Skip to content
Genesis, Creation, and Early Man

Life Outside Paradise

Genesis 4:1-6:5

In the preceding chapter we examined the banishment of Adam from the point of view of Paradise; now we will look to see where he went. With Genesis chapter 4 begins earthly life as we know it now—but in many respects very different from our life now, as we shall see.

Unlike the first three chapters of Genesis, which have abundant Patristic commentaries, the later chapters have only a few. We will rely chiefly on the Genesis Commentaries of St. John Chrysostom and St. Ephraim the Syrian. In the West there are also the Commentaries of Blessed Augustine, which I have not seen, and a few others.

In the fourth and succeeding chapters we will be mainly following the Greek (Septuagint) text of Genesis, with a few variants from the King James Version, which is translated from the Hebrew.

The Banishment of Adam

Chapter 4 begins with Adam in a state of banishment. To where was Adam banished? The Greek text of Genesis 3:24 reads: “The Lord God … cast out Adam and caused him to dwell over against the Garden of Delight.”

Since, as we have seen, Paradise is an actual place, so also the earth to which Adam was banished was an actual place, near to Paradise. We saw in Genesis chapter 2 (v. 7-8) that Adam was created out of the earth and then led into Paradise; so now he is banished to the place where he was created. The Holy Fathers are surprisingly “geographical” about this place, which they see as near Paradise, even within sight of it, and as offering spiritual opportunities which will be lost to later mankind. St. Ephraim the Syrian writes:

When Adam sinned, God banished him from Paradise, and in His goodness He gave him a dwelling outside the boundaries of Paradise; He settled him in a valley near Paradise. But men sinned there also, and for this they were scattered. … The family of the two brothers became divided: Cain went away and began to live in the land of Nod, lower than the places where the families of Seth and Enosh dwelt. But the descendants of those who dwelt above and were called the sons of God abandoned their land, went down and entered into marriage with the daughters of men, the daughters of those who dwelt below.1

We will take up this subject again in Genesis chapter 6; for now, let us only note that the state of Adam outside of Paradise—a state lasting at least for his long lifetime and perhaps in his descendants down to the Flood—was rather different from the state of fallen mankind today. We will examine in this course some of the physical characteristics of this difference; here let us note the spiritual benefit of being close to Paradise, of still seeing the place and state from which man had fallen and to which he is called to return. St. John Chrysostom writes:

The view (of Paradise), even if it aroused in Adam an unbearable grief, at the same time afforded him much profit: the constant beholding (of Paradise) served for the grieving one as a warning for the future, so that he would not fall again into the same (transgression).2

Seeing Paradise still there, Adam is still somehow close to God; he is not nearly as far away from God as mankind became later on. Moreover, spiritually he can look and see what he lost. Therefore, you can imagine that Adam was in a state of repentance and struggle. He fell once and lost his original state, and now he is going to be less tempted by seeing the Paradise which he lost.

This teaching is set forth also in the Orthodox Church service for Forgiveness Sunday, when Orthodox Christians preparing to enter the struggle of Great Lent are given, as an inspiration to repentance, precisely the image of Adam sitting outside Paradise and beholding what he had lost:

Adam sat before Paradise and, lamenting his nakedness, he wept: “Woe is me! By evil deceit was I persuaded and led astray. Now I am an exile from glory …” (“Glory” for “Lord, I Have Cried”).3

Cain and Abel

(The name Cain means “gained.”)

Chapter 4 begins with the first story of life after the fall, when Adam is living in his new place: the story of Cain and Abel.

Here we see the first difference in the life of Adam and Eve between their state in Paradise and their state outside of Paradise: it is only after their banishment that married life and the begetting of children begin. As we have seen, the Fathers are quite specific that, before the fall, Eve was a virgin. St. John Chrysostom writes of this:

After the disobedience, after the banishment from Paradise-then it was that married life began. Before the disobedience, the first people lived like angels and there was no talk of cohabitation.4

Of course, this does not deprive the institution of marriage of its honor and blessing from God. It simply shows that the original state of Adam was not married life as we know it. The original state was like the state to which we will return, when there will be no marriage or giving in marriage (cf. Matt. 22:30), and everyone will be in the virgin state.

The Fathers do raise the question: how would children have been born if Adam had not fallen? They say that children would have been born in a way that God knew, but not according to this way we have now, which, as St. Gregory of Nyssa discusses, is bound up with our animal nature. This [the sexual mode of reproduction] will not be in the Paradise to come, and was not in the original Paradise.

Where did Cain and Abel get the idea of sacrifice? The Fathers tell us that the idea of offering sacrifice to God, of returning to Him the best things of the earth, was placed in the conscience of man from the very beginning of his existence.5 God made people to serve Him, and so the first thing they thought ofwas to offer thanksgiving to Him for what they had.

But why did God look favorably on the sacrifice of Abel and not on that of Cain? Is He playing favorites? Even from the little text we have here, we see that Abel offered the best that he had, his “firstborn and fadings” of the sheep; but Cain offered only some “fruits,” not caring to give the best he had. He had the idea of sacrifice, but he had the attitude: “Well, I’ll give some of this that I have.” He didn’t make a particularly important thing of it, whereas Abel was careful to give the best that he had. Cain had it in his nature to offer sacrifice, but he did not add from his own nature the willing thanksgiving of his heart; and Abel did. Therefore, God was pleased with Abel’s offering, and not with Cain’s.6

St. Ephraim writes:

Abel offered a sacrifice of the choicest, but Cain without choice. Abel chose and offered the firstborn and fatlings, while Cain offered either the ears, or together with them the fruits which were there at that time. Although his sacrifice was poorer than the sacrifice of his brother, still if he had offered it not with disdain, his sacrifice also would have been pleasing, as was the sacrifice of his brother. … But he did not do this, even though it was easy to do so; he did not take care for the good ears or the best fruits. In the soul of the one offering sacrifice there was no love for the One Who received the offering. And because he offered sacrifice with disdain, God rejected it.7

Cain was sorrowful not merely because his sacrifice was rejected, but also because of a deep passion which is revealed here for the first time in human history: envy. St. John Chrystostom says of this passage:

His sorrow proceeded from two reasons: not only from the fact that he himself was rejected, but also from the fact that the gift of his brother was accepted.8

St. Ephraim specifies that God’s acceptance of Abel’s gift was manifested by fire which came down from heaven to consume it, while Cain’s offering remained without being consumed.9

But here again God’s mercy is shown. Just as He came to Adam after he sinned and asked him, “Where art thou?” giving him a chance to repent, so now He comes to Cain with the same opportunity:

St. John Chrysostom says of these verses:

Behold what an unutterable condescension of concern! God saw that Cain was possessed, so to speak, by the passion of envy; but see how, in His goodness, He applies to him a corresponding treatment so as to raise him immediately and not allow him to drown. … [God says to him,] Since you have sinned, “Be still,” calm your thoughts, be delivered from the shock of the waves which besiege your soul; calm your agitation lest to your earlier sin you add another more serious. … God already knew in advance that (Cain) would rise up against his brother, and by these words He warns him. … He desires to meeken the rage and fierceness of Cain and restrain him from rising up against his brother. Seeing the movements of his mind and knowing the cruelty of his murderous intent, God wishes beforehand to soften his heart and calm his mind, and for this purpose He subjects his brother to him and does not take away his authority over him. But even after such care and after such treatment, Cain received no benefit. Such is the difference in the inward dispositions (of Cain and Abel); such is the power of evil!10

We see the same thing today, as indeed throughout the history of mankind: God chastises only after giving men abundant opportunity to repent and change their ways.

In the early chapters of Genesis we see the beginnings of everything that is to be repeated later in human history. Here we see the first murder—and it is a fratricide, the killing of one’s own brother. But here again, as with Adam after his sin in Paradise, God shows first His concern that the guilty should repent, and then shows His mercy even when there is no repentance.

Here St. Ephraim says:

God appears to him without anger, so that if he repents, the prayer pronounced by his lips might wash away the sin of murder performed by his hands, but if he does not repent, then a heavy punishment might be assigned him such as the crime deserves. But Cain, instead of repentance, is filled with dissatisfaction, and to the All-knowing One Who asked of his brother in order to draw Cain to Himself, he answers with anger: “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?”11

St. John Chrysostom notes the difference between the curse pronounced on Adam and that pronounced on Cain:

How far this sin (of Cain) was greater than the transgression of the first-created (Adam) may be seen in the difference in curses. There (the Lord) said: “Cursed is the earth in thy labors” (Gen. 3:17) and poured out the curse on the earth, showing care precisely for the man; but here … since it is an unforgivable crime, he himself (the performer of it) is subjected to the curse: “Thou art cursed from the earth.” He (Cain) acted almost like the serpent who served as the implement of the devil’s plan; just as the former, through deception, introduced death, so the latter, having deceived his brother and led him out to the field, armed his hand against him and performed murder. Therefore, just as the Lord said to the serpent: “Thou art cursed above all the brutes of the earth” (Gen. 3: 14), so also was it to Cain, because he acted similarly.12

After this, Cain finally did admit his guilt; but it was too late. St. John Chrysostom says:

He did confess (his sin), and confessed it with great precision. But there was no benefit from this at all, because he confessed at the wrong time. He should have done this at the right time, when he could have inclined the Judge to mercy.13

One should add to this that his confession is more an admission of fact than an indication of repentance; he regretted, but did not repent of his sin—a very common occurrence among men up to this day.

And so Cain went off to live in the land of Nod, a lower territory but still not far from Eden. At this time in human history man’s geographical distribution is still very limited. From this time forth, as St. Ephraim states, there is no intermarriage between the offspring of Cain and those of the other children of Adam.14 The mark was placed on Cain to prevent revenge from being taken against him by these his relatives.15 And so there are two parallel lines of humanity: as it were images of the true followers of God and apostates from Him, or as Blessed Augustine later described it, the City of God and the City of Man.

From where did the wife of Cain come? She came from among the daughters of Adam. Adam is the one from whom everyone comes. The book of Genesis mentions as his children only Cain, Abel and Seth, but they were only the first ones; there were many others. Later, in Genesis 5:4-5, we read that Adam lived seven hundred years after begetting Seth, during which time “he begot sons and daughters.” Adam was given the command to increase and multiply, and he lived for nine hundred and thirty years. Therefore, there must have been hundreds of children.

This leads to a second question: “How is it that Cain could marry his own sister? Isn’t this against the laws of the Orthodox Church?” Of course, this was at the beginning of time, so they had a different law; they were not living under the law we have now. In those days people lived to be nine hundred years old. Obviously humanity was quite different from the way we know it today, even physically.

In Genesis 4: 17-22 we see the beginnings of civilization as we know it: the first city, the first crafts, the first arts. It is obvious that what is given here is no more than a hint of all that went on then, but this is already enough to give us a picture quite different from that presented by the evolutionary view of man’s origins. In the Biblical view, what one might call “advanced” characteristics of civilization come at the very beginning, and the first city is already founded by the son of the first man. Nothing is said of the population of the world in the generations of Adam, but it is obvious that, with the long life of the early Patriarchs and the command given them by God to increase and multiply, within a few generations there must have been many thousands if not millions of people.

(Rationalist Biblical scholars, seeing the beginnings of man in primitive, stone-age cave-dwellers, deny the very existence of Cain and Abel as historical persons. To them it is all a moral tale.)

Lamech is the first man of whom it is said that he had two wives. Apparently this custom, which appears more commonly after the Flood, was a rarity in the days of the first Patriarchs.

This passage has been interpreted in various ways, but the simplest explanation is that of St. John Chrysostom, who says that it indicates the voice of conscience in Lamech, who openly confessed his sin and declared himself worthy of greater punishment than Cain (for he had already seen Cain’s punishment for the crime of murder).16

Here the text returns to the main line from Adam (through whom the Savior’s genealogy will be traced). Seth means “substitute.”

Verse 26 is different in Hebrew: “Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.” In either case it indicates apparently the beginning of more formal worship of God, bound up with the name of Enosh; this is also why the descendants of Seth are called in chapter 6 the “sons of God.”

The Genealogy from Adam through Seth to Noah

This passage has several questions for us.

  1. All the early Patriarchs lived nine hundred years or so, something fantastic to us who attain eighty or ninety years with great difficulty, which has been the case with mankind since before the times of David the Psalmist. Here there is a temptation for rationalist criticism to “reinterpret” the text. But all the Holy Fathers accept it just as it is written: men at that time, in the first centuries after the creation, were really very different physically from us. In chapter 3 we discussed a little of the climate of the world before the Flood, when there was no rainbow because of the firmament of vapor encircling the earth, giving a moderate climate and filtering out harmful radiation. Life was really quite different then (even Paradise was still visible, as we have seen), and if we put off our prejudices derived from pictures of crude stone-age cave-dwellers, there is no reason for us not to accept this fact.

  2. The second question concerns the genealogy itself: why was this so important as to be recorded? Because the evolutionary theory requires some hundreds of thousands of years for the history of mankind, rationalist critics are forced to reinterpret this genealogy, stating either that there are gaps of thousands of years in it, or else that at least some of the Patriarchs were not real people at all, but simply names signifying vast epochs. If so, then of course there is no genealogy here at all.

But the Holy Fathers are unanimous in stating that this list of names is precisely a genealogy, and it is important not merely as preserving details of the early history of mankind, but above all because it is the genealogy of Christ. The whole genealogy of Christ is given in Luke, chapter 3 (Matthew, chapter 1 carries it only back to Abraham), and the Fathers are very careful to harmonize any seeming inconsistencies in the names (for example, St. Gregory the Theologian in his Homily on this subject) so as to preserve it as a precise genealogy. We have to choose: to be with the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers, or with the modern rationalist critics who take their wisdom from the speculations (not the facts) of modern scientists.

  1. From the number of years indicated in this passage (and later passages in Genesis), it is possible to calculate the age of mankind. According to the numbers in the Septuagint text of the Old Testament, we are now in the year 7490 from the creation of Adam.** The Hebrew text has somewhat different numbers, giving a total age of mankind over a thousand years less. The Fathers were never troubled over this difference (Blessed Augustine, for example, explains it in The City of God as a matter of secondary importance), but they accepted without question both the great age of the early Patriarchs and the approximate age of mankind as some four to five thousand years at the birth of Christ (actually, just over 5,500 according to the Septuagint text).

  2. Beginning with Genesis chapter 5 we follow the history ofwhat can already be called a “chosen people”: a people dedicated to God, handing down the traditions of true worship and piety, and preparing ultimately to give birth to the promised Messiah. Thus, little is said of the descendants of Cain; they are not the chosen people. The descendants of Seth are, and even they eventually become corrupt and are destroyed, save for one man (Noah) and his sons.

Of Enoch St. Paul says precisely: “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God” (Heb. 11:5).

According to Patristic tradition, Enoch, who so pleased God that he did not die but was translated, will return at the end of the world, together with Elias (Elijah) who was taken up alive “by a whirlwind as though into heaven” (IV Kingdoms [II Kings] 2: 1, 11, LXX),17 to preach the Second Coming of Christ; they will die as martyrs at that time, being resurrected after three and a half days (Apoc. chap. 11).

These verses contain the genealogy of mankind down to Noah—the whole of humanity down to the Flood, which occurred about two thousand years from the creation.

Lamech prophesied, giving his son the name Noah, which means “rest,” that in his days there would be an end to the sins of humanity—the Flood.

The Corruption of Mankind

In the Patristic understanding, the “sons of God” were the offspring of Seth, the chosen people who were to preserve themselves in virtue. They were living in a higher place, along the boundary of Paradise. They were called “sons of God” because through them Christ was to come.

The “daughters of men” were the offspring of Cain. They were the forbidden people, the outcasts. The sons of God were supposed to keep themselves pure, and were not supposed to marry into the line of Cain. (Later on, this same idea was related to the Jews, who were supposed to keep themselves separate from everyone else.) The sons of God were to keep themselves separate so that they could become progenitors of the Savior.

St. Ephraim states that a preponderance of daughters were born to the offspring of Cain, indicating the dying out of Cain’s race and their desire to marry the sons of Seth so as to preserve their race.18 The sons of God, being moved by carnal lust, departed from the command of God that they should be separate from all those who were of Cain. They fell into the trap, and the whole of mankind became corrupt-became “flesh” or fleshly. St. Paul says: “They that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8).

The “hundred and twenty years” refer not to the life-span of man, but to the time given for repentance before the Flood-again indicating God’s mercifulness.

Some have speculated that the “sons of God” were heavenly beings or angels. The Holy Fathers were aware of this interpretation and they refuted it, saying that angels cannot beget men. Ancient speculations about angels mating with men, and modern speculations of outer-space beings, are of course empty tales based on idle fantasies.

By “giants” here we do not need to understand enormous men. According to St. Ephraim, the offspring of Seth, the chosen race, were tall and full in stature, while the offspring of Cain, the cursed one, were small. When these two races mixed, the tallness of the Sethites prevailed. The “giant” stature of the men—the descendants of Seth—before the Flood is apparently one of the attributes of humanity that was lost with the new climactic conditions of the post-Flood world.

Perhaps these “giants” with their mighty deeds of strength (manifest perhaps in wars with the offspring of Cain) were the origin of the “gods” of later legend in Greece and other lands.

Footnotes

  1. St. Ephraim the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise 1.10-11, Tvoreniya 5, pp. 359-60 [Pocket Patristics Series. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977—., 10, pp. 81-82]. ↩

  2. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 18.3, Tvoreniya 4, p. 160 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, p. 9 (18.10)]. ↩

  3. The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware, p. 169. ↩

  4. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 18.4, Tvoreniya 4, pp. 160-61 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, p. 10 (18.12)]. ↩

  5. Ibid. 18.4, Tvoreniya 4, p. 162 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, p. 12 (18.15)]. ↩

  6. Two other places in Scripture speak of the sacrifices of Cain and Abel, but they speak only generally: 1 John 3: 12 and Hebrews 11:4. — Bl. Seraphim ↩

  7. St. Ephraim, Commentary on Genesis 4, Tvoreniya 6, p. 338 [Fathers of the Church vol. 91, p. 124 (3.2.1)]. ↩

  8. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 18.5, Tvoreniya 4, p. 164 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, p. 16 (18.21)]. ↩

  9. St. Ephraim, Commentary on Genesis 4, Tvoreniya 6, p. 339 [Fathers of the Church vol. 91, p. 125 (3.3.3)]. ↩

  10. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 18.6, Tvoreniya 4, pp. 165-66 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, pp. 17-19 (18.22-24)]. ↩

  11. St. Ephraim, Commentary on Genesis 4, Tvoreniya 6, p. 341 [Fathers of the Church vol. 91, p. 127 (3.6.1)]. ↩

  12. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 19.3, Tvoreniya 4, pp. 171-72 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, p. 27 (19.11)]. ↩

  13. Ibid., p. 173 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, p. 29 (19.13)]. ↩

  14. St. Ephraim, Commentary on Genesis 4, Tvoreniya 6, p. 346 [Fathers of the Church vol. 91, p. 130 (3.11.1)]. ↩

  15. Ibid., p. 345 [Fathers of the Church vol. 91, p. 130 (3.10.1)]. ↩

  16. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 20.2, Tvoreniya 4, pp. 179-81 [Fathers of the Church vol. 82, pp. 38-44 (20.6)]. ↩

  17. Old Testament: Septuagint (Greek) Version ↩

  18. St. Ephraim the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 4, 6, Tvoreniya 6, pp. 347, 351 [Fathers of the Church vol. 91, pp. 131, 134 (4.2.2, 6.2.1)]. ↩