Genesis 4:9 And the LORD said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? The world was yet young, and there were no judicatories to take cognizance of offences; therefore did God, who, though His creatures had rebelled against Him, still hold in His hands the government of the world, come forth from His solitude, and make "inquisition for blood." But why — omniscient as God was, and, by His own after statement, thoroughly cognizant of the guilt of Cain — why did He address the murderer with the question, "Where is Abel thy brother?" in place of taxing him at once with the atrocious commission? Assuredly there could have been no need to God of additional information: it was in no sense the same as at a human tribunal, where questions are put that facts may be elicited. And in following this course, God acted as He had done on the only former occasion when He had sat, as it were, in judgment on human offenders (see Genesis 3:9, 11, 13). But the method of question is again employed, so soon as there is again a human offender to be tried. "The Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother?" It can hardly be doubted that, in all these instances, the gracious design of God was to afford the criminals opportunity of confessing their crimes. You must be aware how, throughout Scripture, there is attached the greatest importance to confession of sin, so that its being forgiven is spoken of as though it depended upon nothing but its being acknowledged. "If we confess our sins," says the evangelist, "God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." And did the crime, then, of Cain come within the range of forgiveness? Supposing it to have been confessed, might it also have been pardoned? The crime had been fearful; and we must believe that, in any case, the moral Governor of the universe would have so treated the criminal as to mark His sense of the atrociousness of that which he had done. But there is no room for doubt that there was forgiveness even for Cain; even then there was blood which spake better things than that of Abel, the blood of Him who, on the cross, besought pardon for His murderers, and who, in thus showing that His death made expiation even for its authors, showed also that there was no human sin which its virtue would not reach. But if Cain might have been pardoned, had he been but penitent, where was the contrite sinner who need despair of the forgiveness of his sins? Ay, it is thus that the questions under review might have served as a revelation, during the infancy of the world, of the readiness of the Almighty to blot out our iniquities as a cloud, and as a thick cloud our sins. But let us now observe the manner in which Cain acted, whilst God was thus graciously endeavouring to lead him to repentance. If we had not abundant evidence, in our own day — yea, in our own cases — of the hardening power of sin, we might wonder at the effrontery which the murderer displayed. Did he, could he, think that denial would avail anything with God, so that, if he did not confess, he might keep his crime undetected? It may be that it was not in mere insolence that Cain affirmed to God that he knew nothing of Abel; he may have been so blinded by his sin as to lose all discernment of the necessary attributes of God, so that he actually imagined that not to confess would be almost to conceal. Under this point of view, his instance ought to serve as a warning to us of the deadening power of wrong-doing, informing us that there is no such ready way of benumbing the understanding, or paralysing the reason, as the indulging passion, and withstanding conscience. But Cain did more than assert ignorance of what had happened to Abel: he taxed God with the unreasonableness of proposing the question, as though it were a strange thing to suppose that he might concern himself with his brother. "Am I my brother's keeper?" There were then no brothers in the world but Cain and Abel; and he who could insolently ask, "Am I my brother's keeper?" when that brother was missing, might have been convicted, by those very words, of a fierceness which was equal to murder, and an audacity which would deny it even to God. But we wish to dwell for a moment on this question of Cain as virtually containing the excuse which numbers in our own day would give, were God to come visibly down, and make inquisition for blood. But we have how to consider to what God appealed in the absence of confession from the murderer himself: He had striven to induce Cain to acknowledge his guilt; but, failing in this, He must seek elsewhere for evidence on which to convict him. And where did He find this evidence? He made the inanimate creation rise up, as it were, against the assassin, and dumb things became eloquent in demanding his condemnation. "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground." Who has not read, who has not heard, how murderers, though they have succeeded in hiding their guilt from their fellow men, have seemed to themselves surrounded with witnesses and avengers, so that the sound of their own foot tread has startled them as if it had been the piercing cry of an accuser, and the rustling of every tree, and the murmur of every brook, has sounded like the utterance of one clamorous for their punishment? It has been as nothing that they have screened themselves from those around them, and are yet moving in society with no suspicion attaching to them of their having done so foul a thing as murder. They have felt as though, in the absence of all accusation from beings of their own race, they had arrayed against themselves the whole visible creation, sun and moon and stars and forests and waters growing vocal that they might publish their crime. And I know not whether there may be anything more in this than the mere goading and imaging of conscience; whether the disquieted assassin, to whose troubled eye the form of his victim is given back from every mirror in the universe, and on whose ear there falls no sound which does not come like the dying man's shriek, or the thundering call of the avenger of blood — whether he is simply to be considered as haunted and hunted by his own evil thoughts, or whether he be indeed subjected to some mysterious and terrible influences with which his crime has impregnated and endowed the whole material system. I cannot help feeling, when I consider the language of our text, as though there might be more than the mere phantasms of a diseased and distracted mind in those forms of fear, and these sounds of wrath, which agitate so tremendously the yet undiscovered murderer. It may be that, fashioned as man is out of the dust of the earth, there are such links between him and the material creation that, when the citadel of his life is rudely invaded, the murderous blow is felt throughout the vast realm of nature; so that, though there be no truth in the wild legend that, if the assassin enter the chamber where the victim is stretched, the gaping wounds will bleed afresh, yet may earth, sea, air, have sympathy with the dead, and form themselves into furies to hunt down his destroyer. But it is not exclusively, nor even chiefly, as indicating a possible, though inexplicable. Sympathy between material things and the victim of the murderer, that we reckon the statement before us deserving of being carefully pondered. Setting aside this sympathy, there is much that is very memorable in the appeal of God to a voice from Abel's blood, when there were other witnesses which might have been produced. Had not the soul of Abel entered the separate state? was not his spirit with God? and might not the immortal principle, violently detached as it had been from the body, have cried for vengeance on the murderer? We read in the Book of Revelation of "the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God, and for the testimony which they held." And of those souls we are told that "they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" It may, therefore, be that the souls of the dead cry for judgment upon those who have compassed their death: why, then, might not the soul of Abel, rather than his blood, have been adduced by God? Even had it been silent, surely its very presence in the invisible world gave a more impressive testimony than the stream which had crimsoned the ground. In answer to this, we are to consider, in the first place, that it did not please God to vouchsafe any clear revelation of the invisible state, during the earlier ages of the world. That Abel had fallen by the hand of his brother was the most terrible of all possible proofs that the original transgression had corrupted human nature to the core. But it would have done much — not indeed to counterbalance this proof, but to soften the anguish which it could not fail to produce — had there been any intimation that the death of the body was not the death of the man, and that Cain had but removed Abel from a scene of trouble to one of deep repose. This, however, was denied them: they must struggle on through darkness, sustained only by a dim conjecture of life and immortality. Indeed, indeed, I know not whether there be anything more affecting in the history of our first parents. Oh, bless God, ye who have had to sorrow over dead children, that ye live when life and immortality have been brought to light by the gospel. Yours has not been the deep and desolate bitterness of those on whom fell no shinings from futurity. Unto you have come sweet whisperings from the invisible world, whisperings as of the one whom you loved, telling you of a better land, where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." But alas for Adam and Eve! theirs was grief, stern, dark, unmingled. But, indeed, there are better things to be said on the fact that it was Abel's blood, and not his soul, which found a voice to demand vengeance on the murderer. We know not how Abel, the first martyr, died. Oh, I cannot but think that in God's reference to the blood of Abel as the only accuser there was a designed and beautiful lesson as to the forgiveness of injuries. You know that, in the gospel, our obtaining forgiveness from God is made conditional on our forgiving those by whom we may be wronged. "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." And was not the same truth taught, by example, if not by word, from the earliest days, seeing that, when God would bring an accusing voice against Cain, He could only find it in the dumb earth reeking with blood, though the soul of Abel was before Him, and might have been thought ready to give witness with an exceeding great and bitter cry? Abel forgave his murderer, otherwise could he not have been forgiven of God; and we learn that he forgave his murderer from the fact that it was only his blood which cried aloud for vengeance. Thus is there something very instructive in the absence of any voice but the voice from the ground. There is also matter for deep thought in the fact that it was blood which sent up so penetrating a cry. It was like telling the young world of the power which there would be in blood to gain audience of the Most High. What was there in blood that it could give, as it were, life to inanimate things, causing them to become vocal, so that the very Godhead Himself was moved by the sound? The utterance, we think, did but predict that when one, to whom Abel had had respect in presenting in sacrifice the firstlings of his flock, should tall, as Abel fell, beneath the malice of the wicked, there would go up item the shed blood a voice that would be hearkened to in the heavenly courts, and prevail to the obtaining whatsoever it should ask. Blessed be God that this blood does not plead for vengeance alone. It does plead for vengeance on the obdurate, who, like Cain, resist the invitation of God; but it pleads also for pardon of the murderers, so that it can expiate the crime which it proves and attests. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? |
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