Why God Didn't Prosecute Cain For Murder
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According to the covenant that God instituted with Noah after the Flood; murder is a mandated death offense. (Gen 9:5)
The death penalty for murder was included as a mandate in the covenant that Yhvh's people agreed upon with God at Sinai as per Ex 21:12-14, Lev 24:17, Lev 24:21, and Num 35:31-34.
Q: So then, seeing as how capital punishment for murder is a divine mandate; then how was God able to let Cain walk without obstructing justice and compromising His own integrity? Does God practice a double standard?
A: Murder is morally wrong, yes; and it is intrinsically a sin, yes; however; prior to the Flood, homicide wasn't a transgression because God had not yet enacted any laws to that effect. Divinely ordained capital punishment was unheard of, and unthinkable, prior to the Flood because it is an axiom that Bible law isn't retroactive; viz: it can't be enforced until after it is enacted; which is precisely why God couldn't prosecute Cain for murder. (Rom 4:15, Rom 5:13, and Gal 3:17)
Case in point: Abraham married a half-sister. Sarah was his father's daughter, but not his mother's (Gen 20:12). According to the covenant that Yhvh's people agreed upon with God at Sinai, it is a breach of the covenant to sleep with someone that close.
"The nakedness of your sister-- your father's daughter or your mother's, whether born into the household or outside --do not uncover their nakedness." (Lev 18:9)
But Abraham was exempt from that law because God didn't introduce it till several centuries after Abraham's passing; and this is very important to understand. Here's why:
Modern Judaism insists that Deut 29:14-15 retroactively binds Abraham to the covenant. Well; not only is that kind thinking a stretch of the imagination; but it's not even sensible because any and all breaches of the covenant incur curses.
"Cursed is the one who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother." (Deut 27:22)
"Cursed is he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them." (Deut 27:26)
If God were to level curses at Abraham for breaching the covenant; then God would be quite obligated to level curses at Himself.
"I will curse him who curses you" (Gen 12:3)
Not only that; but any curses that the covenant would impose upon Abraham for sleeping with his half sister, would quite effectively annul any and all of the promises that God made to him in the book of Genesis.
The Jews' occupation of the land of Israel has always been conditional upon their compliance with the covenant; but their ownership of the land has always been conditional upon the promises that God made to Abraham prior to the covenant's institution. That way there is no possible chance of Abraham's posterity ever losing the deed to that land no matter how many times they breach the covenant. They might get evicted from their homeland from time to time; but it will always remain theirs due to Abraham's immunity to the covenant's curses.
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From Whence Cain Got A Wife
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†. Gen 4:17 . . Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch
Because of the woman Cain married; it's easy to fall prey to the assumption that God created more human beings than only Adam on the sixth day of creation. But if He did, there's no record of it. And seeing as how God completed creating things for the current physical cosmos-- all of its forms of life, matter, and energy --on the sixth day; then from that time till now, He's created nothing more. So then, on record; the only human being that God ever really created from the dust of the earth was Adam; and everyone proceeds from him.
†. Acts 17:26 . . From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth
Adam got his wife from himself; viz: she wasn't created from the dust of the Earth as he had been, but was instead constructed from a human tissue sample amputated from Adam's side. Thus, Eve was biologically just as much Adam as Adam except for gender. In other words: Eve wasn't a separate species of h.sapiens; no, she was the flip side of the same coin.
Seeing as how there is no record of God constructing a wife for Cain from Cain's body, then it has to be assumed that he married one of his parent's daughters; viz: a sister.
†. Gen 3:20 . . Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
Some believe that inbreeding has always been abhorrent to God since it's forbidden by laws stipulated in the covenant that Yhvh's people agreed upon with God as per Deut 29:9-15. However, those laws were not enacted till many, many years after the Flood; and according to Gal 3:17 they are not retroactive.
Inbreeding is currently very risky business indeed. But it was neither a risk, nor a taboo in Cain's day like it is now. After all, Adam engendered the entire human race by mating with a woman derived from his own body. You can't get any closer to home than that.
The human race in Cain's day was very young, very healthy, and very close to its origin. Not enough time had elapsed to damage the human genome. Proof of the excellent quality of human life was longevity. Adam lived till he was 930 and Noah till he was 950. Nobody even comes close to that anymore.
Even closer to home is the ark. When it finally came to ground, the only people left alive on the whole earth were grandpa and grandma Noah and their three sons and their wives: eight souls; that's all. Hence: everybody alive today is the progeny of inbreeding; no exceptions.
†. 2Pet 2:4-5 . . He did not spare the ancient world when he brought the Flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others.
It was from those eight survivors that everyone alive today descends; via inbreeding.
†. Gen 9:18-19 . . Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated.
Were the Flood to be repeated in 2014, the human race would be in serious trouble because inbreeding today is very dangerous; but back in Noah's day, it wasn't.
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How The Critters Got To Noah
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†. Gen 6:3a . . And Yhvh said: My Spirit shall not strive with man forever. Yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.
Some feel that God set the limits of human longevity in that verse. But people still continued to live long lives for a great number of years afterwards. Even Abraham, who lived many, many years after the Flood, didn't die till he was 175 years old. No; it's far more reasonable to conclude that God was announcing a deadline; viz: the antediluvians had 120 years left to get ready to meet their maker. But you think that alarmed anybody? Heck no. They went right on; business as usual.
"And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the Flood came and destroyed them all." (Luke 17:26-27)
The time of God's patience is sometimes long; but never unlimited; viz: reprieves are not acquittals-- though God bear a great while, He never bears forever.
†. Gen 6:12-14 . . God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah: I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am about to destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark
†. Gen 6:17 . . For My part, I am about to bring the Flood-- waters upon the earth --to destroy all flesh under the sky in which there is breath of life; everything on earth shall perish.
†. Gen 6:19-20 . . And of all that lives, of all flesh, you shall take two of each into the ark to keep alive with you; they shall be male and female. From birds of every kind, cattle of every kind, every kind of creeping thing on earth, two of each shall come to you to stay alive.
Fortunately Noah didn't have to go on safari to round up his passengers. God said two of each "shall come to you" (cf. Gen 7:9, Gen 7:15) which implies of course that species who failed to come got left behind and went extinct in the Flood. There was plenty of time for them to make it because Noah was 120 years building the ark and getting it ready.
A man named Dave Kunst walked across today's world in just a little over 4 years from June 1970 to October 1974. Kunst walked a total of 14,450 miles, crossing four continents and thirteen countries, wearing out 21 pair of shoes, and walking more than 20 million steps. That was an odd thing to do, but does prove it can be done in a relatively short time; so 120 years was plenty enough for all the critters to make it on over to Noah's place in time for the Folly's maiden voyage.
If the ark were to launch in 2015, critters would have been on the move towards it since 1895-- eight years before the Wright Brothers historical flight, and seventeen years before the Titanic foundered --and probably reproduced many times along the way since there are not all that many species that live to see 120 years of age.
But how did they cross oceans? In the past that was doubtless a thorny theological problem. But with today's knowledge of the geological science of plate tectonics, the answer is as simple as two plus two. Scientists now know that continental land masses can be shifted, and in point of fact the dry parts brought so close together as to form one single super continent.
Scientists also know about subduction and magma hot spots and pressure points that can raise and lower the earth's crust like a service elevator; for example according to Gen 14:3, the area now known as the Dead Sea was once known as the Vale of Siddim. Sometime in the distant past the earth's crust rose in that region, blocking the Jordan River's natural drainage into the gulf of Aqaba; thus trapping it's waters in a huge basin from which they cannot escape. Subduction causes the earth to wrinkle, bulge, and form mountain ranges and hill country.
"He established the earth upon its foundations, so that it will not totter forever and ever. Thou didst cover it with the deep as with a garment; the waters were standing above the mountains. At Thy rebuke they fled; at the sound of Thy thunder they hurried away. The mountains rose; the valleys sank down to the place which Thou didst establish for them. Thou didst set a boundary that they may not pass over; that they may not return to cover the earth." (Ps 104:5-9)
That portion of Psalm 104 is probably speaking of Gen 1:9-10. It's handy for showing that God is capable of molding the Earth's lithosphere into any geological configuration He pleases to push sea beds up and form land bridges; thus expediting migrations from all over the world over to Noah's diggings.
This idea is by no means novel. For example: in 2014, a 9,000 year-old stone structure utilized to capture caribou was discovered 120 feet below the surface of Lake Huron; and is the most complex structure of its kind in the Great Lakes region.
The structure consists of two parallel lanes of stones leading to a cul-de-sac. Within the lanes are three circular hunting blinds where prehistoric hunters hid while taking aim at caribou. The structure's size and design suggest that hunting was probably a group effort, with one group driving caribou down the lanes towards the blinds while another group waited to attack.
The site-- discovered by using sonar technology on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge, 35 miles southeast of Alpena Michigan --was once a dry land corridor connecting northeastern Michigan to southern Ontario.
Actually the Earth's mantle is one continuous (albeit fractured) shell anyway, although its profile is so irregular that dry land sticks up above sea level at various high spots; which is a good thing because if the mantle were smooth, the world would be quite flooded all the time. In point of fact, if the Earth's mantle were perfectly smooth, like a billiard ball, there's enough indigenous water on it to cover the crust to a depth of 9,000 feet of water. That would be equivalent to a global ocean approximately 1.7 miles deep.
Geological processes normally take thousands of years to accomplish, but those processes can be sped up considerably by the cosmos' creator, who has absolute control over everything-- not just the earth's geological processes; but all the rest of nature's processes too.
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Who/What The Firstborn Is
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†. Col 1:15 . . He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
Christ wasn't even the one born first in the human family let alone the entire creation so what gives here?
Well; firstborn is just as much a rank as it is a chronological birth order; and though the chronology is set in biological concrete; the title, and it's advantages, are transferable to a younger sibling; e.g. from Esau to Jacob (Gen 25:23) from Reuben to Joseph (Gen 49:3-4, 1Chr 5:1) and from Manasseh to Ephraim (Gen 48:13-14). This situation can lead to some interesting ramifications; for example:
†. Matt 22:41-46 . . Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question; saying: What do you think about the Christ, whose son is He? They said to Him: The son of David. He said to them: Then how does David in the Spirit call him "Lord" saying: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at My right hand until I put thine enemies beneath thy feet. If David then calls him "Lord" how is he his son?
Jesus referenced Psalm 110:1, where there are two distinct Hebrew words for "lord". The first is yhvh, a name reserved exclusively for God. The second is 'adown, which is a very common word in the Old Testament used to simply indicate a superior. Sarah labeled Abraham her 'adown (Gen 18:12) Rachel addressed her dad by 'adown (Gen 31:5) and Jacob addressed his brother Esau by 'adown (Gen 33:8).
So then; Psalm 110:1 could be translated like this:
"Yhvh said unto my superior: Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool."
Anybody who knew the Old Testament in Jesus' day knew good and well from Ps 89:27 that David has no superiors but God because he holds the rank of God's firstborn; viz: no king that you might name is David's superior other than Yhvh: the king of all kings.
So Psalm 110:1 suggests that David's rank-- and subsequently its advantages --as God's firstborn has been transferred to another man; and seeing as how Jesus' opponents agreed that the other man is David's son, then the postion has been transferred not to one of David's siblings; but to one of his own posterity; so that now David has to bow and scrape to one of his own grandchildren, which up to that time was not only unheard of; but just wasn't done.
†. Matt 22:46 . . And no one was able to answer him a word
Well; no surprise there. This was something not only strange to their Jewish way of thinking; but entirely new, yet there it was in black and white in their own scriptures; and they had somehow failed to catch its significance until Jesus drew their attention to it.
Now; here's something else that I'm 110% positive crossed the minds of Jesus' learned opposition. To their way of thinking, David's position as God's firstborn as per Ps 89:27 is irrevocable. Well; seeing as how there is no intermediate rank between the firstborn position and the paterfamilias position, that means David's son, about whom he spoke in Ps 110:1, is equal in rank to God; which is a blasphemous suggestion to say the least. (chuckle) Those poor know-it-all Pharisees were utterly baffled beyond words.
"Your throne O God is forever and ever; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness, and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of joy more than your fellows." (Ps 45:6-7)
If that passage has been translated correctly, it says one of two things. Either God is speaking to Himself, or He is speaking to a king of the Davidic dynasty that has been promoted to a level of dignity and authority equal to His own; which of course outranks David by a pretty large amount; and in point of fact: outranks the entire creation-- no contest.
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The Meaning Of "Under The Law"
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†. Rom 6:14 . . For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.
The "law" in question is the covenant that Yhvh's people agreed upon with God as per Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The important thing to note about the agreement is that it's a legally binding contract. So then the term "under the law" refers to contractual obligations. Seeing as how Christ's followers are not contracted with God to comply with the covenant, then neither is God contractually obligated to penalize Christ's followers for breaching it.
God has to lower the boom on His people for breaching the covenant, but He doesn't have to lower the boom on Christ's followers for breaching it because He isn't contracted with them to do so. This is a very important aspect of Christianity.
In a nutshell: where there is no contract, there is no contract to breach; and where there is no law, there is no law to break; and where there is no law to break, there are no crimes to prosecute. (Rom 4:15, Rom 5:13)
This principle applies in a really big way to people who have undergone the baptism described at Rom 6:3-11. Their status "in Christ" positions them where the covenant that Yhvh's people agreed upon with God does not apply. So then, "in Christ" people have 110% immunity from the curses listed at Lev 26:3-38, Deut 27:15-26, and Deut 28:1-69 which are curses that God is obligated to bring down upon His people for breaching the covenant; which includes all ten of the Ten Commandments; and then some.
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