Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
7.
The cause of Cam’s crime, and his headstrong resolution
But in this matter of God’s speech with man, which I have described above, to the best of my power, what good was it to Cain when God spoke to him in the way in which he conversed with the first human beings, through the medium of a creature subject to him, taking on an appropriate form, as if he were a fellow-creature? Did he not carry out the planned crime in killing his brother, even after God had spoken a word of warning? God, we remember, had distinguished between the sacrifice of the two brothers, showing approval of the offering of the one, and disapproval of that of the other; and we must suppose that this distinction could be recognized by the evidence of some visible sign. The reason for God’s action must have been that Cain’s activities were evil, and his brother’s were good. But the result was that Cain turned sullen, and his face fell. For Scripture says, ‘And the Lord said to Cain: “Why have you become sullen? Why has your face fallen? If your sacrifice is rightly offered, but not rightly divided, have you not sinned? Calm yourself; for there is to be a return of it to you, and you will have the mastery over it.”’
30
In this admonition or warning which God offered to Cain, it is not clear what is the reason or ground for the saying, ‘If your sacrifice is rightly offered, but not rightly divided, have you not sinned?’ And the obscurity of it has produced a number of interpretations, in which each commentator on the holy Scriptures tries to explain the words in accordance with the Rule of Faith.
31
A sacrifice, to be sure, is rightly offered when it is offered to the true God, to whom alone sacrifice is due. But it is not ‘rightly divided’ when there is not a right distinction of the places or times of sacrifice, or the material of the sacrifice or its recipient, or those to whom the victim is distributed for eating. This is to interpret ‘division’ as here meaning ‘distinction’. An
offering may be at the wrong place, or the object offered may be inadmissible there, though appropriate elsewhere; it may be at the wrong time, inadmissible on that occasion, but appropriate at another time; or it may be an offering that is utterly improper at any time or place. Or it may be that a man keeps back for himself the choicer portions of the kind of things which he offers to God; or else the sacrifice is shared by a profane person, or anyone else who may not lawfully partake of it.
Now it is not easy to find out in which of these respects Cain displeased God. The apostle John, when speaking of those brothers, said, ‘Do not be like Cain, who was on the side of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason? Because his deeds were of evil intention, and his brother’s were righteous.’
32
This gives us to understand that God did not approve his gift, because it was wrongly ‘divided’ in this point, that he gave to God something belonging to him, but gave himself to himself. This is what is done by all those who follow their own will, and not the will of God; that is, those who live with a perverted instead of an upright heart, and yet offer a gift to God. They suppose that with this gift God is being bought over to help them, not in curing their depraved desires, but in fulfilling them. And this is the characteristic of the earthly city – to worship a god or gods so that with their assistance it may reign in the enjoyment of victories and an earthly peace, not with a loving concern for others, but with lust for domination over them. For the good make use of this world in order to enjoy God, whereas the evil want to make use of God in order to enjoy the world – those of them, that is, who still believe in the existence of God, or in his concern for human affairs; those who do not believe even this are in a much worse case. And so when Cain discovered that God had approved his brother’s sacrifice but not his own, he ought surely to have changed his ways and imitated his good brother, instead of showing pride and jealousy. In fact, Cain turned sullen, and his face fell. This is a sin which God particularly rebukes, namely, sulkiness about another’s goodness, and a brother’s goodness at that. And it was this that God was rebuking when he asked, ‘Why have you turned sullen? Why has your face fallen?’ Because God saw that Cain envied his brother, and that was what God rebuked.
Now from the point of view of human beings, from whom the heart of another person is hidden, it might be doubtful, in fact completely uncertain, whether Cain’s sullenness was due to remorse for his own evil intent, which, as he had learned, made him displeasing to God, or
to annoyance at his brother’s goodness, which pleased God, as was shown when God approved Abel’s sacrifice. But God gave the reason why he refused to accept Cain’s sacrifice, so that he should be rightly displeased with himself, instead of being wrongly displeased with his brother. Thus God showed that although Cain was unrighteous in not ‘dividing’ rightly, that is in not living rightly, and so did not deserve to have his offering approved, he was much more unrighteous in hating his righteous brother without a cause. However, God did not send Cain away without giving him a command which was holy, righteous and good. For he said, ‘Calm yourself; for there is to be a return of it to you, and you will have the mastery over it.’ Did it mean ‘over
him’
, that is, his brother? Heaven forbid! Over what, then? It can only be ‘over sin’. For God had said, ‘You have sinned’; and he went on, ‘Calm yourself; for there is to be a return of it to you, and you will have the mastery over it.’ The saying that there is bound to be a return of sin to the man himself can certainly be interpreted as meaning that he should know that his sin should be ascribed to his own fault and not blamed on another.
For this is a health-giving medicine of repentance and a petition for pardon which is suitable to the case. Thus, when God says, ‘For (there is to be) a return of it to you’, the verb to be understood is ‘should be’ rather than ‘will be’; it is said by way of prescription rather than prediction. For a man will have the mastery over his sin if he does not put it in command of himself by defending it, but subjects it to himself by repenting of it. Otherwise, he will also be its slave, and it will have the mastery, if he affords it encouragement when it occurs.
But sin can also be taken to mean carnal desire itself. Thus the Apostle says, ‘The desires of the flesh oppose the spirit’,
33
and among the ‘fruits of the flesh’ he includes envy; and it was certainly envy which goaded and inflamed Cain to his brother’s destruction. On that interpretation the verb to be understood is ‘will be’, and the passage will run thus: ‘There will be a return of it to you, and you will have the mastery over it.’ This is what may happen after the carnal element of man has been aroused. The Apostle gives this element the name of ‘sin’, in the passage where he says, ‘It is not my own action, but the action of sin which dwells in me.’
34
(There are also philosophers who say that this element in the soul is perverted, and that it ought not to drag the mind after it, but should be under orders from the mind, and restrained by reason from unlawful acts.) Thus, when this element has been aroused to commit some wrongful act, if we then calm ourselves
and obey the Apostle’s instructions not to ‘place your bodily parts at sin’s disposal, to be the instruments of wickedness’,
35
then that element ‘returns’, subdued and conquered, to the mind and accepts the mastery of reason.
This was God’s instruction to Cain, who was inflamed with the fires of jealousy against his brother, and longed to have him destroyed, when he ought to have imitated his example. ‘Calm yourself’, God said, ‘restrain your hands from crime, and do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires,
36
and do not place your bodily parts at sin’s disposal, as the instruments of wickedness. “For there will be a return of it to you” provided that you do not encourage it by slackening your control but bridle it by keeping calm “and you will have the mastery over it”. Thus, so long as it is not allowed to be active outwardly, it will become accustomed to remain quiet inwardly as well, under the control of the mind’s benevolent sovereignty.’
Something of this sort was said in the same inspired book about the woman also, when God asked questions and gave judgement after the sin. The sinners received the sentences of condemnation, the Devil in the person of the serpent, the woman and her husband in their own persons. God said to the woman, ‘I shall many times multiply your sorrows and your groaning, and in sorrows you will produce children;’ and then he added, ‘And your turning will be to your husband, and he will have the mastery over you.’
37
What was said to Cain about sin, or the perverted desire of the flesh, is said in this passage about the sinful woman, and here is to be taken as meaning that man, in ruling his wife, should resemble the mind which rules the flesh. For that reason the Apostle says, ‘A man who loves his wife is loving himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh.’
38
We should then look for a cure of those sins, as being our own, instead of condemning them as if they did not belong to us. But Cain received that instruction from God like a lawbreaker. For the fault of jealousy grew stronger, and he planned and carried out his brother’s murder. Such was the man who founded the earthly city. He also symbolizes the Jews by whom Christ was slain, the shepherd of the flock of men, who was prefigured in Abel, the shepherd of the flock of sheep. But this is a matter of prophetic allegory, and so I shall refrain from explaining it here. Besides, I recall having said something on this point in my book Against Faustus the
Manichean
.
39
8.
The reason why Cain founded a city among the first beginnings of the human race
My present duty, as it seems to me, is to defend the historical truth of the scriptural account, in case it may seem incredible that a city should have been built by one man at a time when there were apparently only four men in existence on the earth – or rather three men, after Cain had killed his brother. These three were the first man, the father of all, Cain himself, and Cain’s son Enoch, after whose name the city itself was called. But those who are worried by this have given too little consideration to the fact that the writer of this sacred history had no need to mention by name all the people who may then have existed. He only needed to give the names of those who were demanded by the plan of the work he had undertaken. For the intention of the writer, through whom the Holy Spirit was achieving his purpose, was to arrive at Abraham through the clearly denned succession of generations descended from one man; and then to pass from the line of Abraham to the people of God, which was kept distinct from all other nations and in which were prefigured and foretold all things which were foreseen, by inspiration of the Spirit, as destined to come, the things, that is, relating to the City whose kingdom will be eternal, and to Christ, its king and founder. And in this account the other society of men was not ignored, the society which we call the earthly city. It was mentioned as far as was necessary to enable the City of God to shine out in contrast with its opposite.
Now when holy Scripture mentions the number of years which those early men lived it concludes the account by saying of the man spoken about, ‘And he begat sons and daughters, and all the days’ that this or that man lived Were’ so many years ‘and he died.’
40
But the omission of the names of those sons and daughters, does not forbid the inference that during all those years that people lived in that first age of the world, large numbers of men could have been born and large numbers of cities also could have been founded by their association. But those narratives were written under the inspiration of God; and God’s purpose was to direct and distinguish, from the start, those two societies in their different lines of descent. And so on one side the generations of men, that is, of those who live by human standards, and on the other side the generations of the sons of God, that is, of those who live by God’s standards, were interwoven down to the Flood, where the discrimination and the combination of the two societies
is described. The discrimination is described in that the genealogies of the two societies are recorded separately, one deriving from Cain the fratricide, the other from the brother called Seth (for he was another son of Adam, taking the place of the one murdered by his brother). At the same time, their combination is described in that, as the good deteriorated, they all became bad enough to be wiped out by the Flood, except for one righteous man named Noah, his wife, his three sons and three daughters-in-law. These eight human beings deserved to escape in the ark from that destruction of all mortal beings.
About the first city the Scripture says, ‘And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch: and Cain built a city in the name of Enoch, his son.’
41
But it does not follow that we are to suppose Enoch to have been his first son. For this is not to be inferred from the fact that he is said to have known his wife, as if that meant that this was the first sexual intercourse he had with her. For the same expression is used of Adam himself, the father of all, not only at the time of Cain’s conception (and Cain appears to have been his first-born) but also later on, where the same Scripture says, ‘Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to a son, and called his name Seth.’
42
From this we see that this is the normal, though not the invariable, usage of Scripture, when we are told of the conception of men; but the expression is not confined to the first act of intercourse. And the fact that the city was called after Enoch’s name is not cogent proof that Enoch was his father’s first-born. It is not impossible that his father, although he had other sons, loved Enoch more than the rest for some reason. Judah, for example, was not a first-born son, and yet Judaea and the Jews get their names from him.
But even if Enoch was in fact the first-born of the founder of that city, we are not therefore to assume that it was founded by Cain and given Enoch’s name at the time of his birth. For a city, which is nothing but a number of people bound together by some tie of fellowship, could not have been established at that time by one man. However, when that man’s household grew to such a number as to reach the size of a population, then it was certainly possible for him to establish a city and give the name of his first-born to the city thus established. It must be remembered that the lives of men in that period were so long that of those mentioned in the narrative whose years are disclosed, the shortest-lived, before the Flood, attained the total of 753
years.
43
In fact, several passed the 900 years mark, although no one reached a thousand.
Then can one doubt that it was possible for the human race to multiply to such an extent during one man’s lifetime that there would be material for the founding of not one but many cities? We can very easily draw this conclusion from the case of Abraham. For from that one man the Hebrew people reproduced itself in such numbers in little more than 400 years
44
that there were, according to the account, 600,000 young warriors in the exodus of that people from Egypt.
45
And this is to leave out the nation of the Idumaeans, which does not belong to the people of Israel, being descended from Israel’s brother Esau, Abraham’s grandson,
46
and the other nations derived from the seed of Abraham himself, but not through his wife Sarah.
47