Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“Cain said to Yahweh, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me out today from the surface of the ground. I will be hidden from your face, and I will be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth. Whoever finds me will kill me.”“
(Genesis 4:13-14)

Cain is upset about what the consequences of his actions are, but he is still very SELF centric. He is having to travel in order to get anything useful out of the ground, instead of staying put and being able to build something useful. He feels that he will be unable to continue communicating with God – something God did NOT include in His judgment – and that he will be bereft of God’s protection. That last is interesting because the only human beings on the Earth are his mother, his father, and his sisters. He is concerned that when the hidden thing he did is known, one of them will track him down and kill him for it. Essentially, he is assuming that everyone is the same as he is. That since he was willing to commit murder, they will be too. None of this speaks to repentance. All of it speaks to woe-is-me selfishness.

The sage Sforno writes: ‘גדול עוני מנשוא, after Kayin finally realised how G’d in Heaven supervises every detail which goes on down on earth, he was convinced that G’d must know that his sole motivation in doing repentance was to escape punishment. Even this type of repentance was wrung from him only after G’d had pressured him to display penitence. He was embittered, and this is what prompted him to exclaim that the severity of his sin was such there was no hope to obtain forgiveness which would protect him against retribution in kind. The matter is similar to Saul’s failure in killing Agag, King of Amalek. Saul had said to Samuel: “I have sinned,” only after Samuel had insisted that he make a confession of having failed to carry out G’d’s instructions. (Samuel I 15,24) Samuel had had to tell Saul that G’d had despised him as a future leader of the Jewish people before he could prevail on Saul to acknowledge his wrongdoing. (Samuel I 15,24)’

The sage Steinsaltz writes: ‘Behold, You have banished me this day from the face of the land. The ground no longer accepts me, and I feel as though the land is burning beneath my feet. Consequently, I cannot settle anywhere. And from Your face shall I be hidden. How will I be able to present myself before You? Cain was warned that sin crouches at the entrance (4:7). Now, after allowing sin to control him to such an extent that he killed his brother, he was too ashamed to bare his face before God. I shall be restless and itinerant on the earth, and anyone who finds me will kill me. I am now exposed to all the dangers of the world. I will find no security anywhere on earth; I cannot even take shelter in Your presence, and I am unprotected from other living creatures. Cain’s statement expresses the loneliness of a murderer, who feels that the entire world despises him.’