He Shall Crush Your Head

The tears running down her cheek, leaves a shining trail all the way up to her deep dark eyes. She stares at the sandy yellow-brown soil as it slurps up the tears dripping from the bottom of her chin. She hardly notices Adam’s hand on her shoulder. All Eve can think about is her guilt. Oh, how she hates herself. If only she believed God when He told her that they would die if they ate from the fruit of that cursed tree, this would never have happened. But, it’s too late now.

The dreaded picture of Abel’s lifeless body (1) in that lonely hole in the ground is imprinted in her mind. She sighs when she thinks about how uncomplicated and perfect life was in the garden of God. How on earth could she have doubted God’s warning for one second, (2) believing that conniving, deceiving, creature instead? The mere thought of this makes her feel sick. Eve knows that she was deceived, but it’s no one’s fault but her own. She could not imagine the awful dread of death, even in her wildest dreams. Never before did anyone on earth die. Now, she was the first one to experince the awfull, bitter sting of death.

Adam looks at his wild-natured son in surprise. He is fully aware of the self-centered nature of his manipulating son, but thought that Cain would at least be filled with some measure of remorse, or at least understand the enormity of what he had done, but it seems that Cain is more concerned about himself than anything or anyone else. He keeps quiet for a while and then continues with a quivering voice as he tries to control himself. “Do you realise what you have done Cain? You have committed a murder! You took a life!” Adam hopes to get through to Cain by shouting the last part of the sentence, and keeps that tone of voice when he continues. “To make it worse, you took the life of your own brother. That is very serious, and you cannot pass the consequences of what you have done on to anyone else….. You cannot simply walk away from it all as if nothing has happened!” Adam throws his hands into the air in frustration, with a shake of his head.

Cain stretches towards the pile of wood, and selects a piece of wood from it with the intention to throw it into the fire, but then interrupts his intention by pointing the piece of wood in the direction of the cave entrance. “There is a wilderness out there dad, and I must admit that I’m afraid of it. I don’t know what to expect. I’m not ignoring what I did, but I must think of how this will affect my future. I thought that at least you would have some concern for my future as well. Abel is dead, and that it’s over now, but I am still alive and I still have a future.” He takes a deep breath and continues. “God said that I will drift out there somewhere, alone. I’ll be poor and I will be a fugitive for the rest of my life. Everyone out there will despise me.” He almost receives some sympathy when Eve looks up with a frown.