Podcast Introduction

Our reading today is Genesis 4-7. After that I’ll address what some people see as difficulties in those chapters. We’ll do a top ten. The reading is a bit long, and my comments on the top ten difficulties are longer than usual. So after that, we’ll go directly to our “On This Day In Church History” segment,, and then we’ll be finished for the day.

Thoughts

There are several passages and events in these four chapters that many people find difficult to understand.

1. Why did God not accept Cain’s sacrifice? (Chapter 4)

We are told in verse 3 that “3When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. 4Abel also brought a gift—the best portions of the firstborn lambs from his flock.” Why do you suppose that they brought gifts, or offerings? Could it be that God had instructed them to do so? We do know that very specific instructions were given by God to Moses for several different types of offerings. Is it difficult to expect that God, in this very early period of human history, would instruct Adam and Eve’s sons to give offerings with specific instructions as to what would be expected, or required?

And notice the language. “Cain presented some of his crops…” Whereas Abel brought “the best portions of the firstborn lambs from his flock.” The KJV says  Abel “…brought the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.” Many translations say words to the effect. The fat was considered the best part.

So Cain brought “some of his crops”, and Abel brought the best parts. It seems as if Cain was lackadaisical about his offering, whereas Abel’s offering was wholehearted. 

God sees and cares a great deal about the state of our heart, especially when it comes to our offerings.

Note that there is the implication that Cain knew that his offering was not what God required, because when He saw that Cain was unhappy that his offering was not accepted, God said to him, “You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.”

“You will be accepted if you do what is right…” Cain knew that his offering was not right.

2. When Cain went to the land of Nod, who did he marry? (Chapter 4)

If Adam and Eve were the first humans, and Cain and Abel were their only children, how could there be anyone else?

In Genesis 5:4, we are told that Adam (and by inference, Eve) had other sons and daughters. So Cain married one of his sisters. At this point in human history, the gene pool was still pure enough that this would not be a dangerous thing. It was not until God gave the Law to Moses much later, that God forbade the marriage of close relatives.

3. How could lifespans be as long as those recorded in Genesis 5? 

There are two factors that could be at play. 

a) The purity of the gene pool. Much of the disease that plagues us today, including the disease of aging can be attributed to genetic anomalies that have crept in over the generations. When DNA is replicated, errors occur in the code. 

b) Also remember that the genealogy of Adam recorded here is before the flood. It is quite likely that the Earth’s atmosphere was very different before the flood. Remember the description of the creation. After God created light and dark on the first day, on the second day God said, “Let there be a space between the waters, to separate the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth.”

So there was a great deal of water above the Earth and on the Earth. This water canopy above the Earth would have shielded the Earth from the harmful rays of the sun, protecting the inhabitants on the surface of the Earth. Lifespans after the flood decreased dramatically.

4. How could all of humanity actually be descended from just Adam and Eve? (Chapter 5)

One writer has estimated that if Adam did indeed live 930 years, and he saw only half the children that he could have fathered grow up, and if only half of them married and had children, then he could have seen more than a million of his own descendants. And using these calculations, by the time of the flood the population of the earth could have been seven billion people.

After the flood, the population was only Noah and his wife, and his three sons and their wives. Lifespans were indeed shorter, but given the example of Adam and Eve, it is not hard to see how the population would have quickly recovered.

5. What are the sons of God, or Nephalim? (Chapter 6)

The phrase “sons of God” occurs only three other times in the Old Testament. Job 1:6, Job 2:1 and Job 38:7.

It seems clear from those verses that the sons of God were angels of some sort. Translators of the Septuagint used the word “angels”. What is the Septuagint? It is the earliest Greek translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew. These translators clearly thought that the sons of God were angelic beings. 

We know that some of the angelic beings, including Satan, rebelled against God from Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. From Mark 16:5 we know that angels can take on human form. And in Genesis 19:1-5 we learn that the men of Sodom and Gomorrah wanted to have sex with the two angels that were with Lot, so it is quite possible that angels in human form are capable of having sex. 

If these fallen angels procreated with human women, this could easily account for a perverted, evil race. This contributed to the evil that God saw during the days of Noah, and why God decided to wipe out all of humanity, except for Noah and his family.

6. Did God admit that He made a mistake in making man? (Chapter 6)

“And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” Genesis 6:6

One of God’s attributes is omniscience. He knows everything. But that does not mean that He is uncaring. He saw the evil nature of man, He saw the pollution brought by the sons of man, He saw the violence on the earth, He saw the pain that mankind had brought on itself. And it grieved Him. 

When I see my kids do things that bring them pain, it grieves me. But in the almost forty years that I have been a parent, I have never thought that I should never have had kids. I never thought that it was a mistake.

God knew what was coming before He created he universe. He had a plan to bring salvation before He spoke the first words of creation. When God cursed the serpent after the fall, one of the things He said was, “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” This speaks of Jesus’ defeat of Satan. “You shall bruise his heel” refers to Satan’s wounding of the Messiah. “He shall bruise your head” speaks of the Messiah crushing Satan with a fatal wound.

If God already had a plan, why would He admit making a mistake? There was no mistake.

7. How could all of the species on the earth fit on the ark? (Chapter 6)

It was big. 450 feet (150 meters) long. That’s 1 1/2 lengths of an American football field. 75 feet (25 meters) wide. 45 feet (15 meters) high. Shaped like a barge. If the ark carried two of every family of animals, there would have been about 700 pairs. If the ark carried two of every species, there would be about 35,000 pairs. The average size of a land animal is smaller than a sheep. Half of the ark’s capacity could carry more than 130,000 sheep. That would leave more than adequate room for the people, food, water and other supplies.

8. How did Noah gather all the animals? (Chapter 6)

This one’s easy. Genesis 6:20 says, “Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive.” 

God brought the animals to Noah. Many animals migrate. God migrated all the animals to Noah.

9. How could just 40 days of rain flood the entire earth? (Chapter 7)

Genesis 7:11 says, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.

There were large oceans of water under the surface of the earth which was released to the surface, probably preceded by great earthquakes. We know of subsurface water even today, don’t we?

Remember the water that was above the earth? Before the flood, the earth had not seen rain. Now most of that water came down in torrents. 

10. But wasn’t it just a local flood? (Chapter 7)

If the earth were a perfect sphere, with no mountains and no valleys, water would cover the entire earth to a depth of 2 1/2 miles. Maybe the earth was very close to a perfect sphere. Perhaps the earthquakes that released the fountains of the deep began the reshaping of the earth that we know today.

Today’s Bible Translation

Bible translation used in today’s episode: Ch. 4-5 NLT, Ch. 6-7 (ESV)

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