| Chapter 8 Cain's Story II Every serious study of any subject must consider both sides of the issue, not just the side to be defended or proven. In this part, I intend looking at the dichotomous side of man in more detail. At first, I felt this part of the study was leading me to the Greek and Roman philosophers and their influence on New Testament times. The further I reflected, the more I realized that the study must begin in the Garden of Eden and proceed forward from there, or it would be weak and incomplete. All the way through this study, you will hear a common refrain. That refrain is that to understand what God intended for us to understand, we must study the entire Bible in context, without omissions. That one statement begs the question, if that is so, then why don't we study the family histories of men like Cain, men who fall outside of the line of succession that leads to our Lord Jesus Christ. My Hebrew and Chaldee dictionary shows Cain as Qayin. Qayin, the same as Qeynan ( with a play upon the affinity to qanah ), the name of the first child. The name with the word play means, teach to keep cattle and provoke to jealousy. There is also an uncapitalized qayin which comes from the root quwn. The word qayin is defined as a lance ( as striking fast ), a spear. The word quwn is defined as a chant or a wail ( at a funeral ), a lament, mourning woman. His name was prophetic. We come to all the endless genealogies in scripture and we immediately lose interest. Why? Could it be that we feel God goofed. He was just filling space to make a word quota, and all those names and relationships are just frivolous fluff. That's how I have treated the lists in the past, as I am sure most of us have. If God put the list's there, we should diligently strive to benefit from their inclusion. There is always a purpose to every thing that God does. We just are too dense to understand the purpose most of the time. Since they are there, I intend taking us along the dichotomous track to my best ability. In this chapter I will follow Cain as far as I can, and look at 51 _________________________________________________________________________________ antediluvian man. In the next chapter we will look at the eight who got off the ark, and what happened to the forgotten ones. I believe that this will connect, eventually, the dichotomous men who were searching for the why's of their existence to the evidence set before us by God in scripture. In crystallography in order to properly identify a mineral crystal, we must first orient the specimen so that we may examine all the faces of it. If we fail to do this, we can come to faulty conclusions about the truth of what we have in our hands. The study of scripture is no different. To properly understand the state of man in relationship to God it is necessary to study all the faces available to us. Possibly, God has provided us the genealogies to further this end. Genesis chapter 4 tells us the story of how Cain slew Abel. How Cain was cursed, and lost the ability to farm. He was sentenced to be a fugitive and a vagabond, a nomad, the rest of his days. We pick up the story in verse 10, "And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden." What can we glean from this scripture? First we see that Cain was to live a life that could be equated today to that of a bridge person. He was to call no place home. His attempts to till the earth for food would bear no fruit. He was reduced to a position of having to live off 52 _______________________________________________________________________________ |
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