Genesis Chapters 4 - 5: God Hates Fruit

Adam and Eve settle down and have a couple kids.  Cain, the oldest, grows up to be a farmer.  Abel, the second, grows up to be a shepherd.

Squee!

Cain brings God an offering of fruit that he grew.  God says, “Oh…. A fruit basket.  Um, thanks… I guess…”

Abel brings God the firstborn of the flock.  God says, “OH MY SELF!  How cute is that!  Thank you so much!  You’re the best!”

You can see how Cain might not take this well, especially since he’s the firstborn son (firstborn son is kind of a big deal back then).  God tells him if he would just do well he’d be accepted, but that if he doesn’t do well then he’ll be consumed by sin.  Some interpretations say that Cain didn’t really give his gift with faith or that his gift was sort of a half-hearted afterthought while Abel gave the very best that he had.  But he was a farmer…  Farmers work pretty hard.

Cain isn’t happy with what God has said.  He first talks to his brother, then kills him in a jealous rage. 

Sin now has won over 3 out of the 4 people introduced in this story so far, and the fourth person is dead.  We’re not off to a promising start.

God asks, “Hey… where’s that brother of yours?”

Cain shrugs his shoulders.  “It wasn’t my day to watch him.”

God realizes what’s happened and banishes Cain to a life of a fugitive and a wanderer, cursing him so that the ground will not yield anything up to him any more.  Cain’s a bit worried that whoever finds him will kill him, though at this point the population of the earth is sparse enough that he could probably evade capture.  God reassures him at least that if he gets killed, the person that kills him will get it back seven times worse.  He marks Cain so that everyone who meets him on the road will know not to mess with him and sends him on his way.

Cain, by the way, has a wife.  Who is she?  Cain’s wife was even brought up at the Scopes Trial.  It was probably a sister or some other relation.  This is banned later, but at this point, there’s not a lot of choice.  God did start us off with only two people and told them to go forth and multiply.

Answers in Genesis has a diagram to illustrate:

Just wait til we get to Leviticus.... it's awesome.

Cain and his wife have some kids.  He also builds a city, which is pretty good for someone who was supposedly doomed to be a “wanderer on the earth.”  A few generations go by and his great-great-great grandson Lamech has two wives.  Lamech kills someone for striking him and he tells his two wives that since Cain’s revenge was sevenfold, the revenge for killing Lamech is 77 times worse.  It doesn’t seem like God told him this.  He just claims it.

Adam and Eve have another son named Seth and other sons and daughters.  Lots of them… Adam lives to be 930 years old.  There’s a list of Adam’s descendents all the way up to Noah, and they all live between 365 and 969 years.  Noah descended from Adam’s son Seth, and is Adam’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson.