Dearest Rachel –
This letter, and the one preceding it, have got to seem to be a little strange to you, I’m sure. What are these about? Did something happen in my life that I’m trying to allude to in the most oblique of terms, lest I upset someone with murderous intent on me (or upon whom I seek such vengeance, heaven forbid)? Thankfully, no. I’ve not had anything to deal with that comes anywhere close to subjects such as murder and vengeance, or the punishment for grievous wrong. It’s just one of those questions I’ve always had in the back of my mind, and the dream from the other night brought it to the forefront. So, seeing as you likely have the answers at your fingertips (not that you’re able to share them with me), I thought I might as well ask them of you in any event. Maybe, once I join you, I’ll even get them answered – as, by having them written down, someone (or perhaps Someone) will remember to inform me about them.
Of course, by then, I’ll most likely have forgotten…
In any event, Pastor Scott used to say that certain people would tell him that they rejected Christianity due to ‘all the contradictions in the Bible,’ but when he would challenge them to name even one, they would generally fall silent. While it’s gratifying that certain knee-jerk would-be critics can be silenced with a single, armor-piercing question like that, there are a few situations that still seem… inconsistent. It’s possible that some of them could be answered by the simple fact that God deals with humanity in different ways during different times (the whole ‘dispensationalist’ theory in evangelical theology – which brings up a question or two of its own, particularly when you put it up against His own claim that “I AM the LORD; I change not.”), but it’s not exactly a definitive resolution.
In particular, there is this matter of Cain, and the seal (or mark) set upon him. Now, in later books of the Bible (even in later chapters of Genesis!), God makes it plain that, for justice to be served, there must be equivalent recompense; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and so forth. We even understand that this was an edict meant to actually limit vengeance, lest it get out of hand and spiral out of control – think of family feuds, even in America’s own history, such as the Hatfields and McCoys. But in terms of murder, the punishment was a capital one; he who destroys life, his life is forfeit. Case closed, end of story – literally. Of course, in subsequent books, He even makes the distinction between what we categorize as murder and manslaughter, and acknowledges that an accidental killing should not be punished as severely (although the killer is all but imprisoned within the ‘city of refuge’ until the serving high priest dies, but hey, he still lives). But premeditated murder? There’s a death sentence.
And yet, with Cain, this doesn’t happen. God calls him out on what he’s done – and the fellow appears to go so far as to snark at the Almighty! “What, am I supposed to know where my kid brother is at all times?” – and, upon pointing out that He knows full well what Cain has done, proceeds to simply order him away, banishing him from where he and his parents have decided to make a homestead. Cain even protests that it’s too harsh a punishment – although he doesn’t seem as concerned about how he’ll be able to scrape by on his own so much as that other people (and where did they come from, by the way?) will hear about him and what he did, and kill him – which is, according to God in later chapters, exactly what ought to happen to him.
What’s odd is that God agrees with him, and seals him with a mark to identify him not only for who he is and what he’s done (which must have simply added to Cain’s fears for a moment), but also make it plain that Cain is to be left alive, lest whoever kills Cain suffer a punishment seven times worse than Cain’s own. He sentences Cain, in other words, to live.
This seems to go against much of His laws and statutes that He sets up later, both with Noah and again later with Moses. There must be some context to this situation, some details we don’t know about what happened here, that causes God to be merciful to Cain, for whatever reason. It may be that it hadn’t occurred to Cain as to what he might have done to his brother; after all, before Abel, no one had died before. People would sleep and wake up, but no one who’d fallen asleep hadn’t woken up before. Even his response to God might well have been out of panic rather than what I referred to earlier as ‘snark’; it might have been a declaration implying ‘how could I have known that’s what would have happened?’
It would be nice to have more details. One assumes these things are written for a reason; the reader is meant to learn a lesson from the tale being told. But what is the lesson here? Why is Cain’s punishment different than God usually prescribes in cases such as this? There must be something to be understood from this apparent inconsistency, but what is it?
Indeed, whatever lesson the story had seems to have been lost on his own great-great-great-grandson, Lamech. To be sure, that many generations are probably more than enough to lose the thread of any lesson or story – especially one that, as was originally the case in those days, would have been passed down orally rather than being written down – but when in those days, one might live to see down that many generations, it’s possible Lamech might have heard the whole thing from his great-great-great-granddad Cain himself. Certainly, he knew about the mark his ancestor bore, and what it supposedly represented.
So, when Lamech comes back from… whatever he would have done for a living back then, and does the whole ancient equivalent of “Hi, honeys, I’m home!” he tells his wives about his day…
I killed a man for wounding me,
Genesis 4:23b, Expanded Bible
a young man for hitting me.
And while one might expect him to go all Bohemian Rhapsody about this incident, his reaction is rather different than that:
If ·Cain’s killer is punished [L Cain is avenged] seven times [4:15],
Genesis 4:24, Expanded Bible
then ·Lamech’s killer will be punished [L Lamech will be avenged] seventy-seven times.” [C Lamech falsely thought he could get away with murder.]
Now, where did he get that idea from?
To be sure, there is such a thing as justifiable homicide, and, since I’m no lawyer, I won’t go into details, lest I get the specifics wrong. And again, without context or details, there’s no real clue as to whether this was the case. Indeed (and this is the problem with the written word as opposed to recorded evidence), it’s hard to tell what tone Lamech was taking in recounting this incident. I always heard it as if he was all but bragging about having whacked this impertinent young fellow, but maybe he was trying to spin the situation to his wives, and since – in his mind – he had reason for retribution (unlike great-grandpappy Cain, whose attack was entirely unprovoked), he should be that much more sealed from harm than his ancestor.
Now, my version of the text includes a little commentary about what Lamech may have been thinking. I don’t know if it’s that obvious he was thinking this way. Again, maybe he thought his response was justified – we’ll never know. And since nothing more is said about him – in particular, there’s no indication he suffers any punishment, apart from being well aware of what he’d done – who’s to say he didn’t ‘get away with murder’?
However, no matter how you look at it, he clearly seems to have taken the wrong lessons from his great-grandpappy, and I wonder if we wouldn’t, as well. I mentioned before that things are included in scripture for a reason, but I’ll be darned if I know what the reason is for this little segment. It’s not the sort of thing any of us heard about in Sunday School, and yet… here it is. What do we take from this?
Maybe someday, I’ll find someone who has a clue about why this was included. Until then, I guess I should just be happy to get this question off my chest, even if I haven’t got an answer for it. It would be nice if you could fill us in with answers from your side, but that’s probably too much to ask; guess we need to join you to find out about these sorts of things (at which point, it’s kind of too late, isn’t it?)
Anyway, you take care, honey; keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 