an eye for an eye?
The third time that blood is referred to in the Bible, it is the blood of Abel. Immediately after God warned Cain that sin was crouching at his door; longing to have him, and that he must master it, “Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.” You can read about this in Genesis 4.
A few things stand out about God in this passage. If the purpose of the Bible is to reveal the nature, the heart, and the character of God, then knowing the response of God to the first act of violence would go a long way toward that. I don’t know that, as a child in Sunday school, I was really being taught to KNOW God. From this story I learned that ‘this is what bad people do, and this is what good people do, now go and be good!’ This may not have been the intention of the Sunday school ‘program’, but, never-the-less, it was the result...
One thing I notice is that God is in a relationship with Cain. Cain is angry and jealous about the whole ‘offering’ situation, and God discusses it with him openly, seemingly in a face to face type conversation. He warns him. I find it interesting that, two for two now, he has warned people before hand of the danger of going their own way. Neither Adam & Eve, nor Cain, were left to just blindly figure out how to live. They were warned. And so are we.
The second thing I notice is that God gives Cain a chance to come clean. He doesn’t come out accusing. If Cain had had a repentant heart, he could have, then and there, come clean and confessed what he had done. Instead, he gives God sass. He doesn’t really try to hide, like his parents did. Nor does he throw blame on someone else. Cain is openly defiant to God. He tells God, basically, that it’s none of his business. How does God respond to this? Does he smite him? No, he doesn’t. He grieves... At least that’s how I see it. ‘What have you done? Can’t you hear? Your brother’s blood is crying out from the ground!’ The blood, the life, is precious! There is a deep sense of loss here. God is not casual, nor flippant about blood shed. It grieves him. He keeps count, he remembers.
Jesus refers to the blood of Abel when he’s telling off the Pharisees, saying, “And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” He’s keeping track. Three to four thousand years later, God has not forgotten the blood of Abel. From this I learn that human life is precious to God! In a world where there is an increasing willingness to throw away a life that is deemed by us to be undesirable, it is nice to know that God values us, that our lives are precious to him.
There is also, in this story, a need for justice. Our most common sense of justice, even though it is not practiced much, is the idea of ‘an eye for an eye’. In fact, it was God who wrote ‘an eye for an eye,’ who instructed this, in certain situations. However, I find it interesting that in this situation God does not demand an eye for an eye, a life for a life. He certainly could have... but he didn’t. How does that hold up to our concept of God? Does it fit?
There is, however, a consequence. Cain does not ‘get away’ with it. Cain is exiled from the land he called home. Adam & Eve were exiled from Eden, and Cain was exiled further. Adam had to work the land through ‘painful toil’ and the ‘sweat of his brow’ in order to eat. Cain’s punishment went further. ‘When you work the ground, it will no longer yield it’s crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.’
A restless wanderer... Doesn’t that seem familiar? Aren’t we all restless wanderers, looking for the meaning of life, the purpose, the rest. Don’t we all feel a little lost? Without hope? Without depth and security? We look for these things in so many places, in so many ways, not realizing that rather than looking for the meaning of life, we need to be looking for , and reconciled to, the SOURCE of life.
“Cain went out from the presence of God and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” Out from the presence of God... Do we know when we got lost? Why we got lost? It’s right here... God’s answer, God’s response, was not revenge. It was separation.
A few things stand out about God in this passage. If the purpose of the Bible is to reveal the nature, the heart, and the character of God, then knowing the response of God to the first act of violence would go a long way toward that. I don’t know that, as a child in Sunday school, I was really being taught to KNOW God. From this story I learned that ‘this is what bad people do, and this is what good people do, now go and be good!’ This may not have been the intention of the Sunday school ‘program’, but, never-the-less, it was the result...
One thing I notice is that God is in a relationship with Cain. Cain is angry and jealous about the whole ‘offering’ situation, and God discusses it with him openly, seemingly in a face to face type conversation. He warns him. I find it interesting that, two for two now, he has warned people before hand of the danger of going their own way. Neither Adam & Eve, nor Cain, were left to just blindly figure out how to live. They were warned. And so are we.
The second thing I notice is that God gives Cain a chance to come clean. He doesn’t come out accusing. If Cain had had a repentant heart, he could have, then and there, come clean and confessed what he had done. Instead, he gives God sass. He doesn’t really try to hide, like his parents did. Nor does he throw blame on someone else. Cain is openly defiant to God. He tells God, basically, that it’s none of his business. How does God respond to this? Does he smite him? No, he doesn’t. He grieves... At least that’s how I see it. ‘What have you done? Can’t you hear? Your brother’s blood is crying out from the ground!’ The blood, the life, is precious! There is a deep sense of loss here. God is not casual, nor flippant about blood shed. It grieves him. He keeps count, he remembers.
Jesus refers to the blood of Abel when he’s telling off the Pharisees, saying, “And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” He’s keeping track. Three to four thousand years later, God has not forgotten the blood of Abel. From this I learn that human life is precious to God! In a world where there is an increasing willingness to throw away a life that is deemed by us to be undesirable, it is nice to know that God values us, that our lives are precious to him.
There is also, in this story, a need for justice. Our most common sense of justice, even though it is not practiced much, is the idea of ‘an eye for an eye’. In fact, it was God who wrote ‘an eye for an eye,’ who instructed this, in certain situations. However, I find it interesting that in this situation God does not demand an eye for an eye, a life for a life. He certainly could have... but he didn’t. How does that hold up to our concept of God? Does it fit?
There is, however, a consequence. Cain does not ‘get away’ with it. Cain is exiled from the land he called home. Adam & Eve were exiled from Eden, and Cain was exiled further. Adam had to work the land through ‘painful toil’ and the ‘sweat of his brow’ in order to eat. Cain’s punishment went further. ‘When you work the ground, it will no longer yield it’s crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.’
A restless wanderer... Doesn’t that seem familiar? Aren’t we all restless wanderers, looking for the meaning of life, the purpose, the rest. Don’t we all feel a little lost? Without hope? Without depth and security? We look for these things in so many places, in so many ways, not realizing that rather than looking for the meaning of life, we need to be looking for , and reconciled to, the SOURCE of life.
“Cain went out from the presence of God and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” Out from the presence of God... Do we know when we got lost? Why we got lost? It’s right here... God’s answer, God’s response, was not revenge. It was separation.
posted by toomanywhatifs at
9:14 PM
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