SCRIPTURE TEXTS AND THOUGHTS THEREON.
By H. C. MILLER.
“If thou doest well shalt thou not be accepted? [margin—have the excellency] and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.” In chapter four of the book of Genesis we have recorded the first religious controversy upon earth, and the martyrdom of the first defender of the faith among men. Cain brings an incomplete offering, and offers it unto Him who had ordained the service he would have his creatures perform, and the kind of gifts he would have them bring, and the sacrifice they should offer. Cain’s offering was only an offering in part, Abel’s offering was complete. “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” At the sight of the respect God had to his brother’s offering, Cain is wroth, and his wrath burns toward the innocent. His unreasonableness increases. God condescends to reason with this weak, sinful creature. Oh! what mercy, love, kindness and forbearance on the part of God. Sinners, behold and love Him. He gently points Cain to his own errors, shows him that the fault is with himself. That Cain knew what God wanted is plain. God tells him that if he doeth well he shall be accepted, or have the excellency. Cain seems to have been jealous because God has accepted his brother who is younger, and not himself the first-born, and would charge God with having respect unto persons. But “God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.” “Shall thou not have the excellency?” Spoken interrogatively to express it most positively. If Cain will only do faithfully, as Abel, what his God requires, he shall have the pre-eminence his birth gives him. Not because he is the first-born, but because he doeth well. How just in God. No condition in life shall commend us to God, but right doing. “And if thou doest not well,” is the remedy to be found in hating him who does well? Nay, but in correcting that wrong. “If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.” I must confess the latter clause did not seem very clear to my mind until I noticed a comment by Dr. Clarke. We find a similar one on this passage in the comments of the Cottage Bible: “That the term chattauh, used for sin, is used also for a sin-offering, the word offering being usually supplied, see Ez. xxix, 14; xxx, 10; Lev. iv, 3, and so frequently; also Hosea iv, 8; 2 Cor. v, 21; and the verb rendered ‘to lie, is properly to couch as an animal, &c.’ [Ainsworth and Parkhurst.] This reading is preferred by such commentators as Lightfoot, Pool, Ainsworth, Drs. Kennicott, A. Clarke, Boothroyd,” &c. This reading then would represent God as telling Cain “and if thou doest not well, a sin-offering lieth, or coucheth, at the door”—of his tent, or his fold. If he has erred in not bringing the lamb without blemish—the type of his Saviour yet to come, the fault is his own, not Abel’s; and the remedy is at the door. He can make his gift complete. Only cease his murmuring and put his infidelity away, cease his deism, and become a humble Christian, and offer the sin-offering and he shall be accepted, and all will be well. Mercy lingers. Infinite mercy waits. But Cain will not repent. He will not reason with God, nor with his brother; but as they talk, he rises up and slays him. How gently, yet faithfully, God deals with the sinner, pointing out his error and giving him time to consider his ways and return unto God. Cain is declared to be of “that wicked one.” The fault of both consists in refusing to give to Jesus Christ the worship that was meet, thus acknowledging the relation the Father had seen fit to establish.