Genesis 4:7 Commentary and Bible Study

What God says does not mean, ‘If you exhibit good behaviour and a righteous life, won't you be accepted?’ Cain already evidently thinks he does that. No, this refers to the offering. ‘If thou doest well in the nature of your offering, in the way in which you approach me,’ that is, if you come as you ought to, in humble recognition of your sin, of your need of mercy and forgiveness and light and love; if you come in a repentant spirit; if you come conforming to what your father, Adam, taught you about the need to make a blood offering, and to believe in that promised deliverer, that great descendant who would one day come and bruise the serpent's head and put the situation right, ‘shalt thou not be accepted?’ It must refer to the nature of the offering he made, because it tracks the same terms. Shalt thou not be regarded as excellent, accepted, as our translation says?If he does well, either by obeying God and giving the sacrifice that God had prescribed and in the right spirit, or by being sincere and genuinely repenting – that is what is intended in the context of the passage. ‘Shalt thou not be accepted?’ – exalted, says the Hebrew, lifted up. ‘If you obey,’ he is told, ‘you will be lifted up and blessed.’Then we read this mysterious sentiment – ‘And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.’ Now, the meaning of that is most likely understood through a picture. The idea is that sin is like a lion, and the lion is lying at the door of its lair. Some people read it differently. They say, ‘Yes, it is like a beast or a lion which is going to attack you, but lying at the door of your heart’, but the Hebrew does not actually use the word door; it just has opening – at the opening or the entrance of its lair, or hiding in some place. ‘And unto thee shall be his desire.’ That predator is interested in devouring you, and is waiting for you to pass, and then it will leap.But what is this last piece – ‘And thou shalt rule over him’? Well, it is the application of the picture: ‘If you will not submit yourself to God, if you will not seek his mercy and forgiveness and help in your life, then sin (and Satan is behind sin) crouches.’ That is actually the Hebrew word translated in our King James Version ‘lieth’. He does not just lie; he crouches, ready to pounce. Sin is always ready to pounce upon you. Its desire is to take you, and have you, and bring you down, and you – let us put it this way – must rule over him. To survive, if you will not have God’s mercy, if you will not have his kindness, if you will not obey him then the only way to heaven for you is to successfully rule over that beast, to rule over sin. If you will not have grace, you had better be perfect, you had better rule your every lust and temptation, those things that come from within you and from without. But you cannot do it; it is impossible. It is like the law: ‘Do this and live, is the law.’ If you can obey it perfectly and honour it, well then, you will secure your entrance into heaven; you will succeed. But you cannot do it. That is the picture we have here. ‘Cain,’ says the Lord, ‘sin and corruption – well, it is in you already – is like a beast and it is crouching, and it is ready to leap upon you, and your only hope, if you will not have the mercy of God and repent and trust and obey him; your only hope is to defeat sin and to rule over it. But it is impossible; sin is too strong for you. It will rule over you. It will bring you down.