If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? The Lord here remonstrates with Cain as a wayward child; and the passage affords a very interesting example of the way in which the family of the first pair were instructed in the nature and right use of his ordinances. It has been translated in many different ways, some of which have greatly increased the difficulty inherent in it; and our own version is not free from this charge. The Septuagint translators, who seem to have had a different text from our present Hebrew copies, render the verse thus-`If thou hast rightly brought, but hast not rightly divided thy offering, hast thou not sinned? Be still.' A far superior translation is given in the Targum of Onkelos, who paraphrases it in the following manner:-`If thou make thy worship, shalt thou not be forgiven? and if thou dost not make thy worship good, to the day of judgment thy sin is reserved, prepared to take vengeance on thee unless thou repent; and if thou repent, it shall be forgiven thee.' What have chiefly thrown a stumbling-block in the way of interpreters are the two phrases "doing well" and "sin lieth at the door." At what door? It is naturally asked. One, like Onkelos, says, at the door of thy tent; another, at the door of thy mouth, ready to display itself in profanity; a third, at the door of thy heart, ready to take full possession of thee; a fourth says, at the door of thy sepulchre, ready to attend thee to judgment, and to bear witness against thee. But none of these are in agreement with the context.
There are two interpretations of this obscure and difficult passage which seem entitled to particular notice. The first, that adopted by Rosenmuller, Maurer, Gesenius, Tuch, Kiel, Jerome, Augustine, Ainsworth, and others, is this-`If thou shalt do good, shall there not be a lifting up?'-namely, of the countenance; i:e., Will you not be happy and cheerful, as a conscious rectitude of purpose and conduct will render you? (cf. Job 11:15; Job 22:26, where the same word is used in the original 'but if' thou shalt not do good, sin lieth at the door, 'ready, like the serpent, to assail you. And unto thee shall be its desire'-sin will strive to overcome you and domineer; 'but thou shouldst rule over it' - i:e., maintain the strict and steady command of your passions, and you will master them (Romans 6:12; Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5; James 4:7), otherwise they will drive you into sin, and make you a slave of evil (Romans 12:21; James 1:14-15). According to this view, God is arguing with Cain as a wayward child. His look is spoken of as indicating the harbouring of evil thoughts or purposes; an antithesis is preserved between the 'fall,' the downcast expression, and the 'elevation' or 'lighting up' of his countenance; and sin is personified as a beast of prey lying in wait (Genesis 49:9), and ready to seize upon his soul. It is objected to this view that the language addressed to Cain is so figurative and rhetorical that he could not have understood it; besides, that the second clause is wholly pleonastic, "not doing well" being synonymous with understood it; besides, that the second clause is wholly pleonastic, "not doing well" being synonymous with "sin."
The other interpretation considers chaTaa't, sin, in the sense of a sin offering-a sense which it most usually bears in the Pentateuch, and frequently in other parts of Scripture (Hosea 4:8; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 9:23); - "at the door" or gate, namely, of the garden, 'a sin offering crouching (shall by its blood expiate thy sin). There is a remarkable anomaly in the construction of the clause, which seems to warrant this interpretation-namely, the connection of the sin offering-a word of the feminine gender-with the participial form of the verb in the masculine; and although it is common to account for this by a peculiarity in Hebrew grammar, yet, as the same construction occurs in the Syriac New Testament in the important text, "The Word was made flesh" - where the verb masculine, without regard to the form of the associated noun, adapts its gender to that of the person whom it is used to describe, the Divine Word: so here the same rare mode of expression may be accounted for, and the grammatical anomaly satisfactorily explained, by considering that a male lamb was pointed to as the sin offering.
That this was the view which our translators took of the passage is evident from their rendering of the clause, "shalt thou not be accepted?" which they connected immediately with the offering. But the margin has, 'shalt thou not have the excellency?' i:e., the dignity and dominion belonging to the oldest son, who, next to Adam, was the head of the human family. And this version is preferred by many, as describing the real cause of all the fierce and unrestrained feelings which were at work in the moody breast of Cain. The divine speaker is considered as referring to the special privileges which, in the patriarchal ages the firstborn son enjoyed as the natural heir of the promise, and which Cain seems to have apprehended were endangered or withdrawn from him by the marked token of distinction so publicly bestowed upon his younger brother, who, although not named, was evidently alluded to, because uppermost in Cain's thoughts.
It was the re-instatement of those rights of primogeniture, the restoration of his superiority over Abel and all the rest of mankind, that the last clause promised to him, in the event of his correcting his error, and complying with the revealed will of God. The import of the passage, then, as thus interpreted, may be briefly stated: -`And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? And why is thy countenance fallen? Art thou displeased with the justice of my procedure in rejecting thy service? If thou wert sinless, as thy father before his fall, thy thank offering, in token of thy dependent condition as a creature, would certainly have been accepted. But as thou art in very different circumstances-a sinner-it was necessary to bring a sin offering, to ensure acceptance both to thy person and service; and if thou hadst done so, in the same spiritual frame of mind as Abel, thou wouldst have met with as welcome a reception as he, while the rights of primogeniture would have remained perfectly secure.' This latter interpretation appears to be the true one. It involves a reference to previous instructions (Hebrews 11:4), and a remonstrance with Cain for his wilful departure from the appointed ritual. It accords with the solemnity of the occasion, as well as with the dignity of the speaker; and, moreover, it contains a plain, direct, intelligible admonition, which would doubtless be very necessary in the early history of our fallen race, that no worshipper would be regarded as 'doing well' unless he came with the presentation of a sin offering, which, however worthless in itself, was of great efficacy when viewed in faith as typical of a better sacrifice.