4:13-16 - 13Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is more than I can bear. 14Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me."
15But the Lord said to him, "Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over." Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no-one who found him would kill him. 16So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
[ T - OL ]
At last the gravitas of the events dawns on Cain and for the first time he understands what Yahweh is saying. "My punishment is more than I can bear," is his conclusion. And he repeats the words of Yahweh's punishment, interlacing it with reflections of his own about their implications:
1) "you are driving me from the ground" (NIV unhelpfully has "driving me from the land"),
2) I will be hidden from your presence,
3) I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and
4) whoever finds me will kill me.
Why he would think the last of the four points of his conclusion is uncertain. Perhaps it is the natural reflex of a guilty conscience that tells him that as he had done to his brother so others would do likewise for little more than the same petty motive that drove him to it.
The fallen man that I am, my immediate response to Cain would have been, "You would deserve that, wouldn't you?" But Yahweh's response is an immediate, concrete word of affirmation: "Not so." "It shall not happen. In fact, anyone who kills Cain will suffer a seven-fold vengence." We do not know what is the nature of the mark Yahweh then placed on Cain, but it was a mark of protection. And we still say that the God of the OT is a vengeful god? That the OT is a book of law, not grace?
How Cain arrived at the second point of his conclusion—that he would be hidden from Yahweh's presence—is not known. There is no hint that Yahweh had it in mind. Did Cain intuit, perhaps for the first time also, that Yahweh is of such holiness that having done what he had done and cursed as he has been, there can be no place in His presence? However, he arrived at it he left to live in the land of Nod. Whether Nod is an actual place or not is uncertain. The basic meaning of the root from which Nod is derived is "to wander aimlessly." It may be just another device by which the author underlines Cain's alienation into a pointless existence.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2016