23 And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, hear my voice, ye
wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech.


One would naturally suppose that Cain's offering of fruit indicated a
more refined and spiritual idea of the fitness of things than Abel's of
animal food. Why Cain's offering was rejected as unworthy does not
appear.

There is something pathetic in Eve's joy and faith at the advent of
her first-born: "Lo I have a man child from the Lord." She evidently
thought that Cain was to be to her a great blessing. Some expositors
say that Eve thought that Cain was the promised seed that was to bruise
the serpent's head; but Adam Clarke, in estimating woman's reasoning
powers, says, "it was too metaphysical an idea for that period." But as
that is just what the Lord said to Eve, she must have had the capacity
to understand it. But all speculations as to what Eve thought in that
eventful hour are vain. Clarke asserts that Cain and Abel were twins.
Eve must have been too much occupied with her vacillating joys and
sorrows to have indulged in any connected train of thought. Her grief
in the fratricidal tragedy that followed can be more easily
understood. The dreary environments of the mother, and the hopeless
prophesies of her future struggling life, banished to a dreary,
desolate region, beyond the love and care of her Creator, is revenged
on her children. If Adam and Eve merited the severe punishment
inflicted on them, they should have had some advice from the Heavenly
Mother and Father as to the sin of propagating such an unworthy stock.
No good avails in increasing and multiplying evil propensities and
deformities that produce only crime and misery from generation to