{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-6143","native_reference":{"book_number":10,"chapter_from":4,"chapter_to":4,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":9,"verse_to":9},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Bede</b>: And the Lord said to Cain: Where is Abel your brother? Not as if ignorant, to learn from him, but as a judge questioning a defendant whom he will punish.<br/><i>— Commentary on Genesis (Hexaemeron)</i></p><p><b>Bede</b>: He answered: I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? A foolish and equally arrogant answer; foolish, since he thought he could deceive Him who knew his sinful conscience and accused him of the crime of fratricide even before it was committed, as the knower of secrets; arrogant, since he denied being his brother's keeper in the manner of an obstinate servant, who by manifestation, if any danger threatened, should have taken care of his younger brother, and as the elder should have protected him from impending adversities.<br/><i>— Commentary on Genesis (Hexaemeron)</i></p><p><b>Ephrem the Syrian</b>: God appeared to Cain with kindness, so that if he repented, the sin of murder that his fingers had committed might be effaced by the compunction on his lips. If he did not repent, however, there would be decreed on him a bitter punishment in proportion to his evil folly.<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON Genesis 3.6.1</i></p><p><b>Ephrem the Syrian</b>: But Cain was filled with wrath instead of compunction. To him who knows all, who asked him about his brother in order to win him back, Cain retorted angrily and said, \"I do not know, am I my brother's keeper?\" … What then would you say, Cain? Should Justice take vengeance for the blood that cried out to it? Or not? Did it not delay so that you might repent? Did Justice not distance itself from its own knowledge and ask you as if it did not know, so that you might confess? What it said to you did not please you, so you came to that sin to which it had warned you beforehand not to come.<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON Genesis 3.6.1; 3.7.1</i></p><p><b>Maximus of Turin</b>: The divine Scripture always cries out and speaks; hence God also says to Cain, \"The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me.\" Blood, to be sure, has no voice, but innocent blood that has been spilled is said to cry out not by words but by its very existence. [It makes] demands of the Lord not with eloquent discourse but with anger over the crime committed. It does not accuse the wrongdoer with words so much as bind him by the accusation of his own conscience. The evil deed may seem to be excused when it is explained away with words. But it cannot be excused if it is made present to the conscience. For in silence and without contradiction the wrongdoer's conscience always convicts and judges him.<br/><i>— SERMONS 88.1</i></p><p><b>Philo of Alexandria</b>: (69) Why he who had slain his brother makes answer as if he were replying to a man; and says, \"I do not know: am I my brother's keeper?\" (#Genesis 4:9). It is the opinion of an atheist to think that the eye of God does not penetrate through every thing, and behold all things at the same time; piercing not only through what is visible, but also through every thing which lurks in the deepest and bottomless unfathomable abysses. Suppose a person said to him, \"How can you be ignorant where your brother is, and how is it that you do not know that, when as yet he is one out of the only four human beings which exist in the world? He being one with both his parents, and you his only brother.\" To this question the reply made is: \"I am not my brother's keeper.\" O what a beautiful apology! And whose keeper and protector ought you to have been, rather than your brother's? But if you have excited your diligence to give effect to violence, and injury, and fraud, and homicide, which are the foulest and most abominable of actions, why did you consider the safety of your brother a secondary object?\"<br/><i>— QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON GENESIS, I</i></p><p><b>Salvian the Presbyter</b>: Cain was at once the most wicked and foolish of men in believing that for committing the greatest of crimes it would be sufficient if he avoided other human witnesses. In fact God was the primary witness to his fratricide. Because of this, I think he then shared the opinion held by many today: that God pays no attention to earthly affairs; neither does he see those done by wicked men. There is no doubt that Cain, when summoned by the word of God after his misdeed, answered that he knew nothing of his brother's murder. He believed God was so ignorant of what had been done that he thought this most deadly crime could be covered by a lie. But it turned out otherwise than he thought. When God condemned him, he realized that God, whom he thought had not seen his crime of murder, had seen him.<br/><i>— GOVERNANCE OF GOD 1.6</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"ece6f0224048f2fac04be20daeca55b88ffe9ef4bf4f1c83b59355d9f7145985","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":6143,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"01a68e514bb2e0a34e5cf7b61c04e0df04c346b017b3e256929db8d6d2ccac22","translator":null,"work":null}