Genesis 4:7 “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”
The last phrase of God’s message to Cain seems slightly ambiguous. Who is the “him” that Cain is to rule over, and why does God say that his desire, whoever he is, will be unto Cain? Previously I always assumed the “him” must refer to the only other character in the story, Cain’s brother Abel. If Cain understood the “him” to refer to his brother, considering the rest of what God said, he should have taken it as a warning. God was revealing the murderous seed that was already in his heart in his desire to dominate and control his brother. But Cain more likely gave God’s warning a positive prophetic twist more in alignment with the desires of his own heart, and went away from the conversation consoling himself that at least in the future he would have the preeminence over his brother! “Abel may have won round one, but next time he will be left wishing for what I have, and I will be the winner! God said so!” he may well have thought.
Upon further reflection however, God never mentions Abel, or anyone else for that matter, in this talk with Cain. Grammatically, the only possible antecedent for that rather cryptic “him,” is sin, the antithesis of the Lamb and of well doing. Is God personifying sin in this message to Cain? To gain clarity, I checked some other translations and the American Standard Version puts it this way: “[…] sin coucheth at the door; and unto thee shall be its desire; but do thou rule over it” (ASV), while the New English Translation says “[…] sin is crouching at the door. It desires to dominate you, but you must subdue it” (NET). While these versions help clarify the identity of the ambiguous “him” in the text, I like the emphatic way the King James Version renders God’s parting words: “and thou shalt rule over him.” Instead of coming off as mere moralizing advice, these words are both a positive command and a promise for Cain's victory over sin. If only Cain would have believed God’s Word, he would have done well, retraced his steps with a lamb this time, and instead of going down in infamy as the first human murderer, he would have conquered self and sin.
How about you? Will you believe God’s Word even when it cuts close to home, or will you interpret it through the foggy lens of your own sinful desires?
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