Genesis 4:13-14

My punishment is greater than I can hear

Cain’s despair

1.

Behold, Thou hast cast me out this day from (or from upon)

the face of the ground. Thou hast driven me! He sees it to be Jehovah’s own doing. He who drove Adam out of paradise, now drives Cain out of Eden. Adam’s sin brought expulsion from the inner circle, Cain’s from the outer. He is to be cast out from the land where he had been born, where was his home; from the ground which he had tilled. He was now doubly banished; compelled to go forth into an unknown region, without a guide, or a promise, or a hope.

2. From Thy face I shall be hid. God’s face means, doubtless, the Shekinah or manifested glory of Jehovah at the gate of Eden, where Adam and Eve and their children had worshipped, where God was seen by them, where

He met them, and spake to them as from His mercy seat. From this place of Jehovah’s presence Cain was to go out. And this depresses him. Not that he really cared for the favour of God, as one “in whose favour was life”; but still he could not afford to lose it, especially when others were left behind to enjoy it. And all his religious feelings, such as they were, were associated with that spot.

3. I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth. Unchanged from his primeval home, he was now to drift to and fro, he knew not whither. He was to be a leaf driven to and fro, a man without a settlement and without a home. Poor, desolate sinner! And all this is thine own doing! Thy sin has found thee out. Thine own iniquities have taken thee, and thou art holden with the cords of thy sins (Proverbs 5:22). (H. Bonar, D. D.)

The severity of self-inflicted punishment

The punishment which a man inflicts upon himself is infinitely severer than any punishment that can be inflicted upon him. “A wounded spirit who can bear?” You remember how you ill-treated that poor child now dead; you saw the anguish of his soul, and he besought you and you would not hear; and now a great distress is come upon you, and your bread is very bitter. Who is punishing you? Not the magistrate. Who then? You are punishing yourself. You cannot forgive yourself. The child touches you at every corner, speaks to you in every dream, moans in every cold wind, and lays its thin pale hand upon you in the hour of riot and excitement. You see that ill-used child everywhere; a shadow on the fair horizon, a background to the face of every other child, a ghastly contrast to everything lovely and fair. Time cannot quench the fire. Events cannot throw into dim distance this tragic fact. It surrounds you, mocks you, defies you, and under its pressure you know the meaning of the words, which no mere grammarian can understand--“The wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment.” All this will come the more vividly before us if we remember that a man who has done wrong has not only to be forgiven, he has to forgive himself. That is the insuperable difficulty. He feels that an external view of his sin, which even the acutest man can take, is altogether partial and incomplete; and, consequently, that any forgiveness which such a man can offer is also imperfect and superficial. That is so philosophically, but, thank God, not evangelically. God’s forgiveness, through Jesus Christ our Lord, is not mere forgiveness, however abundant and emphatic. It is not merely a royal or even a paternal edict. It is an act incomplete in itself; it is merely introductory or preparatory, as the uprooting of weeds is preliminary to a better use of the soil. It is an essential act, for in the absence of pardon the soul is absolutely without the life that can lay hold of any of the higher blessings or gifts of God. To what, then, is forgiveness preparatory? To adoption, to communion with God, to absorption into the Divine nature, to the witness of the Holy Ghost. (J. Parker, D. D.)

Impenitent misery

There is a great change since he spoke last, but not for the better. All the difference is, instead of his high tone of insolence, we perceive him sinking into the last stage of depravity, sullen desperation. Behold here a finished picture of impenitent misery. What a contrast to the fifty-first Psalm! There the evil dwelt upon and pathetically lamented is sin; but here is only punishment. See how he expatiates upon it. .. Driven from the face of the earth. .. deprived of God’s favour and blessing, and, in a sort, of the means of hope. .. a wanderer and an outcast from men. .. to all which his fears add, “Wherever I am by night or by day, my life will be in perpetual danger!” Truly it was a terrible doom, a kind of hell upon earth. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!” (A. Fuller.)

Remorse

Tiberius felt the remorse of conscience so violent, that he protested to the senate that he suffered death daily; and Trapp tells us of Richard III that, after the murder of his two innocent nephews, he had fearful dreams and visions, would leap out of his bed, and catching his sword, would go distractedly about the chamber, everywhere seeking to find out the cause of his own occasioned disquiet. If, therefore, men more or less familiarized with crime and deeds of blood, had the fangs of the serpent ever probing their breasts, is it unreasonable to conclude that Cain knew seasons of sad regrets? If he had not, God’s inquiry soon stirred up the pangs! The cruel Montassar, having assassinated his father, was one day admiring a beautiful painting of a man on horseback, with a diadem encircling his head, and a Persian inscription. Inquiring the significance of the words, he was told that they were: “I am Shiunjeh, the son of Kosru, who murdered my father, and possessed the crown only six months.” Montassar turned pale, horrors of remorse at once seized on him, frightful dreams interrupted his slumbers until he died. And no sooner did God address the first fratricide, than conscience roused herself to inflict poignant pains:--

“Oh, the wrath of the Lord is a terrible thing!

Like the tempest that withers the blossoms of spring,

Like the thunder that bursts on the summer’s domain,

It fell on the head of the homicide Cain.”

Condemnation

Very little idea can be formed of the sufferings of Cain, when we read that God visited him with life-long remorse. John Randolph, in his last illness, said to his doctor: “Remorse! Remorse! Remorse! Let me see the word! show it to me in a dictionary.” There being none at hand, he asked the surgeon to write it out for him; then, having looked at it carefully, he exclaimed: “Remorse! you do not know what it means.” Happy are those who never know. It gives, as Dr. Thomas says, a terrible form and a horrible voice to everything beautiful and musical without. It is recorded of Bessus--a native of Polonia, in Greece--that the notes of birds were so insufferable to him, as they never ceased chirping the murder of his father--that he would tear down their nests and destroy both young and old. The music of the sweet songsters of the grove was as the shrieks of hell to a guilty conscience. And how terribly would the familiar things of life become to Cain a source of agony!

“The kiss of his children shall scorch him like flame,

When he thinks of the curse that hangs over his name,
And the wife of his bosom--the faithful and fair,
Can mix no sweet drop in his cup of despair:
For her tender caress, and her innocent breath,

But still in his soul the hot embers of death.”

Wakeful conscience

Though in many men conscience sleeps in regard to motion, yet it never sleeps in regard to observation and notice. It may be hard and seared, it can never be blind. Like letters written with the juice of lemon, that which is written upon it, though seemingly invisible and illegible, when brought before the fire of God’s judgment shall come forth clear and expressive. (J. M’Cosh.)

Sin and punishment

Cain said, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.” Saul, king of Israel, had a minstrel to soothe him when the evil spirit rose within him. King Richard III of England, after he killed his two nephews, had horrible dreams. He thought all the devils in hell, in terrible shapes, were coming to pull him about; and, in his fright, he leaped out of bed, and seized the naked sword which he kept beside him, to find and punish the cause of his trouble. Charles IX, of France, had similar anguish after he had ordered the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

A ruined life

Sailing down the Thames one occasionally sees a green flag, in tatters, inscribed with the word “wreck,” floating in the breeze over a piece of the mast or the funnel of a steamer which is just visible above the water. How many lives might thus be marked, and how needful that they should be so labelled, lest they prove ruinous to others!