4:16
¶ 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.[1] It is likely that Cain’s false religion was
carried on and evolved 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.[2]
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.[3] Sometimes there were two
kings, a most famous example being Sparta of Greece or, and evidence suggests
this in ancient Rome with a high-priest as a king for religious purposes, and,
we will see later, perhaps in ancient Canaan. My point is that the roots of
ancient worship were probably planted by Cain in this first city as a pattern
for future civilization.
[1] 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.
[2]
Ibid., 25.
[3]
Ibid., 173.
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