Cain commits murder, from jealousy, because God preferred meat to vegetables ([Gen. iv, 8]).
[Gen. vi, 5]: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” The contents of this sentence is absurd. The heart cannot imagine, or think. The function of the heart is the circulation of the blood.
What this wickedness consisted of, we do not know.
History has no record exactly where this Flood or Deluge took place. That it was localized is certain. It was in all probability nothing more than an overflow of the river Euphrates—that is joined by the river Tigris, and terminates in the Gulf of Persia—in consequence of a series of consecutive rainstorms, etc., and God had as much to do with this supposed deluge as he has to do with any deluge in the Mississippi valley when that river overflows.
[Gen. vi, 6]: “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart.” Now we are getting at God’s anatomy!
Man may labor under delusions—hear voices, etc. All those extravagant statements are perfectly excusable from our modern standpoint.
All this wickedness is supposed to have taken place 2348 before the Christian era, and we have still the same sort of wickedness on earth as there was then. Barbarians inhabited that region—rude, crude, half-civilized herdsmen, not much superior to our Indians. Minding their flocks and increasing their families was their main occupation. Abraham made no scruples in cohabiting with Miss Hagar, Sarah’s maid; nor had Jacob any objections to Miss Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, nor did he scruple to accommodate Miss Zilpha, Leah’s maid, and later we read how Reuben lay with Bilhah, Jacob’s mistress. Shechem seduced Dina, Jacob’s daughter. Her brothers Simon and Levi killed all the males, etc. At this time, we learn, harlots were in fashion.
We have it recited, crime after crime—according to our modern notions—yet these barbarians were God’s own people! After killing Shechem, and Hamor his father, and all the rest of the males, they took possession of their property. Lot and his daughters is another instance of biblical ethics.
This barbarian family, these shepherds, had their first experience in civilization when they reached Egypt, and whatever they practiced later was adopted from that nation. They had received some training under Egyptian rule for nearly four hundred and thirty years. During this period we hear nothing of sin or transgression. No sooner were they organized as a community than the sins, transgressions, and wickedness broke out anew, and continued right along in a greater or lesser degree through the patriarchal period, theocratic period, and monarchial period. During the entire national existence of nearly one thousand years to their captivity, we have recited sins, transgressions, and crime, crime, transgressions, and sin; and all are perfectly human, perfectly natural among barbarians, savages, half-civilized, and even civilized people. Whether David lusts after a nude woman, or Amnon forces his own sister, it reveals the weakness of animal human nature, and is a breach of the recognized laws, and a lack of discipline.
All through the Old Testament the same story is repeated—sensuality, cruelty, and crime; and rebellion against the established laws. It is the burden of song and of prophecy—greed and scramble for power, the cause of continual dissension. The only time the Jews were reasonably quiet was when they were exterminating other nations, plundering and taking forcible possession of their women and female children as well as their property. The great burden of sin throughout the Old Testament consists in the infringement of the law established by Moses, to worship no other god except the one he manufactured—that is, a God endowed with all brutality and sensuality, without a representative form, a God that had all the senses and could utilize them. The wooden idol had these organs but could not use them, while the Mosaic God had them not but could exercise all the functions of animal life. In the light of history, all ages display the same process in the human mind—the same passions and the same tendencies, held more or less under restraint, according to the laws, customs, and habits of the people. The Jews during their whole career were more or less idolators, and were continually relapsing into the idolatry, of some one kind or another, of dead men, which was practiced under different celestial or animal emblems in the neighboring countries. And it was not ended until after the Babylonish captivity, 588 B.C., and when Ezra returned to Jerusalem, 557 B.C., who collected the various manuscripts and put them into some sort of shape and started to rebuild the Temple. This event took place during the reign of Xerxes son of Darius. Ezra and his companions had been educated meanwhile. They had enjoyed the privilege of a Babylonian education. They had the advantage of their learning, their philosophy. Now they returned better equipped mentally than ever they were before their captivity. And for the first time they began to call themselves “holy seed” (chapter ix). They had intermarried with the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, Amorites, etc., (verse 2) “so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands.” Verse 6, this priest goes into hysterics: “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee,” etc. Chapter x: He prays, confesses, and weeps and casts himself down before the house of God, etc. Verse 11: “And separate yourself from the people of the land, and from the strange wives.” Of course their wives were sent adrift. That was the first time in their history that marriages were restricted to their own nation. This also is the first wholesale divorce on record. Intermarriages they had been guilty of for many centuries, and they were never accounted a sin until the time of Ezra. After this reformation the same sins continue, intermarriages perhaps excepted. The animal predominated, as it naturally would. Selfishness was more prominent than ever. They knew the value of gold, and onyx stone, and bdellium. God had told them all about it in [Gen. ii, 11, 12]. The commercial enterprise started with creation, and has continued. Jehova had not half the romance and the poesy of Zeus or Jupiter. The latter had all the Grecian refinement, while the former had all the barbarity of Chaldea.