HelpFinder Bible - Flipbook - Page 377
G ENESIS 4
page 7
“The serpent deceived me,” she replied.
“That’s why I ate it.”
14 Then the Lord God said to the serpent,
15
“Because you have done this, you are
cursed
more than all animals, domestic
and wild.
You will crawl on your belly,
groveling in the dust as long as you live.
And I will cause hostility between you and
the woman,
and between your offspring and her
offspring.
He will strike* your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 Then
he said to the woman,
“I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy,
and in pain you will give birth.
And you will desire to control your
husband,
but he will rule over you.*”
17 And
18
19
to the man he said,
“Since you listened to your wife and ate
from the tree
whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,
the ground is cursed because of you.
All your life you will struggle to scratch a
living from it.
It will grow thorns and thistles for you,
though you will eat of its grains.
By the sweat of your brow
will you have food to eat
until you return to the ground
from which you were made.
For you were made from dust,
and to dust you will return.”
Paradise Lost: God’s Judgment
20 Then the man—Adam—named his wife Eve,
because she would be the mother of all who
live.* 21 And the Lord God made clothing from
animal skins for Adam and his wife.
22 Then the Lord God said, “Look, the human
beings* have become like us, knowing both
good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit
from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will
live forever!” 23 So the Lord God banished them
from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam
out to cultivate the ground from which he had
been made. 24 After sending them out, the Lord
God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of
the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming
sword that flashed back and forth to guard the
way to the tree of life.
3:15 Or bruise; also in 3:15b. 3:16 Or And though you will
have desire for your husband, / he will rule over you. 3:20 Eve
sounds like a Hebrew term that means “to give life.” 3:22 Or
the man; Hebrew reads ha-adam. 4:1a Or the man; also
in 4:25. 4:1b Or I have acquired. Cain sounds like a Hebrew
term that can mean “produce” or “acquire.”
Cain and Abel
Now Adam* had sexual relations with his
wife, Eve, and she became pregnant. When
she gave birth to Cain, she said, “With the Lord’s
help, I have produced* a man!” 2 Later she gave
birth to his brother and named him Abel.
When they grew up, Abel became a shepherd, while Cain cultivated the ground. 3 When
it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some
4
• Family
G E N E S I S 4:1
The last chapter of the creation story
is still going on. God isn’t through yet
with his creative process, for in each
conception and birth, he teams up with
man and woman to create new life.
There is something in the sexual act that
goes far beyond the pleasure of the act
itself, something that is a blending and
bonding of not only husband and wife but
God also, for his divine creative process
makes conception and birth possible. In
creating a child together, a couple has
joined God in bringing a living soul into
the world. This is proof enough that sex
in marriage should be celebrated as holy,
not as shameful or merely something to
be endured.
• Motives
G E N E S I S 4:3-5
Your motives are everything to God. The
condition of your heart is essential to the
condition of your relationship with him.
Coming to God out of obligation, or just
to keep him from getting angry at you, or
to placate him to get something you really
want shows that you want a relationship
with God for the wrong reasons. Coming
to God with a humble desire to know him
and what he wants for you is more about
loving and pleasing him than yourself.
It is quite likely that God rejected Cain’s
sacrifice because Cain’s motives were
self-centered. When your motives are
selfish, even seemingly right behavior
can become inappropriate. Don’t let right
actions be wasted by wrong motives. You
will soon find your actions to be futile. But
right motives always produce meaningful
action, even in the smallest things. More
important, when you pursue spiritual life
with self-serving motives, you rob yourself
of the joy God intends.