NOTES for Gen 4:8-15

Cain's reaction to the determination that can be considered his judgment is quite curious. Even after God exposes him in the terrible sin of fratricide, he regrets nothing and repents of nothing. The only thing that troubles Cain is the fear that now, when he becomes an exile, anyone who wants to will be able to kill him; after all, an exile and wanderer was often defenseless before the first person he met.

Apparently we have here the typical behavior of a sinner who does not consider his sin to be sin. He does not ask God for forgiveness, probably because he considers God's sentence unjust by definition. In the same way, apparently, he considers himself guilty of nothing. That is why what troubles him is not the sin itself, which for him is not sin, but the consequences of sin, which fall on him regardless of his attitude toward the sin itself.

And this is the whole history of fallen humanity: it is permeated not by awareness of sin and not by repentance, but by the struggle against the consequences of sin, both one's own and someone else's. Is this not why humanity proves unable to find that harmony with the world and with itself that so many have sought, and still seek, for so long and without success?

Meanwhile, the solution to the problem is much closer than it may appear. But in order to find it, one must resolve to repent. That means changing the spiritual and mental paradigm of human history as a whole. And judging by the way things are going, for many of us this is no easier than it was for Cain to acknowledge his responsibility for the sin he had committed.