16
¶ And Cain went out from the presence of
the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. 17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived,
and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after
the name of his son, Enoch. 18 And unto
Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and
Methusael begat Lamech.
As the pre-Flood geography would be impossible to know
now where the land of Nod is would be impossible to determine although one
would suspect, if one believed that Eden would have been located where God’s
beloved Promised Land is, that Nod would have been in that nursery of great
ancient civilizations, Mesopotamia. Although whatever Cain had built would have
been destroyed in the Flood it could have been in the same general vicinity as
the great cities that came after.
Cain’s wife, who would have been his sister as
genetically humanity had just begun its slow deterioration that lent
deleterious mutations to every generation and made sexual union between brother
and sister very dangerous today for their offspring, gave him a son named
Enoch, whose name was given to this first city.
Here is the birthplace of
ancient religion as the
ancient city was a religious entity, a type of church, started all at once with
invited families who would share in the same worship and the same gods,
although the individual family would have its own singular worship and gods
which represented their lars familiaris or familiar spirits (see Leviticus
20:27), the guiding divinities of ancestors dead. (20) It is likely that Cain’s
false religion was carried on through his city.
In addition, each home in the ancient world was to have a sacred flame
which was the religious center of the home and must not be permitted to go out.
(21) This eternal flame, like the lamp in the tabernacle in Exodus 27:20, must
never go out. This was a counterfeit city in the ancient world, a city of man’s
creation, man’s poor attempt to replace what God intended. Cain’s false
religion, which will infect the rest of human history even after the Flood,
would have begun to be expressed by his brethren in this city, Enoch, and the
eventual religion of the city-states of Canaan, Greece, and the worship of Rome
and India would have begun here.
The king of an ancient
city was also the high priest, who offered up sacrifices, and was the highest
religious authority. This is evident in a number of ancient writers such as
Aristotle, Euripides, and Demosthenes. (22) My point is that the roots of
ancient worship were probably planted by Cain in this first city as a pattern
for future civilization.
(20) Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of
Greece and Rome (1864, repr. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006), 134.
(21) Ibid., 25.
(22) Ibid., 173.
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