Fathers in the Bible: Cain – A Sweet Father

Fathers in the Bible: Cain – A Sweet Father

by | Jan 21, 2026 | Archives, Men

Fathers in the Bible: Cain – A Sweet Father And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of…

Fathers in the Bible: Cain – A Sweet Father

And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son—Enoch. – Genesis 4:17

Interestingly, we are starting the fathers in the Bible series with Cain, a bitter and murderous individual who killed his own brother for no good reason and was thus banished by God.

It is important to refresh our minds about the objectives of this particular diet of Daily Dew, it is primarily devoted to highlighting the persons and entities in the Bible by spotlighting their strengths and weaknesses, their virtues and vices, their good and bad sides, so that we can appreciate their humanness and, perhaps, learn from their examples.

By beaming the searchlight on the good and the bad sides of biblical characters, we infer that no one is absolutely perfect, without their fair share of flaws, and that no one is absolutely wicked, without some good attributes to them. Hence, the case of Mr. Cain, who was the first person to build a city and the first father to immortalize his son.

From the reference passage above, even after being punished by God and being condemned to a life of fugitiveness and vagabondage, Cain still did something worthwhile with his life. He built a city. He did not just build this city, which he was not destined to live in for long before being harassed to vacate it (remember he was now a fugitive and a vagabond), he also named the city after his son, Enoch. Now, isn’t that sweet?

Cain obviously still has many critics today who would call for his head for the heinous act of murdering his innocent brother. However, even with the weight of his sin, the guilt and the verdict of God upon his shoulders, he still gave himself no excuse for indolence but went ahead to build a city!

While getting land to build a city in his days must have been easier than today, building a city in his era, using crude tools in the absence of modern tools and equipment we have today, must have been a harder endeavor. This challenge, notwithstanding, Cain was still able to build a city, and he showed his affectionate and sweet side as a father by naming the city after his son, and not after himself.

No matter what we think of him, that surely represents a challenge to any of us who may want to play the judge over him. Perhaps, we may not have enough ground to denigrate this his achievement unless we have a better result to show, pointing at what we have built compared to what he did, even with the limitations he had to contend with.

Selah!

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Men in the Bible: Cain and the First Misery — When Sin Condemns a Man to Restlessness

Men in the Bible: Cain and the First Misery — When Sin Condemns a Man to Restlessness

by | Jan 20, 2026 | Archives, Men

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…

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 that are usually unfavorable.

Selah!

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