Covenant Structure in Genesis 4 – Part 4

The enigmatic third act of Genesis 4 not only describes the subtle sowing of tares that bear bitter fruit throughout the Bible but also condemns modern secular humanism. Cain’s rejection of atonement led to world-building without God.

In part 2, we analyzed the Garden cycle of Genesis 4: the two sons of Adam offering their respective “near bringings” at the Sanctuary of God. In part 3, we analyzed the Land cycle of Genesis 4: Cain’s deceptive abuse of his authority in order to lure Abel out into the field, and the subsequent cutting off of Cain from the “strength” of the ground. We now observe the perversion of Cain’s rejection of the cultus of atonement as it founded a culture of “gods.”

WORLD: Prophecy Perverted

Creation / Initiation – Sabbath

• The same patterns are reiterated but here they are embodied in the tropes of the World rather than those of the Land or the Garden.
• The first stanza presents Cain as a new Adam who bears a son just like Cain, that is, the firstborn who is to be offered that there might be more fruit. However, rather than the later—and more subtle—satanic strategy of syncretizing and corrupting true worship, the program here was its complete abolition.
• The stanza recapitulates the head-and-body process (like that in a human birth) but at two levels: the cultus and then the culture. Each of the two levels is threefold. It begins with Cain’s wife who bears a son (in a society without cultus) and ends with Cain building a “bridal” city and naming it after his son (culture). This explains the echoes of the “construction” and naming of Eve.
• The word “city” describes a structure with walls, so the image connotes a fortress, a city of refuge for the first murderer. This also relates to Cain’s continued dependence upon the priesthood whose “covering” he had abandoned, a relationship expounded under Levitical law in the provision of cities of refuge (Numbers 35:11-34).
• The sin here is only apparent if we read back into it the triune architecture that becomes more obvious later on. Cain built this city in the Land rather than waiting upon God to found it as the glory of the World. It was an act just like those committed by Adam and by Cain himself in the preceding texts: Cain desired kingdom before God’s time, and stole now what God was keeping for later. This theme of building cities quickly through robbery and oppression can be traced throughout the Bible, culminating in the city of the Herods. These are not “holy cities,” but harlots—Egypt and Sodom—who devour their own children.

Division / Delegation – Passover

• At Division/Delegation we have a genealogy of what is basically the primeval “uncircumcision,” a kingly succession that ends with Lamech, the seventh from Adam.
• The names are significant. The meaning of Methushael is unclear but based on the negative spin in the others, the most likely option has been included here.
• The name Lamech might be a play on the word “melech,” which means “king.”
• The mention of the first practice of polygamy at Maturity highlights its significance as a “stealing of fruit,” a human means of circumventing the Edenic curse upon the womb.¹For more discussion, see “Big Love: A History of Stolen Fruit ” in Michael Bull, Inquiétude: Essays for a People Without Eyes. Polygamy was one of the three kingly sins prohibited by Moses (Deuteronomy 17:14-17).²For more discussion, see “Guns, Girls and Gold” in Michael Bull, Inquiétude.
• The name Adah may mean “ornament,” which highlights the glory of one wife. Zillah, however, means “shadow,” painting her as a kind of doppelgänger. Her placement at Succession implies that she was only a means to an end—an immediate dynasty of sons, a quick kingdom.
• As a result of this practice of polygamy, “man began to multiply on the face of the land” (Genesis 6:1-2), which led to the corruption of the Sethite line, who presumably were enticed by this kingly practice. Of course, this also sheds light upon the significance of the fact that each of Noah’s sons only took one wife.

Ascension / Presentation – Priesthood – Firstfruits

• The Priesthood stanza establishes the nature of dominion that will later characterise the transition from Priesthood to Kingdom, Moses to David, in Israel. Both Moses and David learned to rule through shepherding, so the Cainites were carrying out the mandate given to Cain by God, but without honoring God.

Testing / Purification – Kingdom – Pentecost

• The Kingdom stanza highlights the Pentecostal nature of kingly gifts. Since the gifts and calling of God cannot be revoked (Romans 11:29), the Cainite line was the one with all the talent.
• Here, the transition is not from Priesthood to Kingdom but from head to body, from Adamic structure (forming the house) to Evian glory (filling the house). The same relationship existed between the bloody bronze altar and the fragrant golden incense altar. The structure of this stanza places the words “craftsman” and “sister” in these exact positions as the matrix relates to the Tabernacle sequence.
• The imagery here describes the house of a king, an Adam who is autonomous, needing no heaven, building a glorious dwelling on earth. Like Aholiab and Bezalel (Exodus 31:1-6), Tubal-Cain is the “tabernacle builder” but he erects a temple to man. Israel committed the same sin after the exile, but repented, as described in Habakkuk 1:1-11. If men are generous to heaven, God is even more generous on earth. The ultimate fulfilment of this principle was the ascension of Christ as Firstfruits and the pouring out of the Spirit of Pentecost, the coming of the kingdom of God.
• Bronze represents the glorified land and iron represents the glorified sea. The elements outside the house of God were covered in bronze, but the gates of Solomon’s Temple were made of iron, relating to the Gentile “sea” and the kingly strength of its mighty beasts. Aptly, the Philistines were skilled in ironwork, and Goliath was covered in bronze armor (1 Samuel 17:5-6) with impenetrable “scales” like Leviathan (Job 41:15). Of course, David found the beast’s weakness. Jesus now rules the nations through His New Covenant priest-kings with a sceptre of iron (Revelation 2:27; 19:15).
• The fact that these two “royal” children were borne by Zillah reveals the true nature of this “shadow” kingdom as waters that were “sweet” because they were stolen (Proverbs 9:17). The other Naamah in Scripture was a wife of king Solomon and the mother of king Rehoboam. The name is related to the name “Naomi,” the woman whose barrenness caused her to request a new name, “Mara,” which means “bitter.” The image derives from the curses upon the land and the womb in Genesis 3, and the picture of offspring as arising from a spring in the Garden. Isaac, Jacob and Moses all found their spouses at a well, and this imagery of fertility continues into the New Testament. In the Revelation, the Temple is described as Edenic “rivers and springs” that are made bitter (Revelation 8:10) and then flow with blood (Revelation 16:4). This also relates the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:2) with the healing of the woman who suffered a flow of blood (Mark 5:25). The fruit of the land and the womb are crucial elements of historical continuity.

Maturity / Transformation – Prophecy – Trumpets

• The covenant-literary structure explains the shift to Prophecy in the next stanza. Of course, instead of calling men to repent and trust int he mercy of God, Lamech is a king who answers neither to God nor to God’s prophets, and thus speaks as the voice of a god. This “godhood” was the intention of God for Adam, but Lamech was the sort of king that satan had in mind. The rejection of substitutionary atonement always results not only in merciless justice, but hatred and vigilantism. Self-government is despised and every man instead becomes judge, jury, and executioner. That is why the world was ultimately “filled with violence.” This was not anarchy but legalism — the use of God’s good law as a weapon. The central words in the Ten Commandments are the prohibitions against the sins of the flesh: murder and adultery. Instead of the “fragrant clouds” of righteousness, these were multiplied as a stench in God’s nostrils.
• Not only does this “Incense Altar” stanza open the abyss to release a cloud of prophetic sulphur, it ridicules both the process of the rite of sacrifice (substitutionary atonement) and the architecture of the Tabernacle, inverting every step of the heptamerous order of God with a demonic counterfeit: Instead of hearing God as a submissive priest (a servant), Lamech speaks as God. The altar at which he speaks is the marriage altar. Instead of judging wisely and mercifully as a king, Lamech is a tyrant-king, a T-rex who bites and devours. Instead of speaking for God as prophet, Lamech slays a young man, corresponding in the structure to the placement testimony of the blood of Abel. For a discussion of this passage in relation to justice and mercy in the USA today, see Michael Bull, Lamech’s Patsy: The Human Cost of State Hypocrisy.
• Lamech’s description of the future is a world covered by the human blood instead of a “covering” for sin. This would culminate in a global Day of Coverings, the Great Flood. His facetious multiplication of the mercy of God replaces the “rest and rule” of true godhood with a claim of immortality. It is possible that the “end of days” of Genesis 4:3 actually describes the first of any such offerings after 70 years of labor. Likewise, the corruption of Israel’s kings led to 70 years of captivity in Babylon (Jeremiah 25:11) through which God restored to the land the rest pertaining to the Sabbaths that the Israelites had stolen from it (Leviticus 25:4; 2 Chronicles 36:21). Following the captivity, 490 years described the span of Israel’s “latter days” (Daniel 9:24), the “times of the nations” (Luke 21:24). In an ironic reversal of Lamech’s “word,” Gabriel literally says, “Seventy sevens are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint the most holy.” Jesus finishes the bloodshed of “human sacrifices” by offering Himself and then the Apostolic Church, finally avenging the blood of Abel and all his subsequent “brothers.” Related to this is Peter’s question concerning forgiveness:

Then came Peter and said to him, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, Until seventy times seven. (Matthew 18:21-22 ASV)

• On the Day of Coverings, the High Priest sprinkled blood towards the Most Holy seven times. In the Revelation, the final judgment upon Jerusalem was poured out from the seven bowls that sat upon the branches of the Lampstand.³This is revealed in the structure of the text. See The Seven Bowls of Revelation. Zechariah 4:2 describes a multiplied Lampstand with 49 lights (7 x 7), so perhaps by the time of Jesus the rejection of the Spirit of Pentecost resulted in a seventy-times-seven judgment, a “Shekinah” that consumed the house of God instead of filling it, holocaust (whole burnt offering) instead of Pentecost.

Conquest / Vindication – Atonement

• On the “Day 6” of this cycle, true atonement comes with the restoration of the Adamic priestly line in the birth of Seth. Based on the Tabernacle architecture and its prefiguring in the three sons of Noah, it seems that the third son of Adam should have been instead a prophet.
• Seth’s placement at Testing perhaps implies that following the murder of Abel and the exile of Cain, he is the new firstborn, similar to the elevation of Jacob and Joseph over their brothers due to the elder siblings’ disqualification.
• Abel—the “seed of the Woman” who was cut off—is positioned at Atonement as the slain High Priest, and Cain is the “Gentile” king who stole his future.

Glorification / Representation – Booths

• As mentioned, Cain owed his life to the continuing ministry of the Adamic priesthood. The only reason Cain’s line could corrupt the world was the continued offerings made by the Sethite line, as described here at “Booths,” the priestly nation serving as spiritual food and shelter for the kingly peoples. In Enosh—seventh in the line of Adam as God’s answer to the voice of Lamech—it seems that God established a “school of the prophets.” The phrase “call on” of “invoke” actually means “proclaim,” a misunderstanding that obscures Abraham’s ministry of evangelism in Canaan later in the book of Genesis where the phrase is used three times.
  The stanza is fivefold, speaking of a kingdom yet “unopened,” so the central line is threefold. The same pattern is found in Genesis 1-5, with Genesis 3 consisting of three cycles: the testing, judgment, and future of Adam. This makes the fivefold sequence “cruciform” like the Tabernacle.
  The name Enosh means “mortal man,” contrasting the humble priesthood of the Sethite line with the claim to immortality of the Cainite kings. All of this is background to the history of Israel but especially to the events of the first century and the judgment upon the rulers of Jerusalem and Rome as described in signs and symbols in the book of Revelation. It would be as it was in the days of Noah, when bloodshed and intermarriage—murder and adultery—corrupted the land and brought sudden destruction.⁴For more discussion, see Altar of the Abyss – Part 1.

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