Genesis 4:1-5
Two offerings
Two brothers, two gifts, one received. The text says less about why than readers would like, and more about what Cain does next.
People of the Bible
Cain
The first son born outside the garden, and the first to take a life.
Cain works the ground and brings an offering from it. When his brother's offering is received and his is not, he is warned directly that something is crouching at his door and that he can still master it. He does not. He speaks to Abel in the field, kills him there, and answers the question about his brother with a question of his own. He is sent east, marked so that no one will do to him what he did, and he builds the first city.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Cain
- 01
- 02
Genesis 4:6-7
Crouching at the door
He is warned before he acts, and told plainly that the thing after him can be mastered. The warning is a mercy he refuses.
- 03
Genesis 4:8-12
In the field
The first murder is committed by a brother against a brother. The ground that he worked now refuses him.
- 04
Genesis 4:13-17
The mark and the city
Even under sentence he is protected, and he goes east to build something that will outlast him.
Why it matters
Cain shows how fast the fracture travels. One generation after the garden, the problem is no longer a boundary crossed in private but a body in a field. The warning he receives, that sin can be ruled rather than obeyed, is one of the clearest statements of moral responsibility in the early chapters.
2 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
