Thoughts upon beginning to study Genesis 4

[prismaticbleed]

(These are my personal reflections; I claim no authority or accuracy on these matters. I am no teacher; I only wish to share what I pray is spiritually sound insight.)

 

Abel being named "vanity" was ironic.

Cain was, according to many translations, initially seen as a Christ figure-- as the fulfillment of God's promise of deliverance to Eve, his mother. John Gill notes: "some render [her exclamation], "I have gotten a man, the Lord"; that promised seed that should break the serpents head; by which it would appear, that she took that seed to be a divine person"... So by this perspective, what good was a second male child to her? Abel was seen as useless, extra, vain. Contrasted against Cain's alleged significance, Abel was as insignificant as could be. Thus pride and humility were personified in the two sons.

Furthermore, we see here the unusual but noteworthy rashness of her hope-- a holy feeling damaged by sinful impulse. She wanted forgiveness and restoration so badly, she could not bear any further suffering, any further penance. So her first son became the focal point of all her desperate yearning. He was seen as a Lord himself, as an angel to deliver her, as her treasured possession and her most honored begotten one. Yet he was born in sin. Eve failed to consider the effects of such rashly placed hope in the first human being born without knowledge of prior innocence. Cain was doomed to fail from the beginning. He was no savior-- in truth, he was the anti-type. But Eve clung to hope in him, and in doing so, effectively repeated her damning sin, the first sin, the true seed that birthed Cain: she, in labeling him so, idolized him, and so chose the creature over the Creator yet again. Her hope should have been set in God alone to deliver her in due time, yet her pained impatience pushed her to seek relief elsewhere, in something more immediate, in someone she may have assumed would be more "merciful" to her plea. Surely her own son would not abandon her; surely he would revenge and restore his own mother to the purity she lost and lamented! But God, in His terrible true judgement, showed Cain's true nature in contrast to His Own. Cain sought revenge, yes, but that was never the right of man... and in so doing, brought more sorrow to his race. He destroyed the purity he saw, moved to wrath at its meekness, having never felt it himself, being incapable of understanding it. The child Eve judged to be "vain" was likewise judged as such by his twin, who slew him in envy, seeing him as worthless as opposed to himself. This self-serving pride was an echo of Eve's fallen choice, both seeking to exalt themselves over what God had placed above them, refusing to accept a lower position. Therefore now Cain was "Lord" only to himself... an empty title, having struck the wrong head.

A summary of the infamous crime: Cain murdered Abel when he was "inexplicably" favored above him-- above his elder brother, the honored firstborn, the inheritor, the assumed promised one! Yet Abel did not seek this favor, nor did he flaunt it. He quietly received God's blessing with humble joy. But Cain seethed with rage; he burned with humiliated envy, and in this slighted hatred, he murdered his innocent twin.

Thus Abel showed the vanity of Cain.