CHAPTER VII.
FROM THE FALL TO THE FLOOD.
1. Notes on special passages.
In Gen. 4: 1 our English version stands—“I have gotten a man from the Lord.” Some critics construe these words of Eve to mean—By the help or blessing of the Lord; but the more direct and obvious sense of the original is this: “I have gotten a man, the Lord”—as if she assumed that this, her first-born son, was really the promised divine “seed of the woman” who was to bruise the serpent’s head. The current objection to this construction is that it is too far in advance of Eve’s theology:—to which however the obvious reply is—Who knows how far advanced Eve’s theology may have been? Her imagination may have outrun the actual revelation at that point made. All we can say is that these words are recorded as indicating her thought, and that this is the most natural sense of her words.
In the Lord’s expostulation with Cain (4: 6, 7) we read: “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?” but better—Would there not be an elevation—i. e. of countenance, a cheerful looking up, instead of that fallen, sullen look spoken of in the previous verse.——“And if thou doest not well, sin lies crouching at the door”—sin being personified and thought of as some animal, perhaps the serpent, ready to allure him on to deeper, more damning crime: “And its (not his) desire is toward thee”—its Satanic purpose is to ensnare and ruin thee: “but thou shouldst rule over it”—in the sense of mastering its temptations, commanding them down and ruling them out from thine heart.
The speech or rather song of Lamech to his two wives (4: 23, 24) must be assumed to have a close connection with the occupation and skill of Tubal-Cain, “a workman in brass and iron.” Consciously strong and boldly overbearing in view of this new invention and production of death-weapons, he proudly sings: “I haveslain (or could slay) a man for wounding me—a young man—for any hurt inflicted upon me; and” (there being in this case some real provocation; Cain had none) “if Cain would be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and seven.” The lenity shown to Cain was bringing forth its fruits; the invention of improved death-weapons was also contributing to fill the earth with bloody violence.——These little facts indicate the state of society which culminated in so filling the earth with violence that God was compelled to wash out its blood-stains and its degenerate race with the flood.
2. Abel’s offering, and the origin of sacrifices.
Abel kept sheep; Cain tilled the ground. “In process of time” (Heb. “at the end of days”)—the stated time for worshiping God with offerings—Cain “brought of the fruit of the ground”—an unbloody offering: Abel “brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat.” The reference to their “fat” proves that these animals, lambs of the fold, were slain in sacrifice.——The record informs us that God looked with favor upon Abel’s offering, but not upon Cain’s. It does not concern us to know how God signified his approval of Abel’s sacrifice, whether by fire from heaven consuming it, or otherwise; but it does concern us to ascertain if we can why he approved it.
We have some rays of light on this point from the writer to the Hebrews who says: “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts.” Now the simplest idea of faith, the one element always present in it, is bowing to God’s authority with implicit confidence in his word. But in this case bowing to God’s authority implies that God had given some word in reference to bloody sacrifices—the offering of a lamb by shedding its blood upon the altar. And if God had given any such word of command, it is certainly to be presumed that he had also given at least this general idea, that the blood of the innocent lamb took, in some sense, the place of the blood of the guilty offerer, so that the sacrifice would imply the confession of guilt, and also faith in a bloody substitute of the Lord’s own providing.——Prosecuting our investigations we find this broad fact of history bearing on thecase, viz. that Noah, Abraham and Isaac built altars wherever they were sojourning and offered bloody sacrifices thereon. Further, God directed Noah to preserve in the ark clean animals by sevens, but animals not clean only in pairs—two of a species—a fact which can not be reasonably accounted for save with reference to their customary use in sacrifice. We have then before us the well-established fact of the early custom of bloody animal sacrifices.