NOTES for Gen 4:7

Before the coming into the world of the Christ, nobody had ever spoken of the original sin. But it does not mean that people knew nothing of it. Another thing is that this fundamental damage, the perversity of the human nature, which became the source of the concrete sins, was not perceived in itself as sin. Indeed, how can someone be accused because he was born such as he was born? Nobody is guilty of his hereditary illnesses, even if these diseases were the consequence of the sin of their parents.

But here is why man is considered responsible in all the times, so it is for his concrete acts. Certainly, in those periods, that the author describes, one couldn’t speak yet neither about the Torah, nor about any commandments, they were still ahead, because the case according to the logic of the author of the Book of Genesis, takes place at the dawn of the history, moreover, the already fallen humanity. But God addresses all the same man with the call to do good works and look calmly into the eyes of God.

Still remained, apparently, even after the fall in the heart of man, the "natural Torah", this law, of which Paul says that it is written to the heathen in their heart. And indeed, it is not paganism strictly speaking here, they still remember the Unique here, He is not yet completely forgotten. And God calls Cain to this simplicity, which frees from all the internal fears and misunderstandings, from all the questions about the accepted and not accepted sacrifice.

If you commit good works, lift your head up and look bravely to the heaven. Otherwise sin will come itself to you, because the one who does nothing good, sooner or later will obligatory slide into the swamp of sin, which for the fallen man is always a direct and immediate threat. So God shows to Cain the only possible spiritual way for him, quite as for any other person. The way that could have freed him from fratricide.