Innumerable times during the study, we paused to discuss, explore, and research. Often it was because we came to the end of a saga or book, just to recap. Sometimes it was because we ran into a word or phrase that just didn’t make sense. Other times it was because the implications of what we had just read just seemed odd or awe inspiring.

From the first sentence, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” We stopped to fathom “in the beginning” of what? After all, it couldn’t be the beginning of all that ever has been, because God already existed. Then there was the question, “what exactly is ‘God’.” Not who, but *what* is a god — this God. How is it that God could exist before the beginning? Is there anything else that was before the beginning? Did it matter? Then — what exactly are “the heavens?”

Most of the time the answers to our questions became clear the more we read, but sometimes the conundrums remained puzzling; this even after reading scholarly and religious commentaries. If we were baffled, astonished, or stumped, we found that there was little agreement among commentaries nor in academia.

An example is the first murder, when Cain killed his brother Able. God told him that he would have to leave the place that his family had begun to call home after they were banished from Eden. Cain’s response was baffling.

“[…] I will be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth. It will happen that whoever finds me will kill me.” Yehowah said to him, “Therefore whoever slays Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold.” Yehowah appointed a sign for Cain, lest any finding him should strike him. Cain went out from Yehowah’s presence, and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain procreated with his wife. […]”

According to the simple reading of Bible, there were no other people on the planet besides Adam and Eve and their children. So who was Cain afraid would kill him and would therefore need God’s protection and a sign? What sign was that? How would the people in the place where he was going, know what the sign meant? Whom did Cain marry? With whom did his children marry and have children? Where did all of these other people come from?

Genesis nor the rest of the Bible purports to tell the story of all that occurred in all time. It is not meant to be a history book. It is not the story of the development of humankind and its lineage; rather, it simply provides an account of the development of the relationship between Yehowah and Yehowah’s people — from those first in the lineage. Those who wrote it were in that lineage.

Not all of the answers to the questions we posed needed answers in order for us to “get the message.”

When we disobey God’s explicit instructions (ex. don’t eat of this one tree) it strains relations with God and we can expect to be punished because of it. Our actions do not have to be in direct disobedience for them to strain relations with God and warrant punishment (no record that God said “do not kill” when Cain murdered Able). Even if we are punished, God provides for our well being during the punishment.

end part 6