Day 2 · Genesis 4–7
East of Eden
The first brothers, two family trees that look strangely alike, and the waters rising.
Day 2 of 365Beginnings
Today’s reading · about 12 minutes
Genesis 4–7
Cain and Abel, Seth’s line, the flood begins
No psalm today. The daily psalms come back on Day 4.
Themes and asks
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At the door
Before the first murder, God speaks to Cain about his anger. In the text’s own picture, sin is “crouching at the door” (4:7, NLT), eager to control him, and he must master it. The warning comes first; the killing comes after.
- What is crouching at your door right now?
- What helps you master it before it masters you?
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Your brother’s keeper
When God asks where Abel is, Cain answers with a question of his own: is he supposed to watch over his brother? God never answers the question itself. He answers that Abel’s blood cries out from the ground, which has swallowed it (4:10–11).
- Whose keeper are you, whether you asked for it or not?
- Who has kept watch over you?
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What a family passes on
Genesis 4 credits Cain and his descendants with the first city, herding, music and metalwork, and closes their line on Lamech’s boast of killing. Genesis 5 follows Seth’s line, one quiet “and he died” after another, down to Noah. Read side by side, that suggests a family can pass on both skill and violence.
- What did you inherit from the people before you, good and hard?
- What do you want to hand on?
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It broke his heart
The flood story opens with God’s grief, not only his anger: seeing how wicked people had become, he was sorry he had made people, and “it broke his heart” (6:6, NLT). Then it turns on one man, Noah, who found favor.
- What grieves you about the world as it is?
- Where could you be the one who walks differently?
Behind the words
Two family trees
Genesis 4 lists Cain’s descendants; Genesis 5 lists Seth’s, from Adam to Noah. Set side by side, several names nearly match: Cain and Kenan, Irad and Jared, Mehujael and Mahalalel, Methushael and Methuselah. Two names, Enoch and Lamech, appear in both.
Many critical scholars read the two as versions of one old list, which Genesis keeps in two sources: an older one in chapter 4 and the Priestly writer’s in chapter 5. Others read two lines set against each other on purpose. Cain’s line ends with a Lamech who brags of killing a man (4:23–24); Seth’s, near its end, has a Lamech who names his son Noah, hoping for relief from the cursed ground (5:29).
Genesis 5’s ages are long: Methuselah lives 969 years. A Mesopotamian document, the Sumerian King List, goes much further. Its kings before the flood reign for tens of thousands of years, the first, Alulim, for 28,800. Some read Genesis’s far smaller numbers as answering that tradition; others read them literally; others as symbolic.
Even the numbers differ from manuscript to manuscript. Counting the fathers’ ages when their sons were born, the Hebrew text gives 1,656 years from Adam to the flood. The Samaritan Pentateuch gives 1,307, and the Greek Septuagint about 2,250, depending on the manuscript.
The sons of God. Genesis 6:1–4 tells of “sons of God” who take human wives, and of the Nephilim. Who they were has been argued for over two thousand years: fallen angels, in 1 Enoch and much early Jewish and Christian reading; Seth’s descendants, in Augustine and many later Christians; or human rulers, in some rabbinic readings.
Two family trees, side by side
The names that match, in the order of Cain’s line. Genesis 5 runs Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech. Enoch is Cain’s son in Genesis 4, but the seventh from Adam in Genesis 5.
You are here
Day 2 of 365, in Beginnings (Days 1–3). Cain settles in the land of Nod, east of Eden, and builds a city he names Enoch (4:16–17). Neither place has been found.
Threads
Each one opens the plan to the days on that thread.
My notes · Day 2
Sources
- Genesis 4–7, Holy Bible, New Living Translation · BibleGateway
- Thorkild Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List. University of Chicago Press, 1939.
- “The Sumerian king list,” translation, Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature · University of Oxford
- Ronald S. Hendel, The Text of Genesis 1–11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition. Oxford University Press, 1998. On the ages in Genesis 5.
- Annette Yoshiko Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- Augustine, The City of God, Book 15.
Something wrong here? A date, a name, a quotation? Let me know
From Dust to Glory reads the whole Bible in the order its story happened, one day at a time, at your own pace. Each day gives questions to sit with, the history behind the words, and where it sits in the story. The plan lists all 365 days.