaves God. We come to a situation where it seems that the choice to have a relationship with God or not has entered into the world. And that choice will become even more pronounced when we move to the story of Noah next week. That choice is still for all of us today. Will you choose to leave God’s presence, or call upon his name?