Genesis 4:1 Commentary and Bible Study

The most traditional way of understanding the chief theme of this fourth chapter of the Book of Genesis is to see it as the beginning of the two peoples, the two nations; the people of God and the people of the world – the seed of Adam, through which the Messiah would come and the church of the New Testament would emerge in due time, and also the seed of the serpent, that is those who are ungodly and who reject God and reject his grace. This is a cable that runs throughout the Bible from beginning to end. If you want an organising principle for the Bible, this is it – the story, the history of the two peoples. The story rises to a crescendo in the Book of Revelation, which is so very obviously about the hostility of the seed of the serpent toward to the seed of the woman, that is the church, but it all begins here. You cannot understand the Bible without understanding this principle. Strictly speaking, the beginning is in God’s words to the serpent in Genesis 3:15: ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed [the people of this world] and her seed [the church of Christ]. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel’, and immediately, the prophecy begins to be fulfilled in chapter 4, and the history begins to be unfolded. ‘And Adam knew Eve his wife.’ That is such a beautiful statement. It is so refined, so delicate. It is an expression taken up by the apostle Paul, in the pastorals and in other passages wherever there is counsel on marriage in the Bible. There are one or two modern versions that kind of paraphrase this, and they say something like – Adam lay with his wife. But no, this really follows the Hebrew very closely – ‘Adam knew Eve his wife.’ It is a very refined way of putting things, and a child is conceived, and we are very concerned about that, as Christian people we honour marriage, we honour the relationships between husband and wife. We do not ever speak coarsely of them, commonly of them, and this is exactly how you have it in the word of God.‘And she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord’ – that is a very important statement. I have received again a gift from the Lord. The LORD in capital letters – Jehovah – the divine name, the divine initials, meaning the great I AM, the self-existent God, from whom all life flows. And so, you might well believe that Eve here gives evidence that she has repented of those dreadful events in the Garden of Eden, and that she sees the Lord as being so gracious to her in the event. Their lives have been preserved, and now the original promises of God are going to stand, and there is going to be an issue, and God has given her a child. And these are beautiful words – I have gotten, I have gained, I have been given a gift of a man from the Lord. Yes, it is as result of her knowing Adam, but nevertheless, it is all of the Lord.