Articles
Starting Over at One
Adam and Eve lost both their sons the day Cain struck Abel down. Abel’s life lay pooled on the ground, and Cain was now cut off from that ground. “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” From a modern point of view, Cain has gotten off lightly, and his cry that “My punishment is greater than I can bear!” strikes us as melodramatic. Nothing could be further from the truth. To be cut off from the land is an eternal death sentence; not only will Cain die, but his whole posterity will be cut off.
God has punished Cain exactly in proportion to his crime. In English translations of Gen 4.10, the Lord tells Cain, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” What He really says is this: “The voice of your brother’s bloods is crying to me from the ground.” Rabbinic commentators have understood for centuries that the use of the plural bloods in this passage means “his blood and the blood of his descendants.” As the Mishnah explains it, “For this reason was man created alone, to teach thee that whosoever destroys a single soul of Israel, Scripture imputes [guilt] to him as though he had destroyed a complete world [emphasis mine].” Cain did not just kill Abel. He killed half of the potential population of the world. For this sin, God cut off the other half (i.e., Cain’s half) from the land.
Thus we find Adam and Eve starting over again at the end of Genesis 4: “And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, ‘God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him’” (Gen 4.27). Seth is explicitly Abel’s God-given replacement, but he also replaces Cain. Moses traces the genealogy of Adam in Genesis 5 through Seth, not through Cain the firstborn.
This is far from the last time God pushes the reset button in Genesis. In fact, God starts over again immediately after Adam’s genealogy. We learn in Genesis 6 that while Seth’s line has been faithful, the rest of the world had taken after Cain: “Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence” (Gen 6.11). Only one man was righteous in that generation: Seth’s descendant, Noah (Gen 6.9). To rid the world of its violence and corruption, God starts everything over with Noah and his sons.
The subsequent chapters of Genesis show us that starting over with Noah doesn’t fix the problems of violence and corruption, so God starts over yet again. This time, instead of reducing humanity to the descendants of one man, He chooses one man, Abraham, to set aside for His own special purposes. God speaks to Abraham in Genesis 15 and promises him offspring more numerous than the stars. Abraham is skeptical because he and his wife are advanced in years. God nevertheless provides Abraham an heir, Isaac. This one son produces another son, Jacob, from whom the chosen nation springs.
Notice how the seed promise through Isaac agrees with the rabbinic understanding of Gen 4.10. Just as from one man shall spring a host of people more numerous than the stars, “…whosoever destroys a single soul of Israel, Scripture imputes [guilt] to him as though he had destroyed a complete world.” It is impossible to overstate the value of a single human life.
The remainder of the Hebrew Bible records how Israel became as corrupt and violent as the people God had separated them from. Within the chosen people itself, God had to start over with chosen men who would do His will. If this whole pattern of failing and starting over from scratch sounds disheartening, it is. Elijah felt certain in 1 Kings 19 that God was starting over at one again—the one being the lonesome Elijah. Elijah was so disheartened that he asked the Lord to take his life (1 Kgs 19.4).
The story is not always so discouraging. Paul presents Jesus as the ultimate “starting over at one”: “For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom 5.19). Where Seth, Noah, and Israel failed to stop violence and corruption, Jesus succeeds. Plus, Paul draws from the lesson of Elijah on Mount Horeb to give us comfort: “So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace” (Rom 11.5; cf. 1 Kgs 19.18).
You might feel like you’re alone at points in your life. You might feel frustrated at having to start over with things in your life. You may feel as if you have very little to offer God. That’s okay. We’re in the Faith for the long game. As we’ve seen, starting over is a normal part of things. If you happen to be starting over at one in your life, take heart: in the beginning, God started out with less.
