I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 4-7.

We have here the story of Cain and Abel.  They both brought gifts to God from what they had produced that year, but God accepted Abel’s gift and rejected Cain’s.  What was wrong with Cain’s gift? At first it seems that Cain’s gift was rejected because it was from his crops rather than from the flocks as was Abel’s.  However, a careful reading shows us the real difference.  Cain presented “some of his crops” as a gift to the Lord, while Abel brought “the best portions of the first born lambs.”  Cain’s gift to the Lord was just some of what he had produced, while Abel’s gift was from the first of what he produced.  Abel gave to God first, Cain did so as an afterthought.  Cain was jealous of the blessings which God gave Abel as a result of his faithfulness.  However, rather than imitate Abel so that he could receive similar blessings going forward, Cain killed Abel.   People today still follow Cain’s example, perhaps not to the extent of murder, rather than imitate the successful they seek to take what they have for themselves.

We also have the beginning of the story of Noah.  The writer tells us that the “sons of God” took beautiful human women as their wives and that their offspring were the Nephilites, the heroes and famous warriors of old.  The writer tells us that Nephilites lived on the earth at this time and for some time after.  Later, when the Israelite spies went into Canaan, they reported that they saw the Nephilim there (the writer at that point tells us that the Anak people were descended from the Nephilim).  This suggests that either the “sons of God” continued to take human women as wives after the Flood, or that the Flood was not as comprehensive as the writer states in today’s passage.  I tend towards believing that the Nephilites after the Flood were not descendant from the ones before the Flood, but wanted to point out the possibility from the passage of an alternate explanation.  I would not be shocked to learn that the flood “merely” wiped out the civilizations on the earth at that time, that the animals on the Ark were merely those which had been domesticated.  The writer tells us that everything which lived on dry land died, and that is what I believe to be the case, but I wanted to note that other parts of the passage contain ambiguous statements which might suggest otherwise.