5. Family Law (Remastered)

Family Law

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Genesis 4:8-15, and our subject is ‘Family Law.’

“And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.”

Genesis 4:8-15

Our concern this morning is with Genesis 4:13-15 in particular. Our question with regard to these verses is to understand, what is the Law’s framework? Obviously whenever God acts and speaks, He has reference to His total Law framework. Of whom was Cain afraid here? Who was he afraid would kill him? And why did God protect a murderer? Was God acting contrary to His Law? The question itself is absurd! Then what law did God have in mind when for the first and last time in Scripture he protected a murderer? Or was he protecting the murderer? It is important for us to understand the significance of this passage so that we may understand more clearly God's Law.

Cain’s fear was obviously not merely a psychological fear because we are told, “God set a mark upon Cain lest any finding him should kill him.” Obviously then, Cain needed protection. Let us examine this text then, very closely; the fourteenth verse in particular. Leupold, a Lutheran commentator, translates it very literally: 

“Behold, Thou hast this day driven me forth off the ground and I must stay hidden from Thee, and I must be shifting and straying about in the earth, and it will happen that whoever finds me will slay me.” ⁱ

Now, these words of Cain very obviously presuppose the fact that the death penalty for murder had from the beginning been made known to Adam and Eve and their family. That this death penalty for murder was God’s purpose and was man’s duty. As a result, Cain’s words very obviously indicate he is in fear and in terror of both God and man, lest one or the other slay him, lest they execute upon him the death penalty for murder. So, already a part of the oral revelation of God to mankind was the death penalty for murder.

Of course, earlier, in verses nine through twelve, God Himself indicts Cain for murder. So obviously the penalty was known. And Cain saw a need to escape from both God and man.

Then the second part of verse fifteen, reads, according to Leupold: 

“And Yahweh gave Cain a sign that whoever found him would not murder him.” ⁱⁱ

Now, this is important to understand because we tend too often to think because of our present-day meaning of ‘mark,’ that it was a physical mark placed upon Cain. We can better translate it into modern English as a ‘sign of guarantee.’ In other words, Cain was given by God an assurance, a statement that made it clear to Cain that he would not be killed. Why did God do it?

Cain, as we have seen, feared God, and he feared man because God’s law required death for murder. Cain was at this time a mature and married man, as the seventh verse makes clear. Adam had many sons and daughters during his 930 years, according to Genesis 5:3-5. As a result, by the time of this murder of Abel by Cain, there was a sizeable family. There were a fair number of men of varying ages already on earth. Thus, there were many men capable of enforcing the death penalty against Cain. Adam was the head, obviously, of a large household, and it was a family clearly geared to discipline and to a law-order, ready to enforce its law. Both Cain and Able were obviously hard-working men. Why then did God protect Cain? 

The first thing we must say is that protection for crime was obviously not God's purpose because from one end of Scripture to the other, including this passage, God's hatred of sin is very clearly stated. God had no intention of protecting crime. God is always the enemy of sin, and sin is so fearful in the sight of God and His justice, so unwavering that it required the death penalty, the Cross of Christ, to make atonement for our sins.

The question we need to ask therefore is this: “What kind of law-order was God protecting when he let Cain go free?” Obviously God was not violating law, His own nature, His own righteousness; He was maintaining it. Then what law-order, what principle of law was God maintaining when He allowed Cain to go free?

This is the key question. To understand the answer, let us look again briefly at a law we considered some time ago; Deuteronomy 21:18-21, wherein every juvenile delinquent had to be executed, every incorrigible delinquent, and every incorrigible criminal. Deuteronomy 21:18-21. This law very clearly states that the death penalty is mandatory for all incorrigible delinquents, and therefore for all incorrigible criminals. In such a trial, the parents must be the complaining witnesses, or among the complaining witnesses. The loyalty of the parents must be to the law-order, God's law-order, not to their child, or else they are accessories to the crime. The parents either stand with God’s law-order and become complaining witnesses against their son, or they themselves are accessories after the fact. This is why earlier in American law, it is breaking down, this principle was applied to a great degree, so that if the parents of a delinquent were not complaining witnesses, they were held accountable for the offenses of a delinquent child.

But, we see further in this passage, Deuteronomy 21:18-21, that contrary to the usual custom or law rather, in this case the parents do not assist in the execution. We shall come, later on, when we deal with the commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” to the significance of the requirement that in the execution the witnesses assist. This is a fundamental part of Biblical Law. But in this case, the only exception, the parents are not to assist in the execution of the delinquent member. The family was thus excluded from the death penalty in any and every form.

Now Cain was obviously reared in a family which was a disciplined law-order as we have seen. Both he and his brother were disciplined, productive workers. Cain new the death penalty and feared it as we have seen. What the protection of Cain meant, therefore, was that the family was barred from the death penalty. This was the assurance that was given to Cain. A sign, a mark, a word of guarantee was given to Cain that no one would kill him. And what this obviously was, was simply this, that God declared: “Mankind still being one family, Adam and your brothers, are forbidden, and I shall declare this word to them, they are forbidden to execute you because the death penalty is not a power, nor a jurisdiction of the family.”

We know that this word was given to Adam, because Genesis 1:1 through 5:1 is “the book of the generations of Adam,” or we can also translate it, “the book of family records as kept by Adam.” So everything in the first four chapters to the first verse of the fifth chapter is Adam’s own record.

Adam therefore, had from God the declaration to Cain, and the declaration that they were not to touch him. The protection of Cain, therefore, meant that the family was barred from the death penalty. It is ironic that later on we are told in verse seventeen that Cain built the first city. And the word for ‘city’ is a walled habitation of men. A village was not walled, a city was walled to protect the inhabitants from others.

Now this point is significant. From whom was Cain protecting himself at this late date? Cain had departed from Adam and his brothers, and moved far out. Cain was protecting himself, not from the law-abiding household of Adam and his brothers, who lived in terms of God’s Word, but from his own progeny, his own children and grandsons. Lamech’s taunt song, as given later on in this chapter, makes it clear that Lamech said that: “If anyone insults me, I will avenge myself upon them seventy and seven fold.” So that Cain, whom God protected by virtue of His Law, that the family did not have the death penalty, had to protect himself, ultimately, from his own sons and grandsons because they were lawless.

The point, therefore, of this passage, and the question that comes to the minds of so many when they read this, “Why did God protect Cain?” was simply this, God was really protecting, not the murderer, but His own law-order. The family can discipline, it can punish, it can cast out its members, it can disinherit them, but it cannot kill any member. At that point the state, as the ministry of justice, must alone prevail. The family has real powers. As we have seen, it can do much to separate its ungodly member from itself, but coercion is not the essence of the family. Coercion is basic to the state and its power to kill. But in family law there is another factor; the husband cleaves to his wife in love. The children obey their parents as a religious duty. Basic to the family law is this inner bond of blood and faith, and the duty of gratitude towards one another. 

The word ‘gratitude’ incidentally does not appear in the Bible, the Biblical term is ‘thankfulness.’ The Scripture closely links God's authority and the parent’s authority, and speaks of the duty of children to be thankful to their parents and of all men to be thankful to God. This appears not only in the Law as in Leviticus 19:3 but in Isaiah 45:9-10, which reads:

Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker!

Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth.

Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou?

Or thy work, He hath no hands?

Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou?

Or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth?

The same thought is expressed in Isaiah 10:15. The idea of anyone being ungrateful to God or his parents is presented by Isaiah as the epitome of what is revolting and disgusting. The parents may not be lovable, there is no duty of love. But the duty of thankfulness and of honor or respect remains.

The lack of gratitude by children who receive not only life but very generous and even wealthy provisions is very commonplace in this day and age, and is as repulsive in our age as it was in Isaiah’s. Such children may lack other moral blemishes, but this is a very fearful one. The family tie is a deeply religious tie. According to Dooyeweerd, the psychic structure of the family is:

“…the feeling of authority on the part of the parents, on the other hand the feeling of respect on the part of the children.” ⁱⁱⁱ

Authority on the one hand, respect, which involves thankfulness, on the other. The absence of either authority or respect results in a serious breakdown of the family and of society. The family is not only a biological entity, but a religious one, and its inner ties are God-ordained and God-governed. The love may be absent, it may be undeserved, but the religious authority and the respect must remain.

The significance of barring the death penalty from the family is very great. Had the death penalty been executed in this case, a precedent would have been set. The result for the world would have been anarchy. No state could have developed, because every family would be its own law, executing its members and anyone who offended it from any other family, and you would have then the anarchistic kind of world that the anarchists dream of, except the anarchists are especially insane; they deny both the state and the family, and theirs becomes an atomistic world.

The development of the state as the ministry of justice was made possible when God set a mark of guarantee upon Cain, protecting him from the death penalty until a non-family law could take over, until men had grown enough in population and numbers, so it would not be the family executing the criminal. God therefore, in setting a mark upon Cain, in giving him a guarantee that he would not be killed, was protecting His own law-order, protecting His righteousness.

It is important therefore for us to understand the sign or guarantee given to Cain. It set a limit on the powers of the family, and made it clear that the death penalty is always the jurisdiction of the state.

Let us pray.

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for this thy Word. We thank thee that at all times we are surrounded by thy law-order, that it is the very air of our spiritual existence and that men can no longer live without thy law than they can live without air. We thank thee our Father that thy justice shall govern all of man’s history. And we can therefore with confidence face tomorrow knowing that thy justice shall prevail, that the ungodly shall perish in their way, and thy Word shall stand. Make us strong in thy Word that we by thy grace may stand in the evil day and may prevail. In Jesus' name. Amen. 

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience Member] When was did the first state develop? ^iv

[Rushdoony] We are not told specifically when the first state was established. But it very quickly does appear that there was law, or progressively, lawlessness. But there are various passages that do imply the existence of a law-order. And when we come to Nimrod, we know that not only was there a state, but there were tyrants. Because, what is translated, “A mighty hunter before the Lord,” probably meant, “A mighty tyrant before the Lord” or against the Law of God. So that by Nimrod’s time and the founding of Assyria, the post-flood Assyria, there were very definitely tyrants. The state was thus very early created.

[Audience Member] There must have been some justice that these early states meted out? ^v

[Rushdoony] Yes. Right. Even the ungodly state must, to a certain extent, abide by God’s Law or anarchy prevails. In other words, it cannot have total lawlessness, because if it does, it collapses. An interesting illustration of this is the Soviet Union. One of the first things it did after it gained power was to destroy the family. It nationalized women. It destroyed the family by placing babies in nurseries. It destroyed everything in the way of discipline and education. Well, what was the consequence? Well, first of all, the birth rate dropped alarmingly. Second, the babies died in nurseries without a mother’s care, and third, the children who were of sub teen and teenage, became roving wolf packs everywhere. And those of you who are old enough to remember reading the newspapers and the magazines of the 1920’s and early ’30’s remember that the wolf packs were a major problem in Soviet society. It was an anarchistic situation. 

So the only thing to save themselves from total collapse, and also to have a birth rate that would make possible a future for the country was to reinstitute strict laws of marriage, strict discipline in the schools, out went John Dewey and everything that Dewey represented. They had embraced Dewey at the beginning of the 20’s, they junked him in the 30’s. In other words, while despising everything that God represents, they had to borrow through the back door certain elements of godly discipline to prevent themselves from collapsing totally. 

So, to some extent, every state must adopt a certain amount of godly law-order.

Yes?

[Audience Member] If all came from two people, how would the family become a non-family, as it were, Dr. Rushdoony?

[Rushdoony] Well, in no time at all of course with the rapid growth of the population, the families isolated and separated themselves, so that third, fourth, fifth, sixth, cousins no longer knew each other; it is a rare person who knows his third cousins today. So you can see how very quickly mankind became diversified and a state could develop, especially as some of these went off and lost association with the others.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Why didn’t God then reveal the law against murder and the exception for family groups at the same time rather than waiting until this point to announce it by special revelation? ^vi

[Rushdoony] Yes, God had made known His Law, but He had made known that it was not as yet applicable, only after the murder. In other words, here was the law which was to be a restraint. It failed to prove a restraining action on Cain, but consider how much more ready Cain would have been to commit murder had he been told in advance there would be no death penalty executed immediately because of the family situation. God gave His Law, then he added to it another law; the restraint upon the family.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Do we know how Cain died? ^vii

[Rushdoony] We are not told how Cain died. So we don’t know. We simply don’t know. We do know that he protected himself against his own progeny, which is a grim fact.

Yes?

[Audience Member] When God says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” what does that mean, Dr. Rushdoony? ^viii

[Rushdoony] Yes. When God says: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” He declares that it is not up to us as individuals to enforce the death penalty or to take the law into our own hands, it can only be fulfilled either directly through God or through the God-ordained channels. 

Now, the state is one means whereby God repays people, the death penalty, God has decreed it. Therefore, as we saw some months earlier repeatedly, officials of state are called in Scripture, “gods.” Because, our Lord said, “To them the Word of God came.” That is, the word of His justice, His vengeance. So they act of God when they execute men. But when they fail, “Because ye have disobeyed, ye shall die like men;” ^ix “you too shall be executed.”

So that the state, when it operates faithfully in terms of God's law-order, is executing the vengeance of God upon the murderer, upon the thief, upon every kind of wrongdoer. Similarly, in every law-order the vengeance of God operates. In the school, when there is discipline, in the family; each, as it fulfills its purpose, is fulfilling the vengeance of God upon evil.

Yes?

[Audience Member] How would you define sin, Dr. Rushdoony? ^x

[Rushdoony] Sin is any want of conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Why was Cain’s offering not accepted? ^xi

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now, that is a very good question and an important point. The offering of atonement was always a blood offering. Because the meaning of atonement is that the penalty for sin against God is death. That ultimately, Christ was to die for the sins of mankind. Now, an unbloody offering was a peace offering after, it was a communion offering after the atonement. But Abel, when he brought the first things of his flock and the fat thereof, made an offering of atonement. But Cain brought, “of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.” In other words, he bypassed atonement. He said: “I am ready to make a gift to God if that is what He wants, but I don’t need atonement; I am alright as I am.”

In other words, Cain was essentially a humanist, he didn’t need saving by God, that was the presupposition of his offering.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Should humanism be destroyed?

[Rushdoony] Yes, humanism must be destroyed, because the essence of humanism is the worship of man by man and it is anti-Christian to the core.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Comment about the close alignment between US politicians and their policies and their openly-Marxist counterparts.

[Rushdoony] Well, it is not surprising. The humanists only differ in degree from the Marxists because Marxism is humanism. 

Our time is just about up, and it was suggested that I touch briefly on the economic situation. As you know there is a credit crunch underway, and this is a part of the whole inflationary cycle. As inflation progresses, the various countries put the brakes on for fear of runaway inflation. As a result, you have alternating credit crunches and inflationary booms. And as inflation proceeds, these become all the more frequent and drastic. Meanwhile because everyone else is caught up in the inflationary cycle, they too are increasingly vulnerable because they operate increasingly in terms of debt or inflation.

Now, earlier a work was written, I believe… yes, in March of this year before the credit crunch began. J Irving Weiss, the Money Squeeze. In this he saw the credit crunch, which began in May, very clearly. And he pointed out how serious the crisis is for American industry, in fact industry all over the world. He gives a list of twenty-five major corporations, and points out how limited their liquidity is; that is, how deeply in debt they are, and how little operating cash they have. For example, Boeing. 

“At the end of 1967 its net quick-cash deficit in millions of dollars was 640. Days of bills covered by cash on hand, 8. Days it takes to turn over cash, 8. Days of elbow-room left, zero. 

Ford, in June of 1968, net quick cash deficit in millions of dollars: 1,880. Days of bills covered by cash on hand, 33. Days it takes to turn over cash, 25. Days of elbow room left, 8.

General Electric, end of 1967. Net quick cash deficit; $1,640 million, or billion it would be over a billion and a half. Days of bills covered by cash on hand, 15. Days it takes to turn over cash, 15. Days of elbow room left, zero.”

And I could go on, and all the figures, Kaiser Aluminum, General Motors, General Telephone, Sears Roebuck, Shell, Standard, Teledyne, Xerox, Polaroid, all of them are in very bad situation. Polaroid is somewhat better than most, quite a bit better.

This means, of course, they are operating on practically no margin, they have no liquidity. This is the same as saying for us, that there is no cash in our pocket to deal with any crisis, we just have barely enough to pay our bills and have nothing left over, and if anything happens we are in the soup.

So, this is the crisis that faces not only the various governments of the world, but industry as well. Then from the Cointact, a newsletter on coins and monetary problems, May 69 issue: 

“Fine print on bank loan contracts now reads, quote: ‘Banks may call for repayment in silver or gold.’”

And where are you going to get the silver or gold nowadays on a bank loan?

Then you are told that there is so much gold being mined that, “What use is there for it?” But, I quote again from Cointact.

“Dr. Franz Pick reports that today industrial and commercial demand for gold is between 800 and 850 tons a year. That is almost equal to South Africa’s annual production.” 

In other words, virtually all the gold in the world today that South Africa, which produces most of it, has to go for industrial and commercial demands, which leaves practically nothing for monetary purpose. So don’t believe what you are told about South Africa having a surplus, and any time it dumps this surplus on the world market it is going to break the price of gold.

Then this: 

“The familiar Lincoln copper cent will be replaced by a more prolific, non-strategic metal in the very near future.” 

It now takes the intrinsic of 42 sandwich type dimes, that is, any dimes 1965 to date, to equal the price of a cup of coffee. That is, as far as real value is concerned. And then this warning: 

“If you are buying small silver bars be careful. Lots of silver-plated bricks around, and always at bargain prices.”

I think that is just about it, so we are adjourned.

i. H.C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1942), 208.

ii. H.C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1942), 211.

iii. Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1957), III, 294.

iv.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

v.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

viii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

ix. Psalms 82:6-7.

x.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.