GENESIS 4:11-12 - Curses: How Fair?

“'Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.'”

FYI: I'm writing this post months following my original analysis of the verses which it's linked to (prompted by questions arising from reading about Cain's curse in Genesis 4:11-12).

Curses: How Fair?

Before addressing the specifics of the curse that God places upon Adam & Eve - which have been subsequently passed onto us - a more basic question I needed answered was the fairness of a hereditary curse in the first place. I can easily grasp the logic of punishing Adam for his sins, but how is it fair to disadvantage me (via a meddled-with-hand-me-down body and mind which has been perverted over the ages) for that?

So I decided to play a little make believe: imagine we had the benefit of being born with un-cursed flawless minds and bodies as God intended. We're now all equally free from internal flaws. But wait, those born in say, war-torn Africa, are still at a disadvantage from external influences. Fair enough, we'll transport our equally perfect bodies to equally perfect environments. We now have what is effectively Eden - and isn't that what we've been getting at all along? Let's continue and say that for every man, an identical but separate Eden is created, so alongside Adam on Earth A, God creates Mike on Earth B. On Earth A, well, we know how that turns out, but on Earth B, Mike's wife manages to resist Satan's temptations, warns Mike, and as a result they live happily ever after. An outside observer could still argue that Mike had it easier than Adam by virtue of his wife making the better decision and thus not "weighing the odds against his own free choice". Very well, we'll remove the last potentially "unfair" variable available: other people.

Success! At last, a universe in which we, oh wait, I mean you, can live and make your own decisions, removed from the dangers of other "unpredictable" people who might tilt the scales against you; it's the truly fair universe you've always wanted: sterile, surgically-controlled, and completely alone.

Admittedly, none of this haphazard reasoning got me any closer to an answer of my original question, but more importantly helped me bridge the gap between the seemingly contradictory ideas of a hereditary curse and God's absolute fairness.

C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity: Morality and Psychoanalysis

The bad […] material is not a sin but a disease. […] And by the way, that is very important. Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. […] When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty […] he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.

[…] It is as well to put this the other way round. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us : all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was. There will be surprises.

C.S. Lewis - The Problem of Pain (p. 65)

It would, no doubt, have been possible for God to remove by miracle the results of the first sin committed by a human being; but this would not have been much good unless He was prepared to remove the results of the second sin, and of the third, and so on forever. If the miracles ceased, then sooner or later we might have reached our present lamentable situation: if they did not, then a world, thus continually underpropped by Divine interference, would have been a world in which nothing important ever depended on human choice, and in which choice itself would soon cease

Partiality, in the sense that objectors commonly use the word, is impossible in the sphere of grace. It can exist only in the sphere of justice, where the persons concerned have certain claims and rights. -Loraine Boettner

If by “fair” we insist on meaning that God be absolutely equitable in how He relates to, or gifts, every individual, then we end up with what may amount to an impossible criteria for even an omnipotent God. No two individuals - not even clones - could ever be given the exact same gifts and circumstances in life.
-Is God Biased?

(back to Genesis 4)

GENESIS 4:7 - The Need to Master Sin

“If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

The Need to Master Sin

All too often I find myself subconsciously treating sin like it's simply an inevitable byproduct of being a fallen creature rather than a conspiring entity "crouching at the door" that I must constantly battle.

This trickles downwards and manifests itself in the idea that so long as I'm sincere in my remorseful request for forgiveness, then the matter is resolved and I can move onto more active and important Christian duties - that God probably cares more about anyways - like Bible study, prayer, apologetics etc. On the contrary however, this verse is unmistakably clear when it comes to what God wants us to do: master it!

Short-Sightedness

It's easy to see the affects of murder but much harder to wrap our temporal minds around the harm of say, an impure thought, unless we consider it in the larger scope of its slippery degenerative effects, as the thought-provoking article What Sin Is & What Sin Does states: "Each sin makes the next one a bit easier. Over time, the conduct will become entirely acceptable, and we will sin without a qualm. Sin is addictive like a drug. As the addiction becomes stronger, the ideal depreciates until it is completely gone." After reading this I realized the sad truth of this statement as I reflected on the profound difference between how seriously I used to treat some sins which I can now barely blink an eye over.

A Losing Battle

We're told to battle against sin, but are then told that it's a battle we're bound to lose, now and for the rest of our lives. Is it any wonder we end up with blasé attitudes towards prevention and instead concentrate instead on forgiveness? C.S. Lewis offers great insight and encouragement on this matter in Mere Christianity (using the example of chastity):

"[...] many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible. But when a thing has to be attempted, one must never think about possibility or impossibility. Faced with an optional question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question. one must do the best one can. You may get some marks for a very imperfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone. Not only in examinations but in war, in mountain climbing, in learning to skate, or swim, or ride a bicycle, even in fastening a stiff collar with cold fingers, people quite often do what seemed impossible before they did it. It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.

We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity - like perfect charity - will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection."

(back to Genesis 4)

GENESIS 4:3-6 - Why did God Reject Cain's Offering?

So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? ”

Why did God Reject Cain's Offering?

Given how sparse the story is with details, the question seems unavoidable. There's no explicit mention in the verse as to exactly what it was that Cain did wrong. So assuming God is fair and righteous it seems we're only left with two possibilities: 1) there was something physically wrong with Cain's offering or the manner in which he presented it, and/or 2) there was something wrong with Cain's heart.

If you think about the doctrine of atonement, it shifts the focus squarely on the former: regardless of his efforts or sincerity of heart, Cain's offering of fruits would remain hopelessly insufficient due to the fact that atonement can only be achieved via death and sacrifice - hence Christ's need to die for us.

Did Cain Know?

Did Cain know about this prerequisite of atonement? If so, it's a cut-and-dry case of Cain being consciously disobedient, but if not, well, it seems rather unfair to judge Cain for simply being ignorant or dimmer than Abel, or simply having the misfortune of being the farmer. To complicate things, there's definitely no prior-recorded mention in Genesis about the ins-and-outs of atonement to make it clear that God isn't just playing favourites.

Bloody Illustrations, Historical Context

I had spent a lot of time reading various disappointingly unsatisfactory explanations and was ready to mark this one as unresolved when I spoke to Pastor Dan who presented me with two very compelling explanations:

Consider Genesis 3:21 a few short verses earlier: "The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them." Looking up the word used for "skin" makes it clear that it refers not to fur or wool but to actual animal hide. And how do we get animal hide? By killing animals. So here we have Adam & Eve who have never seen anything die, and have no concept of death whatsoever. God brings them over to these cute little sheep - which Adam named - and... slaughters them before their very eyes, skins them, and drapes the bloody hides on their backs. Do you think that from that point onwards they ever forgot (or forgot to tell their children) that visceral illustration of the effects of sin and sacrifice?

Secondly, there is the historical aspect; Genesis was written by Moses, many generations after the fact, for people whom blood sacrifice was - and had been for centuries - an integral and ingrained part of culture (think Abraham and Isaac). It would have been a given to everyone during Moses' time that Cain's behaviour was foolish and disrespectful regardless of its sincerity, so much so that documenting the 'why' would seem completely unnecessary, in the same way that a sports writer would feel no need to justify calling a hockey playing stupid for picking up the puck with their hands and chucking it into the net - which might likewise bewilder a reader thousands of years in the future if hockey is no longer played (God forbid!).

(This take on the garments is very different from the positive spin I put on it in my previous entry on Genesis 3:21,23-24 - God's Hidden Compassion)

(back to Genesis 4)

GENESIS 3:21,23-24 - God's Hidden Compassions

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

[...] therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

God's Hidden Compassions

When we talk about the fall, the focus is usually on how we're screw-ups, we're full of sin, and how God had to kick us out and make sure we stayed out. Pretty depressing stuff that we think makes God look like nothing but a judge, a righteous one perhaps, but also cold.

Despite Genesis being written in a pretty brief only-what-you-need-to-know style, there's a surprising amount of compassion scattered throughout these chapters.

Verse 7 states that Adam & Eve had sewn themselves coverings after their fall, and yet in verse 21 God goes ahead and clothes them in additional garments of skin. And while on the surface, verse 7 might seem to take away from God's act of mercy, I find it actually enhances it: this was not a simple case of God providing bare necessities that Adam & Eve wouldn't have been able to obtain otherwise (unlike say, providing manna to the Israelites in the desert who would have otherwise starved). It would be like a homeowner who discovers a tenant of his has been stealing from him and must be evicted, in the dead of winter. In one case, the tenant doesn't own a jacket and so the owner provides him with a ratty old one that certainly isn't the warmest thing but will suffice to keep him alive. In the other case, the tenant already owns that ratty jacket, he'll be fine, and yet the owner, in his compassion, runs after the man and offers him his own warm winter jacket. Maybe I'm reading into verse 21 too much but that's how I see it.

And as for the implicit compassion contained within verses 23-24:

"He might justly have chased him out of the world (Job 18:18), but he only chased him out of the garden. He might justly have cast him down to hell, as he did the angels that sinned when he shut them out from the heavenly paradise, 2 Pt. 2:4 ("For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment..."). But man was only sent to till the ground out of which he was taken. He was sent to a place of toil, not to a place of torment. He was sent to the ground, not to the grave, to the workhouse, not to the dungeon, not to the prison-house,- to hold the plough, not to drag the chain. His tilling the ground would be recompensed by his eating of its fruits; and his converse with the earth whence he was taken was improvable to good purposes, to keep him humble, and to remind him of his latter end. Observe, then, that though our first parents were excluded from the privileges of their state of innocency, yet they were not abandoned to despair, God's thoughts of love designing them for a second state of probation upon new terms.

[...] The command of that covenant being broken, the curse of it is in full force; it leaves no room for repentance, but we are all undone if we be judged by that covenant. God revealed this to Adam, not to drive him to despair, but to oblige and quicken him to look for life and happiness in the promised seed."

(Matthew Henry's Bible Commentary)

The cursed world in which we were "abandoned" to is in many ways a blessing in itself (something Pastor Dan mentioned to me in conversation) as it makes us realize that something is not right, things are not the way they should be...

"The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. [...] God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." (C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity)

EDIT (2008/10/28)

While I still like this interpretation, I should point out my later entry on Genesis 4:3-6 (Why Did God Reject Cain's Offering?) which interprets these events with a much more negative slant. Not sure if these interpretations can co-exist or not...

(back to Genesis 3)

GENESIS 3:17-19 - Man's Easier Curse

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;

Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life.

“Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you will eat the plants of the field;

By the sweat of your face
You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.”

Man's Easier Curse

As an isolated incident, the judgments as a whole make sense to me: both screwed up, both are punished in unique ways relating to their unique roles: Eve is punished via her role as childbearer, mother and wife, Adam via his (assumed) role as worker and provider.

But when you view the results of the curse historically - which is not only justifiable but crucial to an understanding of why we are the way we are - I find myself with questions.

We have come to understand the curses directed at Adam & Eve to be directly passed down through their genders, or species in the case of the serpent. From that perspective however, Adam's curse appears dramatically different from that of Eve's and the serpent's in terms of its directness.

Today, all serpents still crawl on their bellies and all women still experience excruciating pain in childbirth, but everyone is subjected to Adam's curse: Both genders work, are forced to "eat the plants of the field" and are subject to death ("for you are dust and to dust you shall return").

Sure you can make arguments that each gender is directly affected by the curse of their partner (as I noted in my post on Eve's curse) but in the end I don't think there's any avoiding - at least the impression - the disparity between man's curse vs. woman's and the serpent's.

(back to Genesis 3)

GENESIS 3:16 - The Curse on the Woman

To the woman He said,
“I will greatly multiply
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;
Yet your desire will be for your husband,
And he will rule over you.”

The Curse on the Woman

Had I never before read or heard this verse being referenced, I probably would have skipped straight over it thinking it was pretty straightforward. Instead, I found myself spending even more time than usual verses trying to get to the bottom of it thanks to all the muck that has buried this verse beneath feminism and the gender wars of our culture.

This verse can be practically broken-up into two parts:

1) Mothers & Children

"I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth". No real differing opinions or grand examinations of this section, it's pretty straightforward: before the fall there was no physical pain in childbirth and after the fall there was to be.

"In pain you will bring forth children". On the surface, this appears to simply re-iterate what the former already said but it does imply a bit more. Women form a unique bond with their children (even if in some cases it is, sadly, only one-way) from having to bear them, and unfortunately, because they are sinners and will inevitably give birth to a son/daughter who is a sinner. That child is bound to sin and wickedness and as such the mother will experience much pain in raising the child and will have a heart that never rests. An interesting point, that said, not one that really tells us anything new.

2) Wives & Husbands

"This is a description of the curse. It is a description of misery, not a model for marriage." (John Piper - Manhood and Womanhood) This change of perspective makes all the difference in the world. When God tells us that our sinful natures will cause us to want to steal and murder no one interprets that as a license to do those things, so why should we treat Genesis 3:16 any differently?

"Yet your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you". To further Piper's point, the use of desire here can be explained by its identical usage in Genesis 4:7 where God tells Cain:

"Sin desires you. What does that mean? Sin wants to control you. Sin wants to dominate you. Sin wants to take over your life. "But you must master it." You must rule over it. It's the very same expression. The woman desires to control the man and he rules over her. Sin desires to have you, you must control it. The woman then has the same desire for the man that sin has for Cain; a desire to control, a desire to have its way. And the husband has the same need to control his wife that Cain had to control sin.

[...] She usurped authority. She took the place of leadership. He submitted to her. And he was, therefore, sentenced to have to deal with such rebellion on a permanent basis. The wife then seeks control. She seeks to have her way; what she wants when she wants it. The husband resists and tries to maintain his control. And that, of course, is not always balanced. It's not always loving. It's not always kind. And therein lies the conflict of marriage that is so universal." (John F. MacArthur - The Curse on the Woman)

While I obviously like this exposition by MacArthur, I am left with the feeling that he - like almost all of the writers I encountered in researching this - is almost trying too hard to "even the playing field" by equally implicating men into God's statement in verse 16. While it's understandable given the state of our society, the goal of my Bible blog was to understand everything as it was written and the fact is that the gender issues we have today did not exist (or at least weren't anywhere near as prominent) when Genesis was written.

Back to Basics?

Truth be told, despite the multitude of writings which exist on the latter half of verse 16, almost all of them seemed to simply use it as a launching point for a extended discussion on gender roles and few if any addressed what the verse itself means. And so despite reading a lot of good enlightening things, I find myself coming back to the basics, politically correct or not.

"Yet your desire will be for your husband". Is this not simply saying that women will have a greater desire for their husbands than vice versa? From what little life experience I have I've observed this to generally be the case with men and women in relationships. If "desire" simply means a desire to control which the man also possesses (as MacArthur and other authors essentially posit) the lexicon certainly doesn't back him up (tshuwqah: a longing -- desire) and more significant is the question of why God would bother mentioning it in the woman's curse at all?

So in many ways I leave this verse right back where I started, and in some respects, more confused.

(back to Genesis 3)

GENESIS 3:15 - The First Preaching of the Gospel

And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.

The First Preaching of the Gospel

Confession: In all my previous - and obviously hasty - readings, I had always assumed this verse was being addressed to Adam rather than Satan! What a difference altering the recipient makes! All of a sudden this verse went from being relatively straightforward (God saying that guys and gals will rule over gals and they won't get along) to being the most singularly loaded and difficult verse I've encountered yet.

Messianic Prophecy:

"This is one of the most remarkable verses in the Bible. The early church fathers called it the Protevangelium, which means "the first preaching of the gospel." It is the clearest promise of the coming of a Redeemer." (Ray Stedman)

"Here was the dawn of the gospel day: no sooner was the wound given, than the remedy was provided and revealed." (Matthew Henry Bible Commentary)

Most commentaries concerning this particular verse emphasize its messianic foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus:

• "her seed": as opposed to the seed of a man, i.e. the virgin Mary, mother of Jesus
• "He shall bruise...": masculine pronoun, indicating that Christ would be a man.
• "you shall bruise him on the heel": Christ would be made to suffer and die.
• "He shall bruise you on the head": Christ would be ressurected and in doing so defeat death and Satan whilst redeeming mankind in the process for their original sin.

The only thing more amazing than the amount of prophecy that's crammed into this verse is the content of the prophecy itself!

Enmity and the Woman:

While I can certainly agree with above-started interpretation of this verse as being a foretelling of the coming of Jesus who would redeem us from this original sin, I have a bit more trouble understanding some of the specifics of this verse.

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman..."

What is God talking about here? Not the dictionary sense of the word, "a feeling or condition of hostility; hatred; ill will; animosity; antagonism" (Dictionary.com), as it goes without saying that Adam & Eve would hate Satan after what he's done. The majority of commentaries the figures of Satan and the woman here to be representative of sin vs. righteousness, i.e. Satan's way vs. God's way, "this enmity cuts into the human race and divides mankind. Between those who stem from the woman and are true sons of Eve and those who follow the serpent and his master" (Answers in Genesis). But despite the relative unanimity of the commentaries, I still have problems buying into this explanation.

If indeed this is the correct interpretation than what is it exactly - at this point in time, void from everything else that would come after it - that makes the woman pure? After all, was she not the first one to sin? What makes woman anymore righteous than man at this point? God's decision to juxtapose Eve/woman against Satan and sinfulness seems baffling given that it comes directly on the heels of Eve sinning.

Perhaps I just need someone to explain it to me in even further layman's terms...

(back to Genesis 3)