The Cry of Cain

The Lord then said: "What have you done?

Listen: Your brother's blood cries out to me from the soil!

Therefore you shall be banned from the soil that opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. 

If you till the soil, it shall no longer give you its produce.

You shall become a restless wanderer on the earth."

Cain said to the Lord: "My punishment is too great to bear!

Since you have now banished me from the soil, and I must avoid your presence and become a restless wanderer on the earth, anyone may kill me at sight

(Gen. 5:10 ff).

From the time of Adam, whose name is connected to the Hebrew adamah, meaning "soil, ground, earth, field," the soul of mankind has been connected to the ground.  The blessings of the earth seem to flow from the soul of Adam.  All of the references in the early chapters of Genesis emphasize the close connection of "Adam" and "adamah."  After the first disobedience, or alienation from the Spirit of God, Adam, whose task it was to "tend the garden," could produce crops, but the earth would also produce thorns and thistles, making his work more toilsome and difficult.  By the time of the next generation, the earth will refuse to yield at all to Cain.

The Hebrew words for "blessing" (berakhah) and for "spring of water" or "reservoir"(berekah) (at which camels kneel as a resting place) are also very closely connected in sound and in spelling.

In Genesis, we discover the the earth, soil, ground without the "blessing" or pools of water, springs, does not produce.  That is why Jacob needed both the birthright (bekhorah) and the blessing (berakhah) from Isaac.  The birthright without the blessing would have been worthless.

I think maybe we as Americans have forgotten a valuable lesson contained in Genesis.  In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people as they stand at the edge of the Promised Land:

The Lord will affirm his blessing upon you, on your barns and on all your undertakings, blessing you in the land that the Lord, your God, gives you...so that, when all the nations of the earth see you bearing the name of the Lord, they will stand in awe of you.  The Lord will increase in more than goodly measure the fruit of your womb, the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your soil, in the land which he swore to your fathers he would give you.

The Lord will open up for you his rich treasure house of the heavens, to give your land rain in due season, blessing all your undertakings, so that you will lend to many nations and borrow from none.  The Lord will make you the head, not the tail, and you will always mount higher and not decline, as long as you obey the commandments of the Lord, your God...not turning aside to the right or to the left from any of the commandments which I now give you, in order to follow other gods and serve them (Deut. 28: 7-14).

We have tried by our own efforts to make the land produce without the blessings (springs, pools of water) given by God---and now we see the results.  Maybe it is time to go back to an earlier, simpler approach, seeking, in the words of our nation's forefathers, "the blessings of God on ourselves and our posterity."