Genesis 4:1-16
Cain's murder of Abel. The nature of God's sovereignty and blessing and how it relates to covetousness.
Introduction - Moral Law and Sacrifice
It is my contention that at this stage of revelation, everything necessary for life and godliness was given to mankind. The redemption had been promised, the gospel had been preached, the necessity of sacrifice to cover sin had been demonstrated and a reflection on the image of God would have been enough, with careful reflection, to intuit the Decalogue. Thus, after the initial fall and expulsion from Eden the core aspects of the Christian life were in place and able to be understood by the reflective man on simply this revelation alone.
We are fortunate that we have a much larger scope of revelation from which to work, which means that we do not have to guess or draw all of our conclusions from the first three chapters of Genesis. Given that we have much inspired commentary on these basic truths about God, humanity and redemption, we can understand more fully and more easily exactly what the plan of God regarding humanity is.
This is not to say that there are not developments that were not really understood at this time. For example, the fact that Christ, the second person of the Trinity would become a man and die to fulfill the sacrifices required by God to enter into his presence was essentially completely shadowed. While we can see the hints of it in Genesis 3:15, the details of how all that would play out were still unrevealed. However the essential character of the doctrine of the redemption was still present, even at this early stage.
Likewise moral and ethical instruction is expanded upon and understood in greater detail as things go along. The fundamental creation narrative establishes the clear and necessary consequence that we are to worship the Lord and love him with all our hearts minds and souls. The first commandment is essentially what was broken that brought the curse upon humanity in the first place. From the creation we can see that we ought not to hold up parts of the created order as God or as rival Gods. The third commandment, that of taking the Lord's name in vain, follows logically from the first and second. The fourth is explicitly given in Genesis 2:3, with the establishment of the Sabbath.
Honoring your father and mother is also related to the original sin, as expressed in Genesis 2:24, when it is expressed that Adam's marriage to Eve creates the fatherhood of God and establishes the pattern of life for future generations. They failed to honor their father in the Garden and could extrapolate from that. We should not kill, as defacing the image of God is a violation of God himself and a blaspheming of that which we worship.
Jesus also explained that the serpent's action was that of murder (John 8:44). As with much of Christ's commentary on the Old Testament, he does not appear to be stating that this is some unique insight he has because he is the Son of God, but rather that upon careful consideration this is simply what the text teaches.
The creational order of the one flesh arrangement in marriage (Gen 2:24 again) becomes the basis for the prohibition on adultery as explained by Christ (Mt 19:3-9). The prohibition on theft would be clear as the work of a man's hands are expressed as how he is to survive (3:17-19), thus stealing the work of his hands is a work akin to murder. One could also consider the "theft" of the fruit itself as an issue.
The prohibition against giving false witness can be extrapolated from the serpent's deception. It is, after all, what led to the destruction of mankind (Gen 3:13). The covetousness is probably the hardest to extrapolate from what has come before, but I think it is able to be drawn out from the reaction of Eve to the tree: "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise" (Gen 3:6). This is the essence of coveting, desiring that which is not for you.
Why is this important? Because we start to run into very significant interpretive problems if we believe that God did not reveal these things until much later. For example, if the prohibition on murder is not clear at this stage, then how will Cain be held responsible for the murder? The key to this is not that each of the ten commandments should be easily expressible in exactly that way, but that moral instruction was not absent at this early stage of man's existence. It is part of God's common grace that morality was available to all people from the earliest times. When we look at ancient cultures we find that, for as awful as many of them were, there was still a moral awareness from earliest times. The obvious explanation for this is that the moral instruction was gathered through wise reflection on the story of the garden.
Of course, in God's will, he chooses to reveal things more clearly as time progresses, such that the ultimate revelation of himself is through his son (Heb 1:2). Thus, we are not surprised that things which were less clear at the time become more clear as revelation proceeds. Nevertheless, the key components of moral instruction, the need for sacrifice and the promise of future redemption were present from the earliest moments of human history.
4:1-2 The Birth of Cain and Abel
4:1 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” 2 And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground.
First born is Cain, whose name means something like "acquired". You can see that, like we will often see in the Old Testament, that the name is associated with some reasoning that the parent often vocalizes. Cain was a blessing to his mother and she obviously recognized that the Lord's sovereign power is how she and Adam are able to create life despite the deadness of themselves. They are cursed, after all, and dead in their sins and transgressions. While they may have had saving faith (the Bible doesn't say either way), they were, in a sense, still dead. The covenantal death would seemingly act as it does later in the Bible, by cutting off the line of descendants (1 Kings 21:21-29).
We can understand this, symbolically, as the first overcoming of barrenness. (The bible defines "barrenness" as "deadness" in Romans 4:19). Though they had no life in themselves, God quickens the womb of Eve and allows her to give birth to a child, who is physically alive, though spiritually still under the covenantal curse of Adam. Her acknowledgment of this as the Lord's blessing perhaps indicates repentance on her part, though later evidence in chapter 4 might indicate otherwise.
She also has another son, Abel. Though she does not say why she names him Abel, we can comment on the meaning of the name. "Habel" means "a breath" or "a vapor" or "vanity". It's hard to know whether that was the meaning before this story or whether Abel's limited lifespan led to the word being used here. (Note that it is not the standard biblical word for "breath").
We are told that Abel is a shepherd and Cain is a farmer. This becomes relevant as we consider their sacrifices offered to God.
4:3-5 The Offerings
3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5a but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.
Eventually Cain and Abel each independently bring a sacrifice to God. We can assume that they knew to do so because they were taught by their parents, after the pattern of God killing the animals to provide clothing. Perhaps this is the first year where they have been independent. We note that Cain's sacrifice is not mentioned as being the "firstfruits" as will be the pattern later in the Pentateuch (Num 18:13), whereas Abel properly offers the firstborn of his flock. At this stage it is not clear that the one sacrifice would be better or worse than the other, but knowing what is coming ahead, we can make some assumptions as to what the deficiency in Cain's offering might have been.
The Bible is very firm that the "first" production you receive ought to go to the Lord. Trees must be left not eaten from in the first year of their fruit for example. The firstborn child of a couple is supposed to be dedicated to the Lord. Abel gives the first of his flock and the "fat portions" (or the best part) to God. Cain simply gives "an offering". It is possible that Cain was keeping the best parts for himself.
Other than the firstfruits explanation, there is another possible reason why Cain's offering is rejected and Abel's was accepted. It seems to be relevant that Cain's offering was of plant matter instead of a clean animal. There's nothing wrong with offering grain in the Old Testament law, but when we are talking about offerings for sin, we find that it is invariably an animal sacrifice. It appears in Exodus 29:41 and 40:29 that the grain offering was intended to be made after the appropriate burnt offering. The idea here would be that a grain offering is an act of worship, of relating to God in gratitude, but without the appropriate sacrifice for sin, we are not welcome to enter into God's presence and "trample [his] courts" (Isa 1:12). For a Christian, of course, our final sin offering has been made, and thus we are free to worship in gratitude acknowledging that the perpetual sin offering is presented before God to open the courts of God to our presence (Heb 10:14, cf 18).
The Isaiah 1 passage also gives us God's attitude toward someone who tries to make sin offerings without the accompanying faith, as though he is "paying" God to overlook sin.
Isaiah 1:11 “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats... 15 When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
The reality of the wickedness of Israel's heart made the offerings themselves noxious to the Lord. These are not repentant people desiring to acknowledge their sin before God, but wicked, faithless individuals who try to hide behind the blood of goats so that they can shed the blood of man. I find this passage to be particularly relevant because Cain does shed the blood of man in response to this, which indicates that this is precisely the state of his heart before God.
We can also find insight into this event by looking at the book of Hebrews:
Hebrews 11:4 By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.
We see in Hebrews 11:4 that Abel offered a "better" sacrifice than Cain "through faith", which certainly implies that the fundamental problem with Cain is that he does not have faith. This is, of course, the through-line of the entire Bible. A faithless sacrifice is meaningless to God. "For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Rom 14:23). However, we also find that faithlessness and disobedience are highly correlated. Thus, we can assert that the issue was both that he lacked faith and that he offered up the incorrect sacrifice. Hebrews 11:4 seems to back that up with the claim that Abel's sacrifice was in some sense superior. The wording seems to indicate not only that he had faith which made the sacrifice acceptable but that because of his faith he offered a "better" sacrifice.
We can note also the quality of faith here that is relevant. Obviously Cain "believes in God" in some sense as he is sacrificing to him. We can note in a few more verses that God is actually speaking to Cain directly. Thus the belief is not in question. As James indicates, belief in God is not sufficient for salvation:
James 2:19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
Raw belief is simply not a synonym for faith in the Biblical usage. I would, and will, argue that the biblical view of faith has the sense of allegiance. This is the most common early usage of the word "faith" in the Bible, where faith comes up in the context of "breaking faith" (Exo 21:8, 34:6; Lev 5:15, 6:2; Num 5:12, 5:27; Deut 32:51). The only other usage of the similar word in the Pentateuch is in the sense of "faithfulness".
"Believe" is, of course, used in Genesis 15:6 (famously because Paul quotes it in Romans 4) in terms of what we commonly call "saving faith". However, we find that this is not always the case, as the Israelites en masse "believe" the Lord in the wilderness, yet we find in Hebrews 3 that they were rejected for their "unbelief".
This is not the place to go into a detailed discussion of Biblical faith, as that is a book length topic (at least). Suffice it to say that we can understand from this story that the sheer acknowledgment of God's existence and even the desire to interact with him is not saving faith.
4:5-7 God Confronts Cain
5b So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
There is much to unpack here, but we can start with Cain's reaction to the Lord's judgment. The Lord discerns his faithlessness and the unsuitability of his gift, and rather than turn inward to discover the deficiency, he becomes angry at God. Anger is an emotion tied to a sense that justice has not been served. This is an accusation against God happening in his heart, like his father before him.
We find that the Lord speaks to him, directly. This is an interesting thing to consider, as we find that apparently God remained willing, even after the fall, to relate to man: even to a wicked man who has no faith. God asks him why he is angry and why his "face [has] fallen". The implication is that he has no right to be angry. Indeed he is a sinner and also a wicked man who has no faith or allegiance to God. Should God be forced to bless him and accept him because he offered up a sacrifice? Of course not, a faithless sacrifice is even more of an insult to God.
But in God's grace, he warns him again and offers instruction. He tells him that if he "does well" then he will be accepted. The implication is that the offering was indeed deficient, and we have also established that he lacked genuine faith in the offering. The two, as always in Biblical thinking, are linked. Thus, to "do well" and offer the acceptable sacrifice would indicate a genuine heart for the Lord. This is essentially a preaching of the gospel. If he turns from his sin in repentance and offers up the sacrifice that proceeds from genuine faith, he will be "accepted".
There is likely another layer here because the acceptable sacrifice would appear to be an animal sacrifice, which would mean that Cain would need to rely on his brother Abel to procure such a sacrifice. This extra level of humiliation, to need his hated brother would have enraged Cain all the more, and might have been the origin of why he chose to offer an unacceptable sacrifice in the first place.
We also find that the story is setting up the Biblical theme of the younger brother overtaking the older. This is common in Biblical literature and speaks to the church's swallowing up of unfaithful Israel. The older brother demands his rights as the eldest, the younger brother acts in faith and is despised by the older for it. Jesus illustrates this theme in the parable of the prodigal son (Lk 15:11-32).
God also gives him a warning, that "sin" is at his door, ready to strike. Sin is personified in scripture, most dramatically in Romans 7, where Paul speaks of "sin" almost like a person apart from himself. The animating principle of sin is what is in view here. Obviously Cain has already sinned, but there is some greater evil awaiting him. God tells him that he must "rule over it". Likewise we are called to mortify the flesh and set aside our sin that we may not be slaves to it. Romans 8:13 is almost this exact sentiment expressed by Paul (cf Rom 6:6):
Romans 8:13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
The strength to rule over sin is available from the Holy Spirit, and accessible by the faith of the believer. Cain could have repented of his wickedness and chosen instead to live in alignment with the Spirit. We too face a choice, to either become slaves to sin or to put to death the deeds of the flesh and live. We are often faced with choices like Cain's, where anger or greed or temptation burn at our hearts and we have the choice before us, to "do well", and "rule over" our sin, or to allow sin to rule over us. The Spirit gives us the power and the capacity to turn away from sin and put it to death.
It is interesting that God calls on Cain to essentially "repent" and turn away from his sin. If the question of "how does a formerly unaccepted person become accepted by God" is asked, repentance is pointed to here in this passage. We have already demonstrated that true repentance entails faith. We could perhaps make the claim that Genesis 3 implied the necessity of repentance but it is not nearly as clearly communicated as it is here. Thus, from this stage forward in human history, there is an understanding of the need for repentance.
4:8 The First Murder
Genesis 4:8 Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
My first question in looking at this verse is "what did Cain say to Abel"? In context, the only answer that immediately comes to mind is that he was asking him to accompany him out to his field. And when he gets there, he is murdered by Cain. This is the first human-on-human murder and is the beginning of the dynamic that God warned off in Genesis 3:15:
Genesis 3:15 I will put enmity... between your offspring and her offspring
The seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. I have argued in my commentary on Genesis 3 that these are both physically children of the woman, and indeed this controlling idea appears throughout the book of Genesis. The idea is backed up by Jesus' attribution of the devil as the true father of the Pharisees:
John 8:44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning,
The murder would appear to be a key way to apprehend that Cain is indeed the "true son" of the devil, the original murderer. While physically the Pharisees were descended from Abraham, Jesus says that they are not true sons of Abraham, but of the devil. This brings into focus the concept that we understand the wicked to be, in a spiritual sense, bastard children (Heb 12:8), the children of adultery (idolatry).
Here Cain is, watering his field with the blood of the innocent. This is echoed in the betrayal of Judas, whose field is also "sown" with blood (Acts 1:18-19; Mt 27:3-10). The twist of course being that, in the case of Judas and Christ, the righteous man lives and the wicked man sows the field with his own blood. The concept of shedding innocent blood being a key descriptor of the wicked is all throughout scripture. Jesus also makes the connection between his own betrayers and Cain explicit when he is calling for judgment on the Pharisees in Matthew 23:
Matthew 23:35 so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah
They are being held, in a sense, guilty for the death of Abel. This fits well with the biblical idea of generational iniquity and generational judgment of God. As the child ratifies the sins of the father, so he is held responsible for them. This is, as I have mentioned before, the essential idea behind original sin. Throughout the Bible and especially the book of Kings, we will see God declare judgment against family lines. This is in no way in conflict with the idea that it is "everyone shall die for his own iniquity" (pp Jer 31:30). That is when we get into the concept I have identified as "ratification". The son's sins, in these situations, mirror the sins of the father and thus bring down the curse upon his head as well.
4:9-10 The Lord Confronts Cain
9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?”
As another parallel to the incident in the garden and another sense in which Cain ratifies the sin of his parents, God approaches him and asks where Abel is. Like in the garden, God obviously knows the answer to the "where" question but is giving Cain an opportunity to respond. We can understand this as another opportunity for repentance, which Cain does not take.
Rather than admit wrong-doing, Cain now lies to compound his wrong-doing. It's not clear to me why Cain lies, except perhaps that he might not know about God's omniscience at this stage. Since it seems that God is approaching him in a human-like form, perhaps Cain wrongly believed that God's awareness was limited in the same way a human's is. The other explanation would be that Cain knows that the Lord knows he is lying and simply doesn't care. Probably that second option is the worse one. I can hardly imagine a larger insult to the God of the universe than to lie knowing that the God to whom you are lying knows that you are lying. If that's the scenario, then Cain is flatly just disrespecting God to a degree that is hard to overstate.
10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.
We see this theme of the blood calling for vengeance throughout the Old Testament and the blood of the saints calls for vengeance even through Revelation (Rev 16:6). The sin of jealousy has become the sin of hatred and ultimately the sin of murder is its culmination. We can see how Jesus develops this (in reverse) in Matthew 5:
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
It is true legally in the Mosaic law that murder is the crime. That is not the same thing as "sin" and we should not understand it to be such. This is one of the many ways in which the law of Moses is not applied in a "legal" sense. Christ points out that the sin of murder goes beyond the act of murder, and in fact the mere fact of being angry with someone can be a sin worthy of judgment. (This does not obviate the reality of righteous anger). Rather, the murder is merely the culmination or the "result" or even the "accomplishment" or "perfection" of the sin of anger and hatred.
Likewise God caught Cain before the sin had become fully fulfilled and warned him to repent. Now that the sin is fully accomplished, nothing remains but judgment. This is not to make any "legal" argument about the sense in which you are held guilty before God. For example, it is not the case that a person who "merely" hates someone would not be held as a sinner, nor that a person who murders can never be forgiven. This sin progression is not describing some limitation on the judgment or the mercy of God, but the heart of the man who is not in conformity to God's will. The fruit of a small rebellion against God is a great rebellion against God. Sin will not stop itself, but merely take a greater and greater control over the person, to "rule over them".
Now the ground itself stands as a witness against Cain. While he was the man of the ground, he is now being rejected by the ground he once tilled. He has sown death into his ground and he now reaps that which he has sown (Gal 6:7-8).
We find also the idea that blood shed calls for revenge. This is codified as a principle by God in the time of Noah in Genesis 9:6:
Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.
The understanding of the idea that blood calls for vengeance is understood by the sons of Jacob with regard to what they did to Joseph:
Genesis 42:22 And Reuben answered them, “Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.”
Blood of course comes deeply into play in the sacrificial system, which space here does not permit to discuss in any detail. However, we can note the irony that Cain refused to offer God a "bloody" sacrifice, then instead (in a manner of speaking) sacrificed his brother, a vile abomination of a human sacrifice to a demon god, the devil, the "father" of Cain, who himself is the first of the "seed of the serpent". Human sacrifice becomes a feature of pagan demon worship the world over and we find that any culture who does not honor God comes to love death, which is the same idea that wisdom speaks in Proverbs 8:36:
...all who hate me love death.
Thus we find that non-Christian cultures always tend toward bloody cultures of murder and death, of which we saw the most visceral examples of in the Holocaust and the various Communist regimes of the twentieth century. Of course, liberal feminist democracy is no better and in fact could be considered worse as over 60 million children were sacrificed to the idols of sex and selfishness under the Roe v Wade decision in the United States before its overturning and, as I write this, close to 42 million children a year are aborted worldwide, sacrificed to the same demonic God-hating forces that animate Cain in this moment.
Bitterness and covetousness animated Cain as he hated his brother for what Abel had that Cain did not. A culture that celebrates coveting that which others have is also a culture that tends toward death, as also we have seen in various socialist revolutions in world history, starting in France and culminating in the 50 million killed in Mao's Great Leap Forward. While racism was undoubtedly the major force in the Holocaust, it was more than simply convenient that the race that was singled out was also an extremely wealthy subset of the population. Covetousness was a motivation on a different level than racial dislike. In all areas of Europe from the medieval era to the present, anti-Semitic sentiment and violence was usually correlated with poverty and jealousy of the Jews' prosperity and wealth.
We should consider that being angry that others have what you desire is an extremely dangerous emotion that easily leads to hatred and even greater sins. It's also completely nonsensical when we grasp the sovereignty of God. Cain and Abel is a clear illustration of the reality of the ridiculousness of coveting. Was there a lack of blessing available that Abel in any way "took" from Cain? Was it a zero-sum game? Of course not. God's choice not to bless Cain was not Abel's fault in any way, nor did the blessing Abel received harm Cain in any way.
Cain's anger was aimed at Abel but most fundamentally stemmed from anger and resentment against God. While our modern contexts look much more complex, the fundamental reality is the same. God can and may bless any of us in any way at any time. When we covet what another has, we are not being rational. We are simply angry at God for not giving us something that he in his wisdom has chosen not to give us and to give to another. There is no reason to be angry at the person, or to aim any vitriol toward another for some perceived lack in your own life. Rather, we should turn our petitions to the Lord and trust in his providence.
The early chapters of Genesis are deep but (in some ways) simple stories. They demonstrate things that we encounter and live out regularly, but in a simplified way. This allows us to sort of "peel back the veil" of reality so that we can see the real dynamics that are at play. We find that many of the early Bible events work this way, giving us insight into the true nature of humanity and sin and righteousness and God's providence in a way that we ought to then extrapolate upon and apply to our current situation.
The dynamic of Cain and Abel, on different levels and in different ways typifies the reality that hatred toward God results in hatred of God's image, man.
4:11-12 Cain's Curse
11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”
Like Adam in the garden, sin results in curse. In this case the ground rejects Cain. Rather than Cain having dominion over the earth, as mankind was called to do, the ground itself rejects his authority. He may no longer reap from the ground freely. The way it is phrased sounds as though he is simply no longer able to farm effectively. We can note a parallel in Jeremiah on the nation of Judah, when drought comes to Judah as a result of the nations' sin:
3 Her nobles send their servants for water; they come to the cisterns; they find no water; they return with their vessels empty; they are ashamed and confounded and cover their heads. 4 Because of the ground that is dismayed, since there is no rain on the land, the farmers are ashamed; they cover their heads. 5 Even the doe in the field forsakes her newborn fawn because there is no grass. 6 The wild donkeys stand on the bare heights; they pant for air like jackals; their eyes fail because there is no vegetation.
This reminds us of another reality check when it comes to a Biblical worldview. While it is tempting for modern Christians to view the world in a Deistic sense, as though it is a finely tuned machine that God made, that is a fundamental misunderstanding of reality. The world functions in the way it does because of the active will of God. If God desires there to be no rain in the Amazon, there will be no rain in the Amazon. If God simply desires a single person's crops to fail year after year, that is precisely what will happen.
Note that I do not mean this primarily in the sense that God can "intervene" at any time. Rather it is the case that all of reality is one big "intervention". When I say that if God desires that there be no rain in the Amazon, there will be no rain in the Amazon, we must also fully apprehend that the fact that there is rain in the Amazon means that God desires that there be rain in the Amazon. Laws of physics and weather and climate and seeds growing are all simply expressions of how God operates in the common case. God, being a God of order, often functions in a predictable fashion.
However, when we predict something based on "scientific evidence" such as it is (ie: empirical observations), this is simply one method by which we can get insight into how God functions. However, another very important way that we can understand how God operates is through his Word. The blessings and curses that he expresses in Scripture are a powerful route to understanding how God operates and how we may work with or against him. A wise person will consider both the "scientific" view of God's operations, as well as the Scriptural understanding of them.
This means that when we ask why a seed did not grow we can say, in part, that it is because the seed had some genetic abnormality that caused it to be unable to germinate. That might be true, but it is also just as true to say "because God desired that seed not to grow". The wisdom literature, Job in particular, explores the tension between how we believe God ought to operate and how he actually does operate.
We can't always make a one-to-one correlation and there are rarely simple explanations for anything God does. A tornado hitting a trailer park in Kansas is certainly, in a sense, God's judgment. But for any individual there it may be operating in a different way. Perhaps a meth lab is destroyed and lives that would have been ended are saved. Perhaps an abusive boyfriend is crushed under debris and the woman is delivered from his hand. The complexity of the people affected means that it can never be as simple as "God punished this town for x, y, or z".
The advantage to these illustrative stories in the Old Testament is that it often strips away the complexities to present a very straightforward example in order to illustrate the true dynamics of all our interactions with one another and thus, with God.
Exile
The second part of Cain's curse is that he would be a "fugitive" and a "wanderer". This is similar conceptually to the idea of being an "exile". The same punishment that was done to Adam in making him a fugitive from the Garden and to Judah later in being an exile in Babylon is done to Cain here. Being removed from the ground, from the land, from the blessing of God is commonly the way that God deals with those who are in rebellion against him.
It is not possible, at this stage of revelation, to fully express the "systematic" conclusions of this, but the same ideas are used regarding the Hebrews who are forced to wander in the wilderness for 40 years and are then expropriated by Paul and the author of Hebrews as warnings to the church:
1 Corinthians 10:1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. 6 Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.
Hebrews 3:16 For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
We are intended to take these things as examples and warnings for us. Revelation 3 makes this same sort of analogy of rejection when Christ warns the church in Laodicea that he will "spit them out".
4:13-15 Cain's Response
13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” 15 Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him.
Cain rightly discerns that the curse "from the ground" is really a curse of God turning his face away from Cain. This concept of God's blessing being akin to his face being upon you is most famously codified in the Aaronic Benediction in Numbers 6:
24 The Lord bless you and keep you; 25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; 26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
When we read about the "Lord's face" we are always thinking in terms of blessing and curse. His face shines upon the righteous and is turned away from the wicked.
Cain is remorseful in a sense, that he is overwhelmed by his punishment, but not truly repentant. His concern is only for himself and for his own fortune.
We also may note that there are other people in the world at this time. It's possible that he means only Adam and Eve, but more likely there has been a non-trivial amount of time that passed since the expulsion from the Garden and Adam and Eve have already procreated quite a bit by this point. The argument against this would be that the lines of Cain and of Seth are the only two highlighted lines in the Biblical text, but it seems unavoidable that there are people for Cain to be afraid of at this point.
Cain is concerned that he would be killed by anyone who finds him, which correctly understands the necessity of vengeance as illustrated later in the Bible, but misunderstands God's way of working. At this point there is no authority given to man for capital punishment. Genesis 9:6 after the Flood is the command that institutes the principle that man is to carry out the vengeance on God's behalf. Thus, God does not allow Cain to be killed by man. He places some kind of identifying mark on Cain that shows that killing him will be avenged.
At this stage of history, God takes all judgment onto himself more or less directly. We know that this principle that vengeance must be "from God" is still active even in the New Testament, when Paul says:
Romans 12:19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
This is not in conflict with the idea that civil government is instituted by God to "bear the sword" on his behalf a few verses later (Rom 13:4). But at this time no such government had been instituted and no such judgment was granted to man. Rather God warns that vengeance will be taken on anyone who kills Cain in an even greater sense.
He is allowed to continue, even though his sin was so great. This puts us in mind of Canaan, where the sins of the Amorites are not yet full (Gen 15:16) and, much later, the sins of the First Century Jews when Christ tells them to "fill up the sins of their fathers" (Matt 23:34). God does not regularly judge to the utmost extent at the first provocation, but allows sin to continue to mature such that when judgment comes it is most richly deserved.
The evil of Cain and his line will continue to develop, as we shall see and ultimately be judged in the Flood. When God afterward promises to forbear on any similar punishment in the future, he simultaneously grants the right of capital punishment to mankind to carry out on his behalf. It is not likely that that is a coincidence.
4:16 Moving Day
16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
Cain continues to move away from the Lord. It appears that Adam and Eve didn't settle far from the gates of Eden. Some have suggested even that the gate of Eden, guarded by the Cherub, was where Cain and Abel offered their sacrifices, as it was still understood to represent the presence of God. They had moved down, both literally (since Eden is the source of rivers, it is at the top of a mountain) and figuratively. The eastward motion away from God is again pointed out here as Cain moves further from the presence of God and downward and eastward.
Of course, we can never really leave the presence of God. The Psalmist reminds us that God is there even in the most "down" place you can possibly be, Sheol (Psa 139:8). This is a symbolic removal of one's self from God. It is worthwhile to note that the verse describes it as Cain's action that removes him from God's presence. The responsibility lies with Cain. It's not made clear in this verse, but repentance is always an option for mankind and thus any "final" removal of oneself from God is always in the hands of the individual who does so. God does not leave us, we leave God.
He settles in a different land, one called Nod. The Bible never mentions Nod again, so it is likely another geographical detail that was relevant at the time of the writing but is no longer relevant for us to understand. The word means "wandering", so it could be understood that the land is simply the "place of wandering", but it also appears to be a literal location. Regardless, the person who is apart from God is lost, a wanderer, a fugitive, an exile. He stands condemned.
We see this play out in the lives of those who apostatize from the church. It is commonly the case that they complain of their punishment, then leave the presence of God. The heart of a man apart from the Lord simply wails at the perceived injustice of their treatment and asserts their deep desire to be apart from the living God. As CS Lewis put it, their will shall be done.
Concluding Thoughts - The Nature of Scripture
There are two key points that come out in our discussion of this chapter. The first is what we considered in the moral instruction that was discernable through the events of the first three Chapters of Genesis. The second is that the events of the Bible, especially early on, were designed in such a way and expressed in such a way that we might understand the true spiritual dynamics of the universe more clearly and thus be able to see them in our own lives.
This helps us to try and get a handle on what Scripture is. It's tempting to understand it as a list of "laws", like the law code of Hammurabi, or laws like we enact in modern democracies. It's also tempting to view Scripture as a simple narrative of events, where details are simply there to provide some verisimilitude. This is not how Scripture appears to interpret itself and is not the way that Paul and Christ interpret Scripture.
Let's take note of four examples from the New Testament where interpretation is explicitly referred to or done.
Nicodemus
John 3:5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?
When referring to "birth by the Spirit", Jesus tries to explain that "spiritual birth" is necessary for salvation to a dumbfounded Nicodemus. When Nicodemus is incredulous at this (to him) bizarre concept, Jesus is indignant that a supposed "teacher of Israel" would not already be very familiar with the idea of being "born by the Spirit".
The things to realize when we consider this event are as follows:
There was no Scripture aside from the Old Testament; Jesus is not surprised that Nicodemus never read Romans 6.
The concept of being "born by the Spirit" was sufficiently obvious in Scripture that Jesus holds him accountable for not knowing about it.
Therefore the Old Testament taught "birth by the Spirit" in the same sense that the New Testament does.
There is nothing in the Old Testament that explicitly comments on or explains "birth by the Spirit".
It is wise, when you are genuinely attempting to humble yourself before the Word of God to limit yourself to purely Biblical ways of understanding what is being taught. However, this wisdom can become a sort of foolishness if you become a reductionist about what is taught in the Bible. Important doctrines like "birth by the Spirit" are taught in ways that are simply not explicit. Limiting oneself to simply what is explicitly taught in Scripture is a good guardrail, but if it stops there you are liable to be rebuked by Christ who expects you to think more deeply than the simple first-glance reading of a passage.
God of the Living
For another example of Christ's expectations on his hearers, we can turn to Matthew 22:
29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God... 31 ...as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”
Jesus rebukes the Sadducees for not knowing the Scriptures. His reason is that they should have been aware of the existence of the resurrection of the dead from the verse "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob". From Jesus' perspective, the right interpretation and application of that verse (Exo 3:6) was that there is a resurrection from the dead. How many of us would have understood that from that verse?
This helps us to understand how God intends us to read the Bible. We do not simply look at the obvious meaning of a passage, but we consider it and mull it over and think about the implications of what is being said. This is not the "historical grammatical hermeneutic" but it is the Bible's hermeneutic of itself. Note again that this is not some secret thing that Jesus let the Sadducees in on, he is rebuking them for their shallow reading of the Bible.
The implication is that the Bible was always intended to be read this way. They should have known about the Resurrection and they are culpable for not knowing about it. Jesus is calling out their shallow methodology of Bible study.
Raised After Three Days
Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 says this:
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures
Where does "Scripture" (which is the Old Testament at this point) teach that Christ is to be raised on the third day? The answer, if you're looking at direct Scriptural quotations, is: "nowhere". But Paul claims that this is in fact present in the Old Testament prophetic record.
As far as I can tell, the only likely thing Paul could be referring to is that Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days. I think this is likely because Christ uses that same analogy to his own death (Mt 12:40). But who could possibly be expected to see that Jonah's time in the belly was intended to be a Messianic prophecy? Well Paul certainly seems to claim that this is just simply "there" in the Scriptures.
Once again we find that these extremely non-obvious conclusions are drawn by New Testament authors and we are expected to agree with their interpretations. Once again, Paul is not claiming some "new" insight into Jonah here, but directly claiming that the doctrine of Christ's resurrection on the third day was taught in the Scriptures before Paul ever came along to point it out to us.
1 Corinthians 9
In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul goes on an extended defense that pastors should be paid for their services and claims that the Mosaic Law teaches us this:
8 Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? 10 Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. 11 If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? 12 If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more?
Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. 13 Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? 14 In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.
You see that Paul does not merely take the obvious understanding that literally we should not be muzzling oxen, but also extrapolates that animal analogies are intended to be extrapolated to mankind and that the appropriate application of the law that the ox should not be muzzled is that pastors should be paid for their work.
So What?
Thus we find that Scripture is not simply a straightforward record of events, nor is Law a straightforward expression of legal requirements. Rather we find that Scripture, taken as a whole, is intended to reveal to us the thinking and character of God in such a way that we can extrapolate substantive truths from his Word that may not be immediately obvious. This also speaks to the sufficiency of Scripture. While many of the situations of the modern world are sufficiently unique that there is no direct Scriptural comment on it, we must realize that Scripture is intended to teach us a way of thinking and thus if we have our thinking trained by the Word, we will see how to apply its principles more broadly in diverse circumstances. A wise student of the Pentateuch should have been able to tell us that pastors must be paid on the authority of the verse about oxen being muzzled. Paul demonstrates the technique; it is up to us to apply it well.
In the early chapters of Genesis we have asserted that a careful consideration of what is written should have been sufficient to give moral instruction, the requirement of sacrifice and the eventual coming of a redeemer. I will now assert that these had the same level of authority as any explicit instruction has. Of course, to whom more is given, more is required. We are required to be morally upright in ways far more subtle than perhaps Adam's children were. Nevertheless, the basic concepts of moral behavior were taught from the beginning of humanity. They are extrapolated upon as time progresses, but we can always return to Genesis 1-3 and see the rudiments of teachings present in the most ancient records of the human race.
We also can grasp what we are supposed to be getting as we read the Scriptures. In this chapter particularly, we considered that the idea of covetousness is ultimately a slight upon the character of God. God presents us with a stripped down event of covetousness that shows us both the absurdity of the emotion and the awful consequences of it. We can see what's really going on much clearer with Cain and Abel than perhaps we can with our own circumstances.
When we get later into Scripture and things become more abstract and more complex, it will be tempting to revert back to the "natural" (for us) reading and miss the subtext that is going on. By being sensitive to the subtext, deeper meanings, poetry, and allusions of Scripture, we will be more prepared not to simply memorize proof texts that support abstract concepts but rather to have the "mind of Christ", to "be transformed by the renewing of our minds" and ultimately to think like God thinks.