Genesis 4-5: Humanity’s Unending Cycle of Births, Like Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Genesis 4-5: Humanity’s Unending Cycle of Births, Like Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Cain, having murdered his brother, receives punishment from God and is cast out to wander the earth. The only connection between him and God is the mark given to protect him from being killed. It’s a faint sign of hope, a gesture of divine affection. Genesis 4-5 records the long lives of Cain’s descendants—800 years, 900 years—descendants of Adam, who once sought to be like God, now trapped in endless cycles. The records of their lives are monotonous, disheartening, and ultimately meaningless. If the punishment for killing Cain is sevenfold, the punishment for harming his descendant Lamech increases to seventy-sevenfold. Sin and retribution pile up, layer after layer. Humanity, dwelling on a land soaked with Abel’s blood, accumulates cycles of hatred and vengeance. There’s no room to breathe, no comfort to be found. Hatred and vengeance suffocate like carbon dioxide; they don't bring life. Lamech, the descendant of Adam, born into this curse of hatred and vengeance, expresses a longing for comfort at the birth of his child, exposing the deep despair ingrained in these generations.

As I read chapters 4 and 5, I felt a growing sense of suffocation. It lingered with me. The endless records of births stretched on, imprisoning me in a dreary, futile expanse of time and space. What use is it to live for centuries? Even today, a lifespan of 100 years is not necessarily a blessing. Wouldn’t 800 years feel more like a curse? The emptiness I’ve experienced in my own life would simply be passed down to my children. No amount of hope for “comfort” could make a flower bloom in such desolation. There is no escaping this black hole of time and space.

As I sat there with my eyes closed, lamenting and fumbling through prayer, Matthew chapter 1 suddenly came to mind. That genealogy, too, contains hopes like Lamech’s desperate longing for comfort. But there is a difference. Genesis 4-5 is a record of human births, whereas Matthew and Luke record something else—God’s entry into human futility. The cycle of life didn’t continue by human effort alone; in the Gospels, God takes action within time and space. I realized that what Matthew and Luke glimpsed, I too could faintly sense, and the suffocating feeling lifted a little.