The Two Trees Podcast

Cains City

• Jon Dillon • Season 4 • Episode 17

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Martin & Jon explore the meaning behind Cain’s city east of Eden and what it reveals about humanity’s attempt to image God outside of the garden. Rather than treating cities merely as population centers, the ancient world saw them as places of protection, power, and spiritual authority. Tracing the story from Eden to Revelation, this episode examines how Cain rejects God’s provision and builds an “Eden of his own making,” establishing a pattern that echoes throughout Scripture—from Babel and Nineveh to the redeemed city of New Jerusalem. Along the way, we ask what it means to trust in human power rather than God’s presence, and how God ultimately redeems even the symbol of the city itself

SPEAKER_00

If the two trees has been a blessing to you, please leave us a review on your favorite podcatcher or visit our website www.the two trees podcast dot org and click the yellow buy me a coffee icon to leave a donation. And now let's join the conversation.

SPEAKER_03

Hey y'all. Who is slightly bruised from his epic basketball amazingness.

SPEAKER_01

No bruises, just second degree burns.

SPEAKER_03

Well, you know, sometimes you move and the floor doesn't go with you.

SPEAKER_01

I'm either a firefighter or a basketball player. I'm not exactly sure which one, but yeah, I was going for a rebound, uh, like I told John, went to land and the floor wasn't where I thought it was, which is not a normal scenario for me. So I put my foot down to nothing.

SPEAKER_03

I just picture you like sliding across the floor like a seal and then hearing like the breaks as you're seeing what happens.

SPEAKER_01

Good news is the vast majority of my body kept sliding, just my hand did not pull my hand just once.

SPEAKER_03

You know, that's that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's all right. So I'm icing it now because icing takes out the heat.

SPEAKER_03

It feels that way. I don't know if that's medically true.

SPEAKER_01

If you're a medical doctor, back me up on this, okay? That's what happens.

SPEAKER_03

It feels good to ice it when you've when you've got a boo-boo.

SPEAKER_01

Plus, then I get to carry around ice and people are like, oh, are you okay? Are you hurt? And then you get the free sympathy. Nice. And it really works for me with this.

SPEAKER_03

But well, we're here without our friend Rose. I know that um thank you guys for tuning back in. We were dark last week, but we're back this week. There is an absolute avalanche of stuff going on in our lives at the moment. Uh Rose has some family members who are um in the hospital. There's a lot going on with their family, so please keep Rose's family in your prayers. Uh, and also just with work things and with just church life, and I've got a missions trip coming up. I'm heading out to the Navajo Nation to do some teaching out there. Uh, there's just a million things on fire right now. So we're kind of moving from one emergency to the next emergency. And last week we just couldn't get all of our schedules to work. And even today, Rose is out at the hospital with her family, and we told her, don't you worry, we will take care of things. And she is worried because she has no idea what we may say in her absence.

SPEAKER_01

That's true. But in, you know, to put her at ease, we kind of say everything in front of her, also. That's true. There's not really anything that we hide when she's here.

SPEAKER_03

I think that she would like to be a positive influence. I'm pretty sure it's the opposite.

SPEAKER_01

That's probably true. That's probably true. Anyway, let's get on with this episode, can we? Getting on. Yeah. Rose isn't here to keep us like on track. So we're really gonna have to. That's true.

SPEAKER_03

Usually she gives like the mom look across the room. We're like, okay, on to the next thing.

SPEAKER_01

That's why we can't put these on video because then people would see what really happened. So then we'd be in trouble. But hey, I do have an a uh sponsor. Oh, yeah. Tell us. Yeah, I'm kind of running out of them, so I might need to go around town and you know ask for some more sponsorships. But um, this episode is brought to you by John the Baptist hors d'oeuvres.

SPEAKER_03

Ah, John the Baptist, friend of the show.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, he uh his hors d'oeuvre shop where they have locust with honey or honey with locusts.

SPEAKER_03

I would like the honey. I I don't want the locust though.

SPEAKER_01

What?

SPEAKER_03

That's a thing though, eating bugs like fried crickets and that kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, it's some of the like highest protein per calorie, I think, like on earth. If you're a medical doctor, back me up on this.

SPEAKER_03

I am gonna stick to hamburgers and steak. I think that uh I mean, nothing against crickets and locusts, John. I I'm sure that you you had an amazing palate. Uh but I but I'm I'm not gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01

I think that's like way down on the list of what he's known for, was what he was eating. That's what I went with. That's what I went with. Uh, but hey, also uh if you're liking the podcast, leave us a review. Wherever you're watching whenever you're listening to us on Spotify, iTunes, wherever you get your podcast, leave us a review on there because then all those places will generously push us out to other people that you don't know. That's true. And we don't know, but then they'll start listening to us, and then the snowball effect happens. So leave us a review, leave us a like if you have any uh way to do that. But I did want to send something. This is actually from our Facebook page, which we don't plug as much anymore, but it's the two trees podcast. Just uh type it in your little search bar and it'll come up with a uh little emblem that has two trees on it, and it says the two trees podcast on there. So click on there and give us a like. It's free to do so. Uh, but I want to shout out to Angie. Uh, she gave us a wonderful review on Facebook that said, Hey y'all, this is Angie, and I miss you guys when you're there wasn't an episode released, but I wanted you to know that we're praying for you, and I'm sure that she's not the only one that misses us. And the coolest part about that is, thank you, Angie, for the kind words. Very encouraging uh when we're through going through this busy time. But the coolest part about that was was there's another individual, Leah, that commented on her comment and said, Hey, I live like down the street from you. And I was just reading that to John, and he goes, Yeah, they should go get coffee and send us the bill. The next one says, Maybe we can get coffee because she works in the same town that she lives in. Send us the bill.

SPEAKER_03

We want to, we that makes me excited.

SPEAKER_01

So I can't believe that these two people that don't know each other are coming together because of us, and they live like thousands of miles away from us.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, that's that's the hope when we get together with these things. Because honestly, it's what we end up doing. Like, we record the podcast, and then afterwards, everyone has like their deepest thoughts, and we sit on the back porch for a minute. We're like, what about this? Or what about this? And we're like, man, we should have kept the podcast rolling. We could have captured some of this wisdom.

SPEAKER_01

The two trees after we turn off the recording. Like, it's so much better. If you guys like us now, imagine if you come out and look and you would not like us at all.

SPEAKER_03

Probably. But anyway, we're back to our story. We're we're punching our way through uh the book of Genesis, and we're looking at really the story of Cain. And in particular, the story of Cain is uh is is highlighting for us what it looks like to image God outside of the Garden of Eden. We know what it looks like in a perfect world, right? Where everything works exactly right, and there's not, and the biggest problem you have is whether or not to eat the fruit from the tree, and the snake is talking to you, but things go south in a hurry. All of a sudden, Cain is filled with murderous rage, and the expectation that Cain carries is that he is supposed to still be what God made him to be, even though he is not in the garden, that the the calling to image God is greater than just a geographical reality. You don't get to take the uniform off and then just go relax and do your own thing. That's what we are. And so when you are jumping into the story of Cain, I just want to give a little bit of a warning here that there's some really uh fascinating rabbit trails that you can chase with Cain. But when you're doing Bible study, it's important to resist the urge to unravel mysteries that the text does not address. I mean, you save them for later when you're just spitballing and you're wondering and you're you're chasing those things. That is a different element.

SPEAKER_01

That takes away half of my notes. Oh, no, no, you're gonna be fine.

SPEAKER_03

No, that's that's that's an important part of enjoying the scriptures themselves. But we don't want our questions to drown out the reason that the text writes it the way that it does. And so what we want to do is to give preeminence to the text to say, okay, I'm gonna have a lot of questions, and I'm gonna have a lot of what-ifs, and um, I'm I've got weird thoughts floating around in my head that I would like you to address, Bible, and I notice you don't. Why? What is it that you are focusing on? And so rather than demanding that the scriptures do what we want them to do, it is wise, I believe, for us to demand of our own minds what is the scripture saying and why is it following that particular line of thinking?

SPEAKER_01

It's so funny. I guess it's ironic to think about it that the Bible leaves out a lot of the specifics about a scenario because it's trying to highlight what it's trying to highlight. And then the only thing that our little minds can wonder about is what are the other specifics that it left out? Like instead of looking at what it's saying, we're like, if only we knew deeper, then we could understand. It's like they've already taken away all the distractions. Exactly right.

SPEAKER_03

We don't we don't want to impose our own narrative onto the text, it has its own ancient um context, and the author was trying to say something. So we want to honor both what the spirit has done as well as letting it lead our conversation. In order to do that, you really have to let go of all of the things, the brilliant thoughts that you're gonna have. They're gonna rise to the surface. And you have to say, okay, we're gonna have those after. But before we get to them, what is the text saying? What can I take? And because once you have that, you have the hand holds that are necessary to really climb around the rock face. It's gonna let you really do wondering and thinking that's going to be in keeping with the text itself. You're not bringing in weird things because you have as your holds the scripture itself. So here's the trail that we've been following so far. God made man to image him. And in the beginning, Adam or mankind is completely isolated. He is living, breathing earth, and he's he's okay, but the Bible looks and says not good, meaning incomplete, not done yet. It's like that moment when you open up the uh the oven and you're cooking something amazing, but it's not done yet. It's not that it's bad, it hasn't yet reached its intended point. And so God makes him a plural. He makes one two. And Adam becomes Adam and Eve. He gives to him a help, an ally, an acer. This is the word that we're gonna come back to time and time again. That Adam is not made to be a threat to Eve, and Eve is not made to be in competition with Adam. They are made to be two expressions of one thing.

SPEAKER_01

I think it's interesting to think about that what you're saying about man being incomplete. I think that we view God's plan chronologically as if God is throwing it together as we go. Like, but it's it's so interesting to me that God understood the beginning and the end before he created Adam.

SPEAKER_03

That's right.

SPEAKER_01

So when he's looking at it, he's saying there the fruits of the spirit, God knows them before Eve is created. And God's saying, Well, how can they do all of these outward-facing fruits of the spirit when there's only one? Like it it there has to be more than one for this plan to work. And so that is what spurs the action of bringing Eve in and then allowing mankind to populate the earth the way that God intended it to. But a lot of the times we view God's plan as like, well, once this happens, then he'll react and do something different. Or now he can change and do something, whatever. He he knows what's gonna happen tomorrow. He's already experienced it. And so to have the idea that God has to allow something to happen so then he can respond to it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, as though God is like figuring it out. Oh man, I don't like that. I'm gonna erase some and kind of fix this over here.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_03

Uh the Bible sometimes talks that way because it's time related, and we are creatures inside of time. But we know the nature of God is not improving or falling apart. He is as he's always been. The intention for Adam was always for there to be community, right? That there would be family. And this isn't just a Garden of Eden thing. This is part of the purpose of humanity. And so even when Adam and Eve are no longer in the garden, they are to be an aser to one another. Um, we find this in the New Testament. I mean, how often does it say to bear one another's burdens? Or uh even within the families as husbands, you know, don't grow bitter against your wives lest your prayers be hindered. Like there's a very real expectation. If you have power or you're a big guy and you can make people do what you want them to do, there's always someone higher up the food chain than you, at the very least, God. And so if you are treating people beneath you poorly, do not expect God to open up his ears to you because he is going to give you what you are sowing. You are going to reap that harvest. And so you see this fall apart with Cain. Cain is part of a ceremony where he and Abel offer sacrifices to God, and in some way, God rejects the offering. God accepts Abel's and doesn't accept Cain's. How that works, I don't know. It appears to me that God is physically there, that there is a manifestation of the Lord, and in some way it is made apparent to everybody what's happening.

SPEAKER_01

Not to go down a rabbit trail by any means, but Jacob texts us about that question as well. How did God, you know, show that he approved of one and not of the other? And I think it's a is a fascinating question because a lot of the times in the Bible, it's I assume it was like a sticker.

SPEAKER_03

Like God was like, here you go.

SPEAKER_01

But it's made abundantly clear. Like during the Christmas story, the angel appears to people, and there there's so many times where an angel shows up and people physically see something, and then that thing tells them very clear instructions. But there's nothing in this story about what or how that happens.

SPEAKER_03

Right, but it is abundantly clear that it has to use that as a moment to kind of talk about this because that's an expression of what I mean by letting the text direct our questions. The text tells us Cain and Abel are offering something, God accepts it, Cain's is rejected, and then there's a conversation that happens. Now I have questions about the text. I can see what the text is saying that Adam and Eve have apparently passed priestly roles onto their children, that they are approaching the Lord with an expectation of interacting with him. I use all these truths that the Bible then tells me, and I understand the goal of the text is to show me humanity is still in a relationship with God. It matters how we act, what we do, what's going on. And now I get to do the what ifs. It's so I don't do the what ifs before I want them to flow out of the text. So I'm a hundred percent in favor of chasing all the weird random questions you've got. But hold on to the text first, right, not your own premise.

SPEAKER_01

Don't lose the forest through the trees type of idea. That's kind of what you're saying. I think someone said that uh last episode. But you but you're absolutely right, and I think we do that all the time with that's why people pick and choose uh which verse they want to talk about or which verse they want to bring up, because they're losing the context of what they're talking about to hyper focus in on one rabbit trail. And like that is okay in a certain facet where you should, you know, memorize certain verses because what it means to you, but don't lose the context of the verse, don't lose what the passage is trying to tell you because you're so deep in thought about one specific item.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think our go-to uh reaction as readers is to immediately put it into our own world and our own stories. And that is an intended part of Bible study, but it is not the initial piece of Bible study. You have to lay the foundation and find out why is the text saying what it's saying. For instance, in Cain's story, it doesn't specifically tell you why Cain's sacrifice is rejected.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_03

It doesn't say it was stinky or that God only wanted meat and this was plant, it doesn't say anything like that. It just says it was rejected. But what you get in the text as it flows on from there is God begins to point out that there are real flaws in Cain, the offerer. And so we look at this and we say, okay, even though the text doesn't come right out and say, and the reason God rejected Cain's offering is because Cain stinks, you get the impression that the author of Genesis is looking at Cain as a twisted priest. Right. That this is not coming from a good place.

SPEAKER_01

And unfortunately, we don't accept that as the answer. Like we want a more meat and potatoes answer. And it's like, well, you know, the heart of Cain was twisted to the point where God didn't want the sacrifice from him because it's not the sacrifice that God desires. He doesn't need the plants, he created the plants. If he wanted more, he could snap his fingers and have the best you've ever imagined. Like there is nothing that we could repay to God. We were just talking about like has somebody done something to you, and you unfortunately are unable to repay them in the same fashion. Like that happens. It happens in the Bible, and I think it's happening right here. We can't repay to God more than he has provided to you. It's it's an impossibility for human beings to do that. So God doesn't look at it and he's like, Oh, finally you're almost repaid because you're giving me 10%. Like eventually you're gonna pay me back. There is nothing in the the nature of God that implies that's what he's after.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_01

But there is a lot in the nature of God that implies that your subservientness to him in the way that you love and respect and worship him is exactly what you're saying.

SPEAKER_03

If humanity had rebelled in the garden, the sacrifice that's taking place here seems to be an act of loyalty, a way of going to God and saying, We are honoring you, we're in a right relationship with you, and God points out Well, one of you is one of you is about to murder the other one. Like there's a real problem here. Sin is crouching at the door.

SPEAKER_01

And again, go back to that time idea where it's like God sees what's gonna happen tomorrow in Cain. Right. And so just d how disgusting it must be for God to be like, Really? You're coming to me now, showing your loyalty to me, knowing tomorrow you're gonna bash your brother's head with a rock.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Like that that's something we don't put into perspective because we don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. Are we gonna be good or are we gonna be bad?

SPEAKER_03

Is in the text. And so when you're reading it and you let the text lead your discussion, you find that you're going to have deeper questions than just the ones that will immediately pop into your mind. Right. Like you're seeing Cain is an unaser. He is the opposite of an Azer. He's not a help, he's a hindrance, he's a predator, he is there to devour and to feed the blood of his brother, literally, to the earth. And so Cain's his words show his heart. He says, you know, hey, am I my brother's keeper? And the answer is yes. That's exactly what an acer is. It's not just a husband and a wife thing. This is also prevalent. I just I'm preaching on the story of David and Saul right now, and looking at Jonathan, he is a beautiful example of an Azer. What does real friendship look like? At no point in the story does David ever get to pay Jonathan back. He is an almost flawless example of friendship. What I want to be true of my own life, he's an un-Kain. And so you're looking at this guy, and the text shows you again what God is like. God is compassionate, Cain is not. God is merciful, Cain is not. God is just, Cain is not. Even after Cain rebels and murders his brother, God is still compassionate, merciful, and just to Cain. We never see in Cain a real image of God. You get the idea of what it looks like when one of us goes sour. And we may not be murderers, but we can relate kind of quickly to what it looks like to almost look like God in a situation.

SPEAKER_01

And it's so funny because we always talk about, and and rightfully so, I'm not trying to say anything negative about this whatsoever, but we always talk about the forgiveness that we should give to other people, the mercy and the gentleness and kindness that we should give to other people, and we say because that's the ultimate showing of that is Jesus on the cross. Right. And we really push that, that you know, if Jesus can still die for you while you were yet sinners and that kind of stuff. But I mean, look all the way back in Genesis four, where God is showing the sinners mercy and kindness and patience and gentleness, and tell me that it's not the same God in Genesis four that it is in Matthew twenty.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, He is unchanging.

SPEAKER_01

And so but but I think we limit our our view of God's compassion and God's heart to the cross and the New Testament.

SPEAKER_03

That can happen when we want to impose an order that we've created onto the story itself. It makes sense to start at the beginning and to take those patterns forward. Uh most of us, though, um are following in uh traditions that uh kind of wander all over the place. Like we're not very consistent in our Bible reading or in our studies and things. We're kind of all over the place, and so so are our thoughts. That makes sense. Uh Cain isn't giving us a good image of God. He is, though, giving us a good image of the serpent. Remember, the Bible says of Satan later on, he's going to say he was a murderer from the beginning. He is sneaky, he is cunning, he is twisty. This is a person who is not. Imaging God, but who is now imaging uh the darkness. So God tells Cain the curse has a deeper hold on you than any other human in the world. The curse is going to affect you differently. There are consequences for your actions. But don't worry, I'm going to protect you. And he provides for Cain a pathway to repentance and obedience.

SPEAKER_01

Just like he did for the rest of mankind.

SPEAKER_03

No, it's not what Cain wants. He's told, listen, the ground's not going to feed you anymore. You're going to wander, but you're not going to be killed. The things that you're afraid of aren't going to happen. You're going to be okay. And there's almost this implicit promise of, I'm not done with you. Come back. Begin to image me again. And Cain is going to refuse to do that. You're going to see him go further and further from the will and the word of God.

SPEAKER_01

That that's the rabbit trail that gets me the biggest is the idea that Cain activity pursues to not come back, to not repent. And that that's what I guess hurts me the most when when you talk about the sin of blasphemy the Holy Spirit type of idea. I think this is a good example of what that is because Cain is given the opportunity. And it's not laid out. I mean, he's the first person to go through this. So like cut him a little bit of slack. Like he doesn't know what's going on.

SPEAKER_03

Nope, not gonna.

SPEAKER_01

But it it seems that God is pretty explicit with his verbiage of like what you need to do to come back to me. Like it was laid out for Cain. I'm I'm always an idea of like pleading ignorance because you've never experienced something before. And so it's tough, and I get it. But like my life is tough too. I've never experienced tomorrow before. And but I will tomorrow. And so this idea of like I don't really know what it is, and I'm always at a point where I can drift farther away from God and actively choose to rebel. And I have to fight and push back and and gravitate towards the light of Jesus. And so it's like, man, was Cain actively doing this? Like every day he got up and he's like, Nope, not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it. Or how was the deceiver involved to get him to pursue the life that he did?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and you remember this is a person who has had face-to-face conversations with God.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

This is not like not to knock you and me, Martin, but that's never happened to me. Not yet. And I mean it would be nice. Well, maybe it would be nice, it'd be terrifying, uh, but it would be it would be wonderful. Cain's had that. And he God tells him what's going to happen, what he's expecting of him. And Cain doesn't respond with humbleness or repentance. He kind of storms off. I have to do this, I can see the forces arrayed against me. And instead of imaging God, he continues to look like the darkness. So let's jump now back into the text. This is Genesis chapter four, verses uh sixteen and seventeen.

SPEAKER_01

Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the son of his son, Enoch. No. After the name of his son.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, after the name of his son, Enoch. So all of a sudden, Cain is told, You are to go wander, right? And so he goes to the land of Nod. Nod comes from a Hebrew root and it means to wander. He is moving. It's not like there was a map, and they were like, if you keep going east, you'll find the land of Nod. Remember, this is humanity's not explored the entirety of the world. Where this is, I don't know. It seems to me to be more of a state of being than anything in particular. You're supposed to go out there and be a wanderer, but what does he do when he goes to Nod? He settles. And all of a sudden we find that he has a wife and he has a city. And our questions immediately come to mind. Well, if there's only four people in the world and you just killed one, who did you marry? And if you founded a city, who's living in your city? The text does not intend to answer this question. And so it leaves it hanging out there as an obvious thing for us to wonder about. So I don't know is the answer. I wasn't there. I've not asked him recently. I can't tell you. Do I have guesses? Yes, I think that the text doesn't intend to have this as its answer. It has another goal. My personal opinion is that Adam and Eve had lots and lots of children. And just because the text is only talking about Cain and Abel doesn't mean that they are the only children of Adam and Eve alive in the world. Later on, Adam and Eve are going to have another child that is, it says, in the image of Adam, and his name is Seth. There is a lot about this that we just don't know. People wonder if there were other humans outside of the garden, if there were other it could be anything. There's a lot of options you can go with here. But before you get lost in the weeds, ask yourself, why does the text want me to know that he stops wandering and settles? And why does it want me to know that he builds a city? This feels like information I don't need. And as a matter of fact, it feels like information that is distracting to the point of before you tell me these things, you should have told me these other 30 things that I want to know. Who's coming to live here? How can you possibly have a city with one guy and his wife living in it? What is happening here? My personal opinion, just because I'm going to get emails about it, is that Cain is marrying one of his sisters, that this is one of the children of Adam and Eve, or maybe a niece or a nephew. I don't know. The Bible says people were living a very long time at the time. But Cain goes into wandering and eventually finds family. Whether she goes with him or whether he finds her while he's there, the text doesn't tell us. To us, it's a weird detail that Cain builds a city. But one of the rules of Bible study that Dr. Michael Heiser made abundantly clear to me and to the rest of the people who bothered to listen to him is that if it's weird, there's a strong chance that it's important. And there's a good chance also that what you're dealing with here is a cultural difference. Something that the text doesn't bother explaining was probably evident to the original audience in a way that it is not evident to me. That ought to pump the brakes for me. So before I accuse the Bible of being bad at something, I want to ask myself, what did ancient people think about cities? What does what is it saying that Cain made? How is it different from what I think? And so the very first thing I did, because I am a modern man, is I Googled it. What is a city? Uh I grew up in West Virginia. We don't have many cities, we have lots of unincorporated places with names. Uh I moved here to Covington, beautiful place, but Covington is not a city, and Covington is not a town. Covington is a village.

SPEAKER_01

You got that right.

SPEAKER_03

We are village people. And Martin is the president of our village council. And uh and so you look at that like what's the difference between a town and a village?

SPEAKER_01

Population.

SPEAKER_03

Population. We have very what what do you know the difference?

SPEAKER_01

Uh under 4,000 people is a village.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we're at 2,400 in Covington.

SPEAKER_03

When does it jump from town to city?

SPEAKER_01

Um I I think it's 7,500, don't quote me on that, but I think 7,500 is in now a city.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, okay. And then there's you've got cities that end in ton, like Charleston, that means town. So you there's cities that are called towns. It gets weird. But what you're dealing with here are human, imaginary, arbitrary designations. Yes. Someone is trying to determine how big a thing is, and it has to do with size.

SPEAKER_01

I always think that's funny because people say they're going into town here, and we're a village. Nobody says I'm going into village to go to see, you know, it even sounds wrong. Right. Like, I'm going into the village later today. No, I'm going in town.

SPEAKER_03

Like when I asked Google, uh, it said what I already thought. It said, you know, a city has to do with size. It's a large, settled urban community characterized by high population density, complex infrastructure, and distinct government systems. And I thought to myself, that's probably not what Kane made.

SPEAKER_01

This is probably not what Kane made. He didn't have the council. He didn't have the council, he didn't have the infrastructure.

SPEAKER_03

Like, what does it mean when it says he builds a city? And so then I began researching and was thinking about this. There's a bunch of really good books. I can link some of this out there for you. But in the Bronze Age world and before that, what did people mean when they used the word ear or city? And to them, they had a very different meaning when they used the word city. It meant a walled settlement, a place of power and safety. We think restaurants, they thought temples. We think traffic, they thought fortifications. We think sports teams, they thought kings. The way that they thought of a city, sometimes it did have size um instincts to it, but really it had to do with function. This is a place that is designed for religion and for protection. That's its function.

SPEAKER_01

Almost like an estate is what we would think of it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's exactly what it would kind of be a walled estate, a fortress against the rest of the world. The oldest cities that we know of are in the cities of Mesopotamia, uh, which happens to be where Abraham, right, and his family are from. And so it makes sense that when the authors of Genesis, which I don't know if you guys have read Genesis or not, but Abraham's a major character in this story, this is his family who's recording these stories for us, they used the word ear, which is a word that had a real meaning in Mesopotamia. When a Mesopotamian group of people were talking about a city, what they meant was a tiny kingdom. They didn't have empires or like large kingdoms like we think of that expanded for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles in every direction. Every city was its own little political cosmic world centered around a god, priests, and a king.

SPEAKER_01

I'm just thinking of like a tiny house, but like as a as a tiny fortress. That was what they were at the beginning. Yeah, they took a school bus and then made it into a tiny house. Like a that's what I'm envisioning.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, but it but it's it's function. I don't think of going to the city because I'm in danger. As a matter of fact, I'm more likely to find crime in the city than I am in the countryside. To me, going to the city involves entertainment. It involves, you know, I'm I'm on vacation, like I'm going out to like a fancy restaurant, something that is designed to be around large groups of people. And it almost always is connected to the idea of entertainment because that's the world that we live in.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_03

In the ancient world, though, they were going to cities because there was a danger around them and they were fleeing to a place of safety. Because in their world, this happened on a regular basis. They needed a castle-like structure.

SPEAKER_01

It's so funny. You you mentioned this to me the other day, and it it really, I don't know, blew my mind, but basically blew my mind where just the the difference in the word. And and I'm not trying to say that we need to nitpick every word and whatever, but we do need to uh bridge the gap, the cultural gap, which is what we're trying to do this season of the the two trees, to have an understanding because I would never in a million years think of city as what you're describing right now. Like I wouldn't ever come to my mind naturally that that's what it is. Because I live in a place, and my only experience with cities is like you're mentioning, places that you go to be around a lot of people, to see something. You know, like world tours of um singing groups come to large cities. So can see that. And so the the FIFA World Cup is coming to the United States and they're using big major cities because it's a metropolis for this to go. Did Covington get in at all? We put in there. Um we're still waiting to hear back from them. We have that old field out by the football field they might use.

SPEAKER_03

I think I think the FIFA is missing out.

SPEAKER_01

No, definitely not. But anyway, it's just the idea that it's a metropolis. The the bigger and more impressive it is, the more of a city that it becomes.

SPEAKER_03

And those things are true of ancient cities. They became, because they were places where lots of people were going for safety, they also became a great place to sell goods. They became places where um goods were readily available. You're getting fabrics from all over the place. If you want to sell your stuff to people, this is where you go. And we're living in a world that has been shaped and now it has the element of city that is without the danger aspect.

SPEAKER_01

We almost flip-flopped that, where it doesn't become a city until you have a market and a government and a this and a that. And then once you've hit those benchmarks, boom, now it's a city. Now it's a city, yeah. They didn't think that. They looked in the opposite way. The city was established when the individual created the fortress or the or the group created the you know the walls, and then it morphed into different things like, oh, there's enough people here to pop up a food stand and to build a silk stand.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, those grew inside of cities, and now we think of them as the thing that defines city, and it's not. Uh each of these cities is a it's a walled place for people to join together to resist the dangers of the wide world wolves, bears, roving bands of barbarians, uh, natural disasters. It's a place you go for safety, and its primary function is protection and religion. As far back in history as we can go, cities are connected to the gods. They don't exist as a purely secular idea. They seem to be religious in their very nature. They didn't believe that the city was protected by a god, they saw the city as the earthly domain of the god. That's a distinction that's important. Because if Cain is wandering away from God and he's founding the first of the cities, when an ancient uh Mesopotamia would have heard this word, they would have thought not just of Cain building some walls or some restaurants and things, it would have had a religious ring to it. And what you're going to see with Cain's family is they begin reaching out into the darkness, and then Genesis 6 happens, and man, it's it gets messy real, real fast. Surrounding farms and smaller unwalled villages, they are manipulated by the nearby city and forced to feed resources back to the city.

SPEAKER_01

What's the distinction that you're making there? You said that it wasn't defended by the God, but it was where the God lived.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, they didn't think of this as the God was something that served the city. They saw the city as something that served the God. And so when you think of this as Cain has wandered away from his relationship with the Lord, he has gone out, and he is a priest, intended to be a priest. And suddenly we find the story begins to become darker and darker and darker until you find that humanity is worshiping the creatures of the of the heavens that have fallen down. There is a very real chance, it's not an obvious thing, but it's built on the text and the use of the word, that Cain may have gone out and set himself up as either a king or a priest rather than serving the Lord, he is drifting further and further and further. And so that's me speculating because of the word that's used in the text. Do I know this for sure? No. But I do know that when ancient Sumerians used this word of city, that's what they thought of.

SPEAKER_01

And so not to say that Cain specifically did this, but most generally a city would be the place, the the landing place or the dwelling place of a spiritual creature, is what we're mentioning here, with kind of the expectation that that creature would give them something in return, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's why they built like ziggurats and things like that in these cities. Uh and and they became predatory. Like the purpose of these is to be supported, not to support. Like the cities aren't going around and bringing goods to the nearby farms. The farms are being forced around them to bring their goods to the city. They belong to the city.

SPEAKER_01

Or the fact that Cain is face to face with the Almighty Creator God, and he goes out and builds a city because he thinks that maybe the next God is going to be better off for him than Yahweh.

SPEAKER_03

Well, you have to remember Cain has been around supernatural creatures probably more than he has been around other humans. Like the world that he has been living in is one where he is having he can go to the gates of Eden, and there are the cherubim. He knows that there are spirits who are in rebellion against God, and he is now opposed to God. So much so that the curse has grown unbelievably heavy on Cain. The earth is not going to feed you. You're going to have to trust God to provide for you. Cain walks out of wherever they were into the land of Nod and settles. As though he flips the bird to the Lord and says, I'll do this myself. He seems to be saying, I'll have another patron. I'll do things my own way. I'll become my own thing. And whether he sets up a temple, it doesn't say that, but it does give the impression that he is walking in rebellion to God.

SPEAKER_01

So almost the pride is more than anything else. Like it's not that I'll find a God that will do it my way. It's I'll do it my way. And these gods will help me when I maybe need them.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think by the time you get to Abraham's time period, they are they are definitely thinking of cities as extensions of the gods. Um so much so that like even battles between cities are seen as expressions of the gods, right? Uh battling one another. Uh it gets weird. There's some I'll I'll link some some stuff in here that you can go read into this kind of a thing. But what I want to focus on is what the text is saying. Cain doesn't do what God asked him to do. It's implying a lot and not giving you the details.

SPEAKER_01

But it also helps look at the Abraham story because he kind of asks Abraham to do the same thing, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

To go be a wanderer, and Abraham does.

SPEAKER_03

That's that's a brilliant connection, Martin. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01

Abraham does a lot of other stuff, but at least he listened to God when he told him to just go wonder.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and he does keep wandering, and wherever he goes, he's a blessing. Right. Cain kind of does the opposite. Wherever he goes, he remains a predator. He's gonna take because he can't get it any other way. And so what you're you're being seen here is that okay, he's gonna found a city. The name Nod means wandering. Cain rejects the curse, he settles. The earth is no longer feeding him. He needs others to either care for him. Did you say nod means wandering? Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01

That's funny.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's what it means. He, where did he move to? He moved to wandering. And then he settled in wandering.

SPEAKER_01

But you you you mentioned earlier about how he kind of gives it back to God. Like, that's what I would do as a seven-year-old. When my mom tells me to do something, I would do the complete opposite, but it would be named what she told me to do. Like, it's the ultimate, like, you know, I'm definitely not doing what you tell me to do, but I'm gonna do it in a way that seems like I did what you said, but I'm doing the complete opposite. That just reminds me of myself so much with my mom. Yeah, well, I mean, that is the moment. I'm gonna go to the city of wandering and I'm gonna not wander.

SPEAKER_03

I'm gonna sit myself down and I'm gonna build something. And what he builds, this city, is you can tell it's intentional.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah, it's not a good thing. Cain is intentionally doing this.

SPEAKER_03

And and the text is highlighting this. What does he do? He goes and builds a city. He has children. What's he doing? He's passing his rebellious nature on to his children. He is not providing for his people, he's expecting them to be providing for him. And so what you've got here is the very first uh strong man, like the guy who is manipulating other people to do what he wants them to do. And in order to get that done, he builds this city. And so the city itself becomes an Acer. He's not relying on his family, he's not relying on his wife or his children. He is taking control of his life because he's worried about his safety. Remember, he's he's upset. He's saying, you know, maybe uh when people find out what I did, God, they're gonna come and they're gonna hurt me. And God says, No, don't worry about that. I'm gonna put my mark on you, I'm gonna keep you safe. And Cain says, Says, you know what would really keep me safe? Walls. Do you know what really keep me safe? Power. Do you know what really keep me safe is the ability to make my own way in the world. And he begins to make wisdom his own way. This is the distinction between following God and doing what is right in your own eyes. He can't see it. He's going to take it himself. He's going to define good and evil for himself. This is just the story of the Garden of Eden again. Yeah. In a different context.

SPEAKER_01

It's so it's so crazy because we we talk about that all the time. He puts the mark uh onto Cain to keep him safe. Like, I mean, if you're Cain, that's a free pass. Like, hello, thank you. I got it. Like, nobody's gonna hurt me. Now I can do what I know is right. But you know, there has to be some like pressure on Cain of like, he knows what to do, but if he does it, then he's going to lose. He's gotta be me. He's gotta be humble. You know, the the society or the culture or the spiritual beings that are influencing him are going to say, You lost. Right. And it's like that's so clear in our life today. How many of you have a cross on your necklace? I mean, that's the mark of Christ that's on you. And you are protected by God. You do have him with you. He follows you wherever you go. And yet we fall victim to the social prior to pressures that we can't declare that. We can't go out and talk to that person, we can't do these things because we're scared of the repercussions that come from it. And it's like, you're wearing the mark that God says, I will protect you. I've already taken care of it for you. And yet we struggle with that today. So the first response I have is like, Kane, you're just a dummy. Like, God gives you a free pass and you waste it. And then I say, Martin, you're a dummy. God has given you a free pass and you are currently wasting it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, but it's I mean, how I mean, we was like, Well, I would never do that, but you're right. Yeah, we do that all the time. God, I can see that you have said this, but don't worry, God, I'll take care of it.

SPEAKER_01

I got it figured out. I got it figured out. I noticed you missed a few things in there.

SPEAKER_03

I I'm a little nervous that you may not protect me well. So I've got an idea. And he invents city. This is the idea. It becomes his Acer. Um, the founder of a city was oftentimes worshipped or at least became like the king of that place. Like he it is his city as an extension of him and his ideas. And that's what Cain is. It becomes his family seat, his family place.

SPEAKER_01

I'm so glad that you said it it becomes his Azer. Because how many times does the spiritual world and the physical world try to replicate what God has already put in place? Absolutely right. That's that's so powerful of a statement. And it's just like God says, okay, mankind is not complete. He needs an Azer. Boom, creates the Azer, which is relationship bound, you know, humanity. And it's like, that's it. God says, This is what I'm expecting. And then Cain says, You know what? I don't like it. Because people are mean, people are mad, people are this, people are that. I'm better off by myself. He goes and he says, I'll make my own help.

SPEAKER_03

That that that's just a and that's the theme that echoes throughout scripture.

SPEAKER_01

It's a replay.

SPEAKER_03

So then asking yourself, yeah, but who is his wife? Is it's interesting, but it's not the story that the text is laying out and continuing. So like I'm giving you lots of like rabbit trails and things along the way, probably more than I should.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And I'm gonna and I have lots more. But it's to say, okay, but I'm also seeing God, you've laid out something, and then I'm gonna notice as I read the rest of the Bible, this keeps coming up, how we relate with one another. Am I my brother's keeper? Are people things to be used, or are they images of God?

SPEAKER_01

You know, it is a good question if you're asking who his wife is because you realize that God had put into place a natural order of things that man is to have an Acer. Yeah, even Cain. But that's not why we're asking the question. As a family. We just want to know what's going on or how who Mary Cain is the first murderer. Who is this lady?

SPEAKER_03

Maybe he was really good looking. I don't know. Uh but he he has a wife, he has family. Her name isn't given, but his his son is. Uh, and it and the name of the son is Enoch. There are two Enochs in the Bible before everyone gets like really freaked out by this. But to you But the name of the first city is Enoch.

SPEAKER_01

But to your point of like seeing what the scripture is actually trying to say, what are we trying to get to and have an understanding of that? And just the conversation we had about the the easer that he is creating his own changes my perspective of the question of who was his wife. And so that's exactly the thought that you're trying to get at is like when we understand the text for what it is attempting to say to you, those rabbit trail questions that you have become less squirrely because you're looking at it in the lens of what the scripture was trying to tell you in the first time.

SPEAKER_03

That's right. It they give the direction, they are the lines that we're coloring inside of. And so you see, like Kane kind of says, you know, no more wandering for me, you know. God gave me family, I kill family. I'm gonna do this my own way. He is rejecting God's mark, he establishes a new way of life, he's defining right and wrong for himself, he's trusting his safety to his own power rather than the Lord's hand, and he no longer views himself as part of a unified humanity. It's us versus them. And for the rest of humanity's existence, I would assume before the flood, any one of the people of the world who wanted to reject God's image would have had a place that they could go and join other people who are going the opposite direction. So rather than thinking of Cain's city as like a modern city, just sprawling off in size in every direction, uh, think of a fortified farm or a hamlet, uh, not New York, but an Eden of his own making, a place where he could be king, or worse, uh a priest. That's what we're looking at here. So God's ideal for humanity was the Garden of Eden, right? Adam and Eve are there, they don't seem to have created cities of their own, and in the Bible, cities are oftentimes a motif for describing mankind's futile attempts to control fate and create their own order. Uh the first cities named in scripture all have a negative connotation. You've got Enoch, uh, you've got the cities of Nimrod, uh, Babel, and Akkad, you've got Nineveh and the land of Assyria, you've got Ur falls into this category, and then you've got Sodom and Gomorrah. It's not a very happy list. Uh, and so you would assume that God must not like cities very much, and that everyone should be living a rural life, and God uh should just be like, you know what, you need to be in villages, not in cities. But God does something really beautiful, he doesn't cast away cities. As a matter of fact, by the time you read the book of Revelation, we do not find a garden of Eden descending from the sky. We find the city of God descending with Eden-like characteristics. So if you're in a city, you're like, oh no, God hates where I'm at. No, no, he does not. As a matter of fact, you're just surrounded by more and more imagers. You can image God beautifully in a city, you can image God well rurally. It's not about the placement, but God has the ability to take even something intended for rebellion and bring beauty and goodness and joy and righteousness through it. I think that's really cool. And so when we find God revealing the heavens to us in revelation, we find the city of God. But the cool thing about the city of God, right, it has walls, it's got big walls, and it has gates, which are defensive, but it says the gates are never closed. So there's a weirdness here. Why does the city of God have walls? Walls are defensive fortifications. That's what they are. That's what the ancient world they made walls to keep things out. But having open gates is a way of letting things in. And so you have this well, which is it? Is God gonna slam the doors on us any second here? No. The doors are wide open. The walls of the city of Jerusalem become beautiful. They are stunning in the way that they're described. But the gates are beckoning to you, and not just one gate, but lots of gates to the city. God has a temple. It's not built in a rural garden, but in uh the city of Jerusalem. And the same idea that's here. Walls are a defense against an enemy, and gates are barred to outsiders. The city of God retains the walls, but redeems their purpose. They're no longer instruments of exclusion. They become the welcoming arms summoning the people to the glory of God. Let's read the book of Revelation 21. And this is a longer one, okay? You're just gonna have to cope with this, but it's gonna need to be read. This is verses nine all the way through verse twenty-six.

SPEAKER_01

Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and spoke to me, saying, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. From where? Out of heaven. From God.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, this is a righteous thing. This is not a bad thing.

SPEAKER_01

Go ahead. Having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal, it had a great high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the Sons of Israel were inscribed. On the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south, three gates, and on the west three gates.

SPEAKER_03

Lots and lots of gates, and a great big wall that reminds us more of a jewel than it does a defense.

SPEAKER_01

Keep going. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. I mean it keeps talking about the gates and the walls.

SPEAKER_03

Keep going.

SPEAKER_01

The city lies four square, its length the same the same as its width, and he measured the city with his rod, twelve thousand stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. Seventeen oh well he that's verse seventeen. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement. So it's not just like a wall, that's a massive wall. Keep going. Which is also an angel's measurement. The wall was built of jasper, and the city was pure gold like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second, sapphire, the third, agate, agate, the fourth, emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh, Carillosite, and the eighth, barrel, the ninth topaz, the tenth cryoprase. Yeah, close enough. And the eleventh. Why are these getting weirder? The eleventh Jasonith and the twelfth amethyst. I got that.

SPEAKER_03

J just so you're aware, these are all stones that cast light. They're shiny. So the walls of the city are shining. This is something that is glorious, but walls are instruments of war, of exclusion. God has turned something that Cain invented or used into a beautiful thing. And so when people are like, You shouldn't be living in a city, God intended you to live on a farm. Well, okay. Except for we all seem to be moving towards a city not made with hands. That's what Abraham was looking for, is city not made with hands. Let's keep going.

SPEAKER_01

And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold like transparent glass. And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city had no need for a sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By the light will the nations walk, and the kings of earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night.

SPEAKER_03

And how does he describe the city as a place where God is as God's city, a place that is open for people? This is the beautiful example of what Cain tried to make in his own image. So God doesn't just say, Oh, cities are the devil. We don't want nothing to do with that. He redeems it and he holds it close to him. It becomes this expression of God's love for the people. So in a very real way, the walls of the city of Jerusalem are kind of like uh the nail wounds in the hands of Christ. History has happened, but it has not stopped what I was doing. They become glory, they become an element that isn't necessary, but with their presence there, we see the fullness of what God's nature is like, and you and I are called to join in with that.

SPEAKER_01

I think the most humbling thing about this whole scenario and about really all of our scenarios is that once again imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Eden is a city, the way that Cain views a city. And Eden is perfection. When Cain rebels against God, the only thing that he can think to do is try to do what God did in the beginning. Yeah, because Eden has a gate. The only difference is in Eden, God is there. In Cain's city, God doesn't want to live in Cain's city. That's right. And so the the humbleness that comes from that is the only thing that we can do is try to reproduce what God has already cr put into place.

SPEAKER_03

And so as we wander around in our villages, towns, cities, you should notice pretty quick, quick, like this may not be a godly place. But my calling is exactly the same. I'm either gonna wander like Abraham, or I'm gonna wander like Cain. I'm either gonna try to define this myself, or worse, just make like arbitrary the Bible doesn't like cities. Look at these this list, and you can say, okay, there's a motif here, but it's redeemed. It comes into a beautiful fulfillment. We see that God is not excluding people, He's welcoming, He's calling them in. And the same calling was given to Cain. Stop it. Just stop it. And I think the same thing could be said to me, like, John, why do you insist on doing this? Come back, repent, and I will, I, I will forgive you. It's as that's what he does. If we confess our sins, he is faithful, he is just to forgive us our sins. That's the opposite of Cain. And it's, I know it's easy to blame Cain, but it's it's also kind of the opposite of John Dillon. I'm a very bitter person. I have grudges that go back decades. And I have to constantly go to God and say, Lord, I'm embarrassed. I still have this. And I give it away, and then I find it in a drawer later on. And I'm like, oh, what do you know? I have it again. Old faithful. Yeah, old faithful. Here it is. I am seeing in Cain's story, even just this real short line of Cain runs away, settles in Nod, builds a city. There is a story arc here that is going to find its redemption in the end of Revelation. And I'm part of it. If you're living in a city, do so to the glory of God. If you're living in the village, do so to the glory of God. If you don't have a neighbor for miles, do so to the glory of God. Image him well. Because Jesus is the God of gods, the Lord of Lords, mighty and awesome.