GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
GENESIS 4:1-2
In a sense, the final 47 chapters of Genesis are easier for us to relate to and understand than the first three, because from here on we see the world as it is now; the home of sinful mankind. Many interpreters have a very different view of the first chapters than we have taken, because we don’t see them as allegories or pious mythology, but as the true history of the earliest days of the world and the cosmos. But we have already seen the key teachings of the Bible: God’s grace, the fall into sin, the promise of the Savior, the importance of the Word of God and right doctrine, the roles of men and women, the origin of the church and of the worship of God, and the blessing of the family. We have also seen the terrible enemies of man introduced one by one: the devil, the world and the sinful flesh.
In this chapter we see Adam and Eve’s continuing life of faith (4:1-2), the Lord’s battle with Cain’s unbelief (4:3-16), the Lord’s opposition to man’s glorification of sin by glorifying his own saving grace (4:17-26), Eve’s faith sustained by God’s grace (4:25) and the beginning of the public ministry and preaching (4:26).
4:1 Adam was intimate with Eve his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “I have brought forth a man together with the LORD.” 2 Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel was a shepherd of flocks, and Cain farmed the soil.
The first order of business after the resettlement of Adam and Eve away from the Garden of Eden is the business of making their family. In Hebrew, the verb for a husband and wife’s intimacy is “to know” (yada), and we should recognize this as a polite euphemism, as when we say “they made love,” or “they were intimate.” In the books of Moses, the term “to lay with” in Hebrew (shacav) is usually used for a sinful union, such as when Lot’s daughters got him drunk to conceive children with him (Genesis 19:33-35), or when Shechem the Hivite slept with Dinah, Jacob’s daughter (Genesis 34:2), and other sinful acts (Genesis 35:22; Deuteronomy 22:22-29; cp. 1 Samuel 2:22). But the intimate union in a marriage pleases God and is his design. Doesn’t everyone understand this? No, they don’t. In ancient times, there were entire heretical sects that taught that even marriage itself was a form of adultery (Tatian the Syrian, the later Nicolaitans), and still to this day, certain traditions forbids marriage for their clergy. The Apostle Peter, who himself was a married man (Mark 1:30; 1 Corinthians 9:5), warns: “There will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies” (2 Peter 2:1), among which, Paul writes, “They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:3-4).
Here we could add many more things, but since in the days of the Reformation the Catholic Church publicly stated: “Let them (the Lutherans) show, if they can, where God has commanded priests to marry” (Confutation of the Augsburg Confession Pt. II, Art. II), we are compelled to answer with the words of the Apology: “Paul says (in 1 Corinthians 7:2) ‘Because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife.’ This is an express command, directed to anyone not suited for celibacy. Our opponents demand to be shown a command requiring that priests should marry– as though priests were not human beings?” (Apology XXIII:14-15). No vow can abolish either human nature, or passion, or even lust, and therefore no one can abolish the statement of Scripture, “It is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1 Corinthians 7:9). Therefore anyone with a desire to marry has the right to marry. And since Moses and Aaron and all of the Old Testament priests were married, and almost all of the Apostles were, according to Paul’s own admission, married (1 Corinthians 9:5), it is not right for any church or sect to forbid its priests or ministers from marrying, just as it would not be right or even possible to forbid the ordinary public from marrying. “For we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
Adam and his wife began their family in the natural way. Were Cain and Abel twins? Not necessarily; but in either case, Cain was the older brother. And these babies grew up to become young men who both desired to work. Adam’s family seems to have found out quickly that herding some flocks (sheep or goats) helps to manage land through grazing and fertilization, and that working in tandem with another person’s work (one farming crops, one herding the flock) was an efficient system for their labor.
Let’s return to Eve when the boys were babies. Holding her baby Cain in her arms, Eve confessed her faith. Her words mean either, “I have acquired a man (who is) the Lord” (Luther), or “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.” If she thought that this baby was the Messiah, she was showing her faith in God’s promise, but she would be disappointed, for Cain was not Christ. But if she was saying that the Lord (who is gracious and who keeps his promises) had given to her a baby boy, then she was showing her faith in all of God’s promises and she was acknowledging that all good gifts come from the Lord. Even if she was mistaken about the identity of the Savior at that time, her faith in the promise of the Savior was justified. Eve was learning to take the Lord’s words as the truth, and to trust in him at every turn. She had her place in God’s plan for all mankind, by being the mother and grandmother of all living people. And like a mother with each believer as a child in her lap, she passes her faith down to us all, one after another, urging us to fear, love and trust in God above all things.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Listen or watch Bible classes online. https://splnewulm.org/invisible-church/. Archives at St Paul’s Lutheran Church https://splnewulm.org/daily-devotions/ and Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: www.wlchapel.org/connect-grow/ministries/adults/daily-devotions/gwfy-archive/2026
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Genesis 4:1-2 Sons for Eve