A you have commended yourself specifically by having carefully observed that which Paul [a] had handed down to Timothy to be kept; for it is evident that you are devoting yourself to reading. Furthermore, you have also stirred us, who are advanced in years and already broken by age, by the infirmity of the body, and by a multitude of troubles (for the great abundance of evils that has been set in motion against us has almost crushed our life), and you have refreshed and enlivened us with the fervor of your spirit, just like deep-burrowing animals, stirring us to wakefulness and to the reception of the vigor of life. The statement, therefore, can be understood in a simple sense as the words sound, and it can also admit of a varied interpretation. The explanation, then, that can be readily available to anyone is this: that Cain must pay a sevenfold penalty for the things in which he sinned. For it is not the role of a righteous judge to exact equal punishments for equal sins; rather, it is necessary for him to afflict the author of the offense with heavier penalties, so that he may both be corrected himself and make others slower to commit sin by his example. Therefore, since it was decreed that Cain should pay a sevenfold penalty for his crimes, he says that whoever kills Cain will release him from this very penalty decreed for him by the divine judgment. This is the sense that occurs first in this passage of the reading. But since the mind of the studious is accustomed to investigate the causes of things more deeply, it seeks to understand the justice of it: how is satisfaction given to it through a sevenfold penalty? Is the offense sevenfold, or is the fault simple and single, while the punishment for the one offense is sevenfold? The law of Divine Scripture always defines the number for the remission of sins by the septenary. "How many times," he says, "will my brother sin against me, and I shall forgive him—if he sins B against me" (the words are Peter’s to the Lord), "up to seven times?" Then the Lord answers: "I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven." For the Lord did not move to another number, but by multiplying the seven, He fixed the limit in it, and as it were, established the boundary of remission. And in the seventh year, the Hebrew was granted liberty. Seven weeks of years made that jubilee most celebrated among the ancients, in which the earth rested, the names of debts were rescinded, servitude was removed, and a new way of life, as it were, was established anew in the fiftieth year, with the prior and old way having been brought, as it were, to an end. All these things foreshadowed this age of ours, which circles around us in the orbit of seven days, in which the punishments for human faults are exacted for our sake, in accordance with the merciful care of our good God, lest we be condemned to eternal punishments for all eternity. The "sevenfold," therefore, is mentioned because of people’s closeness or affection toward this world, so that those who love the world more than is right may receive the greatest damages from the very debtors for whose sake they chose to sin. Furthermore, if you explain the offenses C of Cain to anyone, you will find seven; if you take those D ordained for him by the Judge, you will also not miss the meaning.
A First, the sin that Cain himself performed is envy, in that he felt Abel had been preferred before him by God. The second crime is fraud or deceit, with which he beguiled his brother, when he said: "Let us go out into the field." The third is murder. The fourth is an increase or completion of his crime, in that he slew his brother, and this increase makes the parricide a greater wickedness. The fifth is that Cain stood forth as the first murderer, and handed down a most evil example to posterity. The sixth offense is that he brought heavy grief upon his parents. The seventh is that he lied to God Himself. For when he was asked where his brother was, he said, "I do not know." Therefore, seven crimes in the murder by Cain were punished by seven penalties.
For the Lord said: "Cursed shall you be upon the earth which has opened its mouth to receive the blood of your brother, and you shall be groaning and trembling upon the earth." And Cain said: "If you cast me out today from the earth, and I shall be hidden from your face, and I shall be groaning and trembling upon the earth, then everyone who finds me will kill me." To this the Lord replies: "Not so; but everyone who kills Cain shall be punished sevenfold." B Since, therefore, Cain believed he would be easily taken by anyone, because he knew of no protection on earth, since the earth was cursed by him, nor did he look for help from God, who was angry with him on account of the murder, in such a way that, deserted by the hope and help of heaven and earth, he was excluded and said: "Everyone who finds me will kill me," the Word corrects his error, saying: "Not so," that is to say, "You shall not be killed." But he not only covers the wound, he also adds another to the murder, while he weaves a lie and says: "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?" From here, then, God begins to count the penalties. "Cursed shall the earth be because of you." This is the first penalty. "Work the earth." This is the second. For a certain unspeakable necessity was fastened to him, which so urged him to the work of the earth that it was not permitted to him even if he wished it to take C any part of rest, but it pressed him most assiduously; the earth was hostile and inimical to him, which he had made execrable to himself when he had defiled it with fraternal blood. For it is a bitter kind of punishment to live with those who hate you, and to retain an enemy within one's own house, and to nurse eternal hatred. "Work the earth," that is to say, "Relax at no time from the sweat of tilling and digging the earth, so that you recover from labor neither by night nor by day, but that, with an ultimate necessity which surpasses all servile servitude forcing you, you are always urged to work, and yet by your assiduous cultivation you do not make it better." For although continuous work has some fruit of labor from time to time, yet the labor itself brings immense trouble and torment to one who is always stretched tight, always occupied, and never ceasing from work. But you, with immense labor, will achieve nothing, nor will you make anything worth the effort, nor D
ment; you will carry that back with you. Moreover, "groaning and trembling A you shall be upon the earth." He added two other punishments: incessant sighs and the trembling of the body, having lost the strength and vigor which the limbs previously received. For since he had abused the strength of his body, its tension was taken away, so that he was made to shake and tremble, unable either to convey bread to his mouth safely or to bring drink to it with his impious hand following his murderous deed, his body being no longer permitted to perform its necessary functions. There is another punishment, which Cain revealed when he said: "If you cast me out today from the face of the earth, and from your face I shall be hidden." The most grievous punishment in the eyes of the wise is rejection from the face and sight of God. "And it will be, he says, that everyone who finds me will kill me." He conjectures that other punishments will follow from the previous ones. If You cast me out from the face of the earth, if You drive me from Your face, what remains but that, being proscribed, I can be taken away by anyone? What then does the Lord say? "Not so," but He set a sign upon him; this is the seventh punishment. But that the retribution should not be hidden, but proclaimed by an open sign, that this is the architect of wicked deeds (for to those who reason rightly, it is B the most grievous disgrace among punishments), is something we have also learned concerning the judgment, when these will rise to eternal life, and those to everlasting shame and reproach. There follows annexed to this a question regarding what Lamech said to his wives: "For I have killed a man for a wound, and a young man for a bruise." Therefore, a wound is one thing, and a bruise is another; and a man is one thing, and a youth is another. For if for Cain a sevenfold punishment was decreed, from the killing by Lamech four hundred and ninety punishments are to be exacted. If Cain was impious, if God's judgment regarding Cain was pious and just, so that a sevenfold punishment was inflicted, then he indeed designed murder with no example before him, but this latter one saw even the parricide undergoing punishment. Yet I, always seeing before my eyes the groaning and trembling Cain and the magnitude of the wrath and fury of God, have not learned from the example to be wise; whence I am worthy of four hundred and ninety stripes. Some, however, have advanced a line of reasoning of this kind, which is by no means foreign to ecclesiastical doctrine: namely, that from Cain until the flood seven generations passed. And immediately the punishment was brought upon the earth because of the great deluge of sin that had occurred. But the sin of Lamech did not require the cataclysm for its healing, but Him who takes away the sin of the world. C