Genesis 4:14, commentary and pictures

The verse is Cain's fearful answer to God's sentence for murdering Abel, in which he understood being driven from the land and hidden from God's presence as leaving him exposed to be killed by anyone who found him. That sentence came after Cain rose against Abel in the field and killed him, then lied about knowing where Abel was and denied being his brother's keeper. In this he rejected his duty as elder brother to care for and protect Abel from evil, after refusing to correct his wrong course in his offering, refusing to admit error, and placing blame on Abel and on God.

The verse belongs to the Genesis 4 account of Cain the tiller of the ground and Abel the keeper of sheep, a chapter of departure from God's plain commands that filled the world with transgression and sin and led God to destroy the world. Although as a wandering fugitive fearing death his murder deserved death, he was mercifully spared and given opportunity for repentance. After the curse Cain withdrew from his father's household and from God's presence, casting away the promise of restored Eden to seek possessions and enjoyment in the sin-cursed earth, thus standing at the head of those who worship worldly gods. Though made a wanderer he remained a tiller of the soil, founded a city named for his eldest son, and pursued merely earthly material progress with disregard for God and in opposition to His purposes for mankind.

Cain used his spared life only to harden his heart, rebel against divine authority and, led by Satan, become head and tempter of a line of bold abandoned sinners. His example, teaching and demoralizing influence corrupted his descendants and filled the earth with violence and corruption until it called for its destruction by the Flood. Sparing the first murderer set a lesson before the whole universe on the great controversy, showing what happens when sin is permitted to go unpunished and what would result from letting the rebel live forever in rebellion. God's forbearance only made the wicked bolder and more defiant, with its fruition seen fifteen centuries later in the crime and pollution that flooded the earth. The history of those before the Flood testifies that long life is no blessing to the sinner, since the longer men lived in sin the more corrupt and abandoned they became.

This makes manifest that the death sentence on the fallen race for breaking God's law is both just and merciful, for cutting short a career of unbridled iniquity and freeing the world from the influence of those hardened in rebellion is a blessing rather than a curse. In mercy thousands at Sinai died to prevent the need to judge millions, for had those transgressors been spared as Cain was, still greater evils would have followed and the earth would have become as corrupt as in Noah's day.