An Atheistic Bible Study Of Genesis - Chapter Four - Cain And Abel

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Adam gets Eve pregnant. She gives birth to Cain, and proudly declares that God has given her a son (though Adam obviously had much more to do with it than God). Soon afterwards she has a second boy, Abel. Years later Cain starts tilling the land while Abel become a shepherd. Both brothers offer some of the product of their labours in a sacrifice to God. God is quite happy to accept Abel’s offering of lamb (or mutton), but he rejects the produce Cain offers, (be in corn, wheat, oats, etc. is unstated). He offers no explanation for hi rejection of Cain’s offering, nor are we told how the offering is made, how God chooses the sheep-meat, or how Cain know his offering has been rejected. God realizes that Cain looks unhappy about his offering being rejected, as Cain should do. God clearly knows what work Cain does and that it is obviously just as valid and important as Abel’s duties. God tell Cain that his failure is due to sin, but never explains to Cain just what he has done that is wrong. This is very ungrateful and malicious of God. Cain angrily draws his younger brother out into the fields and kills him, performing the first murder. His jealousy of Abel’s favour in God’s eyes seem to be the motive, but God being ungrateful for Cain’s sacrificial offerings does seem terribly mean. God asks Cain where Abel is, as if God would need to ask and even though God should have been able to prevent the crime along with every murder ever committed afterwards. Cain gives the rather smart and astute cynical lying retort that he doesn’t know where Abel is as he is not his brother’s keeper. Abel’s spilt blood cries out to God to tell of the murder from the ground where it was spilt. (shame that never happens on CSI). God is shocked and asks Cain what he has done to his brother, though he ought to know already. God curses Cain to never again successfully grow or feed from the crops of the Earth, and makes him a fugitive, to be hunted and chased by anyone who ever sees him, and no one will ever offer him shelter. He is doomed to roam the Earth forever as a vagabond. Cain panics at the enormity of his sentence and notes that anyone who sees him is going to kill him. God marks Cain with a curse-mark to warn us that anyone who kills him will suffer as Cain does but seven time worse (however being cursed to never eat, never be loved, always driven away and never die seven times over is worse or any different than just once. Cain is cast out of whatever land he was in, and goes to the land of Nod, somewhere near Eden. Despite the curse, he finds a wife, and they have a son called Enoch, and they build themselves a city called Enoch after the son. So, Cain is told he will never be able to go near other people but immediately gets a wife, son, and a city. Where has this wife come from given the only woman created was Eve? Have Cain and Abel had incestuous relations with their own mother? How have they produced enough offspring in their lifetime to populate an entire city? How has God’s curse on Cain proved so ineffectual. If God created other people, male and / or female independently of Adam & Eve, surely their descendants are not cursed by the original sin of Adam & Eve’s consumption of the forbidden fruit. A bunch of names of the descendants of Enoch (the son, not the city) are given over several verses. One son descended from Cain, a man called Lamech, tells both of his wives (Polygamy being acceptable to God at this time), that he has killed a young man, and laments that he must suffer as Cain did but seven and seventy fold (77 times) worse. As Cain never really suffered at all, 77 times nothing equals no punishment at all too. Adam and Eve have a third son, to replace Abel. They call him Seth. The chapter ends stating that men now started to call upon the name of God, indicating the beginning of prayer, without saying what was prayed for or if God answered any of these early prayers. This may mark the beginning of priest-hood and organized religion. Arthur Chappell