Fear No Fear

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

“Cain left Yahweh’s presence, and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.“
(Genesis 4:16)

Cain left God’s presence. God didn’t leave Cain. God NEVER told Him he had to leave His presence. That was not part of the curse. Cain ADDED that. That is how Cain saw it. If we couldn’t stay, be a farmer, get the best of the land, and stay in place as the firstborn son, then he would leave. And he did it. It was a totally selfish move, a TERRIBLE decision for his descendants, and a heartbreaking choice from God’s point of view.

Cain left because Cain was not repentant. Yes, Cain would have had to move in order to make sure he could eat (since the curse would make the ground play out if he remained too long in one place). But Cain could have repented instead of forsaking God and abandoning the rest of his family. Since Cain doesn’t seem to have repented, this attitude is somewhat understandable. The wicked do not like to be around the righteous (Proverbs 29:27). And perhaps he left because while they would not KILL him, he may have dreaded the many ways that they could have made his life miserable. After all, the ungodly expect ungodly treatment.

The land Cain went to was Nod. A word used only once in scripture. It means vagrancy. A land of wandering. I assumed it was named so because that is where Cain wandered, instead of being a named place beforehand. After all, if Cain didn’t wander the whole world but stayed in a given region – traversing it from side to side to avoid it playing out – then that name for it could have grown out of his lifestyle.

The sage Rashi points out: ‘Indeed, we find, also, that the Eastern quarter always forms a place of refuge for murderers, as it is said, (Deuteronomy 4:41) “Then Moses set aside three cities of refuge towards the place of sun-rise [that a murderer might flee thither].”‘