Where we last left off in the good book, God had made a nice garden for his new pet people (among other things) and then some drama happened. It's kind of how any situation with new pets goes, right? You lay down the guidelines, but they don't necessarily understand everything you're telling them. They're fresh from the pound and everything is all new and who knows if they can even understand you?
I think it's also like any new roommates situation. There's a brief honeymoon phase until someone gets into someone else's cookie jar, doesn't replace the cookies, and then shit hits the fan. God kicked everyone out because they had stolen his cookies, metaphorically. Or maybe it would be figuratively.
The man and his woman, Eve, decided to have some children after they'd left the garden. After all, they got free clothes and God told them about this thing called child bearing which sounds interesting. I've never been pregnant, but I've had kidney stones so I feel like I'm not very qualified to talk about this topic. However, the fact that Eve wasn't sure what to expect probably made the whole thing worse, especially considering she never knew the alternative painless childbirth. This technology wouldn't be rediscovered until the 20th century in the form of pharmaceuticals.
I found it odd that at this point (chapter 4: Cain and Abel), the writers keep calling him "the man" instead of "Adam". Which is actually pretty cool, in its own way. He gets his name a few paragraphs later, only after this whole debacle I'm about to discuss. Which leads me to believe maybe there was more to this whole thing than is being let on here.
So Cain was the firstborn, and he was a gardener. Then Abel was born and he was a shepherd. God, apparently no longer upset with anyone about eating from the wrong tree, receives an offering from each of these children and decides he only likes the one. There's nothing in the text to show that one is greater than the other, but the end result was that Abel's offering and him were "looked upon with favor."
Which is, I guess, what it is. This Lord, which is another noteworthy change from "God" or "Lord God", seems pretty particular about certain things. Thinking back to the garden, the lord decided one tree was off limits which is just adding unnecessary temptation to your new roommates. Realistically, if he hadn't mentioned it at all they may have never even noticed. Being particular does not make someone a bad person. Although, it's kind of a dick move to receive two gifts from two brothers, make a big deal about the one gift and then go ask the other brother why he's so upset. Just don't say anything? We're supposed to believe this is an all knowing individual?
At any rate, in the most over reactionary over reactions thus far in history, Cain kills Abel. The text says it was because he was sad about their lord being kind of an asshole, but their parents should have told them something about this, I'd hope. Maybe they were embarrassed because they got booted from their first apartment and had to move to the suburbs for the kids. Cain should not have murdered his brother because their grandfather (?) didn't appreciate their gifts. If my grandfather pulled that shit on my brother, I'd tell the old man to go fuck himself and stop being such an insufferable prick. He needs to apologize right now because I couldn't care less about his praise due to the fact that I didn't even want to get him a gift at all.
Cain's punishment from his grandfather is to be a "restless wanderer on the earth" and he's marked somehow. The mark is to show his mom and his dad that if they kill him they will be punished for it seven-fold. The writers here have written themselves into a corner and just decided to go ahead and go with it. Right now, in the story, there aren't any more people. Cain, the restless wanderer, settles east of Eden, in the land of Nod. There he founded a city.
The plot holes here are getting ridiculous, but I'm assuming this is all wonky because this is maybe a flashback scene or something? Cain settles in a city and had polygamist children. Their offspring were plentiful and artistic and this city sounds like a fantastic place compared to whatever hovel they'd been living in up until now. Cain's great-great-grandchildren were the ancestors of all who dwell in tents, keep cattle, play the lyre and the pipe, or forge instruments of iron and bronze. Knowing a bit about history after the bible, it seems like Cain was not cursed at all. It seems like he was the founder of the greatest city of antiquity.
Having one murdered child and one cursed (yet historically successful) child, Adam and Eve decided to go for best two out of three and finally had their biblically successful child, Seth. He seems very important to the plot, but really only as a continuation of the lineage. A good portion of this chapter goes into length about the ages of Adam's grandchildren through Seth.
The ages all seem to be around 900 years except for Enoch. This could be some sort of writing trick to show an artificially increased age of the world, or it could be simply that these numbers aren't actual years. Enoch went and "walked with god" at 365 years old. He was the only one of the individuals mentioned in this section that this happened to and he also died much younger than the others. I'd like to think this is a historically accurate representation of possible ages for humans and there's something we're doing wrong now. That way, maybe I can rediscover how to live a long time like we've rediscovered the tricks to pregnancy before the whole fruit tree disaster.
Lamech was the name of the last born in this lineage before Noah, another familiar name. Lamech had this to say when Noah was born:
"When Lamech was one hundred and eighty-two years old, he begot a son and named him Noah, saying, 'Out of the very ground that the lord has put under a curse, this one shall bring us relief from our work and the toil of our hands.'"
Presumably, some of the curse he's talking about at this point is the sons of heaven. The footnotes say this is the sons of the pagan gods, but either way they seem to be coming to earth and having a lot of sex. The offspring of a human and an angel (?) or "son of heaven" is called a Nephilim and these beings "were the heroes of old, the men of renown." There is no mention of the daughters of heaven coming to earth and fornicating with humans, but I feel like this is one of those Sappho moments where they just want to leave out the obvious sexual relations and/or homosexuality. The following section all but implies there was more going on here than "oh lawd, we have too many heroes" because the very next sentence is:
"When the lord saw how great was man's wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved."
Just when it started to sound interesting. Emphasis above is mine, but basically it's like saying "These damn kids are having sex with gods and making heroes, not on my watch." Odd how he didn't start over earlier when a quarter of the population murdered another quarter of the population, but now that the the "sons of heaven" are involved, it's time to do a re-boot.
Next episode is all about the flood. So be prepared to get wet.
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