Men in the Bible: Cain and the First Misery
Cain replied to the Lord, “My punishment is too great for me to bear! You have banished me from the land and from your presence; you have made me a homeless wanderer. Anyone who finds me will kill me!” – Genesis 4:13-14 (New Living Translation)
We are still studying the man, Cain. Today, we will explore him from another unpleasant angle of being the first man in recorded history to be plagued with misery.
While this may not be such a big deal in itself, since we are all probably familiar with the story, the essence of today’s note is to help us to appreciate some of the consequences that our actions, good or bad, may attract, even when we do not really think about them. This was probably the case with Cain too, as he might not have guessed what the repercussions of killing his brother might be. After all, there was no precedence for him to learn from, which could have helped him reign in his violent impulse.
There is an African saying, “someone who does what no one else has done before will certainly experience an effect no one else has experienced.” This was the case with Cain as he soon found out when God decided to punish him for his offence. If Adam and Eve had seen the worst hand of God as the punishment for their own disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit, Cain had it much worse than his parents with this weighty pronouncement of God:
And He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth.” – Genesis 4:10-12
While Adam had the ground cursed for his sake, in the case of Cain he was outrightly cursed from the earth with the implication that he would be forever unproductive, as the earth would not yield its goods to him. This is a terrible sentence indeed, as it meant that Cain was condemned to a life of unfruitfulness. There is no work, no business, no trade, no endeavor that he would do that would give him a satisfactory yield.
Moreover, Cain was also condemned to a life of fugitive and vagabond. The Oxford Dictionary defines a fugitive as “a person who has escaped from a place or is in hiding, especially to avoid arrest or persecution,” and a vagabond as “a person who wanders from place to place without a home or job.” These are no desirable statuses for anyone. However, they were the lot of Cain as the divine sentence for the heinous crime he committed in taking the life of his innocent brother.
He was condemned to running from place to place with no settled abode to call his own. He would run from humans, animals. elements, and everything else. Even when those were not really chasing him, his guilty consciousness would not allow him to think so, as he would only see threats to his life and safety around everyone and everything he was around. What a miserable way to live indeed.
Sin has consequences, which are usually not favorable.
Selah!
Also read:
- Men in the Bible: Cain and the First Lie
- The Ordinance of Firstborn: Are Firstborns Cursed? (1)
- Beauty in Disability
- Pregnancy Preserved via Prayer
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