Genesis 4:11-12 “And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.”
As Cain’s parents lost the garden of Eden for their sin, so Cain lost his garden for his sin. More then that, like the serpent in the previous chapter, Cain receives a curse. But while God pronounces the curse, He doesn’t say “I curse you,” but uses the passive voice, “thou art cursed.” The curse comes from below, through the earth, not from above. Our own sins are the curse, and God judges us to help us see that. The ground had already been cursed for Adam’s sake (3:17), because Adam's disobedience was the evil seed that now brought forth bitter fruit in the sin of his firstborn son.
God’s judgments are never arbitrary or vindictive. They are just, and congruent with the crime. As Abel’s blood soaked into the ground, the ground would never be the same again, nor would it respond to Cain’s cultivating efforts as it had previously. Cain’s nomadic lifestyle likely resulted from his failed agricultural profession, and perhaps a guilty paranoia, more than any real pursuit by family members seeking vengeance.
In His mercy, God took away Cain’s pride and joy, his idol that had supplanted the Lamb. Instead of being tied to the farm, Cain would now be a vagabond without a place to call home, not even on this earth. A logical choice of new profession for him would have been to become a keeper of flocks and herds. It was a marvelous opportunity for Cain to repent, to return to the Lamb. If he had, he would have learned to seek another country, even a heavenly one as he wandered as a pilgrim and stranger on this earth. If only he had humbled himself under the mighty hand of God, his story could have been a powerful testimony to God’s redeeming grace.
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