Genesis 4:1-16
“Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have produced a man with the help of the LORD.’ Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground” (Genesis 4:1-2)
In the second creation story, man is created from the ground – formed by God out of clay and left inanimate until God breathes God’s Spirit into the man – and from this man God takes a rib in order to make woman. The man is named Adam, which is no coincidence since the Hebrew word for “ground” is adama. That’s an important little piece of trivia to keep in mind for throughout the rest of today’s passage, we read of Cain’s connection to the adama, the ground. Indeed, the first description we get of Adam and Eve’s firstborn, Cain, is that he is “a tiller [literally the Hebrew here is “servant”] of the ground.” In the Hebrew, you would read that Cain, the son of Adam, is a servant of adama. There is a very real and clear wordplay at work here.
Now, word play in a story like this is important for there is no way to verify whether Cain and Abel are actual, real, historical figures. Questioning the veracity of Cain and Abel’s existence should not be taken as an act of faithlessness in the scriptures, for the scriptures are rather vague on A LOT of details. (For example, when God says God’s going to punish Cain, Cain is worried about being murdered by other people. Where did these other people come from? So far the Bible has only introduced Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel). So, rather than try to read Genesis 4 (and, really, this holds true for Genesis 1-11) as a historical word of God, we do well to attend to the poetry of the passage.
When we do so, what we find is a story about one man (Cain) who is created to be a servant to his father (again, taking the adam/adama word play seriously here). He is to till or cultivate the adama.
It’s easy to read this story and wonder if God isn’t being just a tad prejudicial. That isn’t to justify Cain killing Abel, of course, but it is to honestly acknowledge that God plays favorites… and that can hurt. No one wants to be on the wrong end of playing favorites, in general, and certainly not with God. But once we see that Cain cannot take pride or find value in being the cultivator of his earthly father, Adam, we might see that he won’t fare any better in cultivating/tilling/serving his heavenly Father.
There’s no doubt about it: this is an odd story. If read harshly it can be despairing. (I mean, literally the story of the first two siblings ends in a murder and exile. What hope do we have for all our siblings – literal and metaphorical – if this is where humanity begins?!?). However, there is something deeper in it – something in the word play if we attend to the original Hebrew – that leads us back to a more trustworthy confession. For what is the chief end of humankind? It is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Or, put only slightly differently, what’s the point of your life? To cultivate/till/serve your Father in heaven, and to find pleasure in those acts despite any evaluation of the product produced. Friends, let us learn from Cain’s mistakes and become the joyful cultivators we were created to be. Amen.
