life and rebellion: a tale of two mothers

I’ve been studying the early chapters of Genesis rather extensively as part of my BibleProject class over the last couple of months. It may seem like an odd place to find foreshadowings of the Christmas story, but not if you’re a Bible nerd. After all, everything begins at the beginning.

This verse, in particular, has been making me think:

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a manchild with [the help of] the Lord.”
- Genesis 4:1

One reason I’ve been dwelling on this verse so much is just the obvious translational liberties that have been taken with it—well-intended, but still risky. The bracketed words, “the help of,” do not exist in the Hebrew; they’re added by the translators in an effort to make the sentence make more sense to us. And the word “manchild” is actually just the ordinary Hebrew word for “man.” No reference to a child.

So let’s read it without those alterations:

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a man with the Lord.”

The verb phrase have gotten is related to the same word used of God to denote His status as the source, Creator, and possessor of all things. And the word with, while it could mean with the Lord’s help as the translators have suggested, can also just mean in proximity to the Lord—or similar to what the Lord has done.

So there’s at least one alternative way of understanding Eve’s words: “I have made a man, just like God.” She whose name means “life” may have read a bit too much of her own press and believed that she really could create life, just like Yahweh.

Whether Eve saw Cain as a gift she acquired with the Lord’s help or as a boastworthy achievement that fulfilled her deep-seated longing to be “like God” (Genesis 3:5), we can make one educated guess: She was hopeful that this man would fulfill the words of the serpent’s curse and deliver the death-blow to the sin and deception she had welcomed into Paradise.

The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life; and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”
- Genesis 3:14-15

Could Cain be that victorious seed? Could Eve’s ill-advised grasp for power and wisdom on her own terms be reversed, and righteousness restored to God’s image-bearers?

No.

Instead, the man Eve created—the son of her fallen flesh—became the father of hatred, jealousy, and murder on the earth. Although his parents were the ones who fell, Cain himself is the first human to draw his first breath in a fallen state. When he raises his hand to kill his brother Abel, he kills all the remaining goodness in his life as well—his identity, his work, his relationships within his family—and is separated forever from the face of the Lord.

Eve goes on to bear more children and receive them with greater humility (Genesis 4:25), but the serpent lives on—and with him, thousands of years of brutality and bloodshed, jealousy and murder, hatred and division.

Until another young woman, whose name paradoxically derives from the word for “rebellion,” meets a being from the spiritual realm.

And the angel [Gabriel] said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and give birth to a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; for that reason also the holy Child will be called the Son of God.” … And Mary said, “Behold, the Lord’s bond-servant; may it be done to me according to your word.”
- Luke 1:30-35, 38a

Eve “created” a man through the flesh. Mary submitted herself as a vessel for the Son of Man through divine conception.

Eve thought her son would make her like God. Mary’s Son would be God Incarnate.

Eve hoped her son would rescue her from the consequences of her sin. Mary’s Son would wipe out the sins of all humanity.

Eve’s son became the father of murder and the instrument of the first human death. Mary’s Son became the Resurrection and the Life.

Eve’s son was the first in a long, long line of disappointments who never overcame the wiles of the serpent—but Mary’s Son was the One who, though wounded in the battle, finally crushed him.

And Mary said:

“My soul exalts the Lord,
And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
For He has had regard for the humble state of His bond-servant;
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed.
For the Mighty One has done great things for me;
And holy is His name.
And His mercy is to generation after generation
Toward those who fear Him.
He has done mighty deeds with His arm;
He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones,
And has exalted those who were humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
And sent the rich away empty-handed.
He has given help to His servant Israel,
In remembrance of His mercy,
Just as He spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and his descendants forever.”

- Luke 1:46-55

The woman named Life became the mother of death. The woman named Rebellion became the mother of salvation.

Where history would look back on Eve as one accursed, Mary knew from before Jesus was even born that she would be remembered as blessed among women, for she was considered worthy to bear and raise her own Savior—and not through any doing of her own, only surrender to the work of the Lord.