DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS

Genesis 3:21-4:7   (3/17)    1st Reading at Vespers, Monday of the 2nd Week of the Great Fast

 

Beyond Eden-I ~ Providence Unabated: Genesis 3:21-4:7, especially vs. 22: “And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them.”  The book of Genesis has  powerful insights into the consequences of disobedience.  The door of Paradise closes, but God shows that He has not abandoned mankind.  His providence continues.  Yes, He reveals sin in all its viciousness, ugliness, and deadliness.  But to prevent despair, God discloses that His image remains  within us.  Thus, despite sin, the grace of God still abounds.  Showing us the abyss of our choices in sin, He leads us to consider His kind, loving, and incessant Providence.

In the present passage, it is strikingly clear that although God sent our primal parents out of the garden of Delights, He neither abandoned nor destroyed mankind.  He barred the way to the Tree of Life with a fiery sword, but as St. John Chrysostom notes, “He did not stop loving them at that point.  Instead, faithful to His own goodness, He is like a loving father Who sees His own son through negligence committing things unworthy of his upbringing and being reduced from his eminent position to the utmost depravity: He is stirred to the depths of His being as a father, yet far from ceasing to care for him, He displays further concern for him in His desire to extricate him gradually from his abasement.”[1]

Be humbled before God’s continuing providence.  Yes, He imposes death on us all, on Adam’s race, because we are disobedient, but He does not withdraw the element of physical life.  Hence, Adam calls his wife Eve, Zoe, that is, Life (vs. 3:21).  She will bring many children to life (4:1,2,25; 5:4).  Further, as St. John Chrysostom points out in his comments on vs. 3:21, God “does not overlook them in their depth of shame and nakedness...[but] showed them great pity and...makes them garments of skin...and clothes them in them.”[2]  He causes the ground and the beasts to produce life’s necessities for mankind (vss. 3:23; 4:3,4).  St. John notes also that even death should be understood as providential, for, by our death, God checks “our decline into greater evil and [stems] the tide of wickedness...out of fidelity to His own lovingkindness.”[3]

God’s providence is evident when Cain is born.  Eve is prompted to name him “I have begotten,” in the Hebrew, “qayin,” or Cain.  In addition to his name, she expresses delight in the child as a gift of God: “I have gained a man through God” (vs. 4:1).  Thus, she acknowledges, as we all must, God's providential care for her in and through her birth-giving.

The sons of Adam are moved by God’s beneficence to bring offerings.  “Cain brought of the fruits of the earth a sacrifice to the Lord.  And Abel also brought of the firstborn of his sheep and of his fatlings” (vs. 4:3,4).  However, there was in Cain’s offering a failure of true gratitude.  About this, St. Didymus the Blind observes, “For Abel’s sincerity is manifest: he offers of his firstborn considering it necessary to reserve for God the most precious things, from which he also chose the fatlings.  This is what Cain should have done, bringing the firstfruits of the fields.  For it is especially appropriate to offer the firstfruits to God...”[4] and not merely some of the fruits - because of God’s munificent providence to the human race (vss. 2-5).

God’s providential care remains manifest as He responds to Cain’s sullen reaction when He “regarded not” his sacrifice (vs. 4:5).  See how God lovingly seeks to curb Cain in his passions: “Hast thou not sinned if thou hast brought it rightly, but not rightly divided it?  be still, to thee shall be his submission, and thou shalt rule over him” (vs. 4:7).  In His prescience, God was seeking to avert the tragedy that followed (Gen. 4:8-11), yet He did not force Cain to “do the right thing.”  Again, providentially, God greatly respected the freedom He bestows upon us.

Help us, save us, have mercy on us, and keep us, O God, by Thy grace.[5]

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