Cain and Job

Q. In the book of Job, God has an adversary. Is this the devil? In Genesis, when Cain was expelled from the first family, he expressed fear of being killed. By who?

A. Thanks for your questions. God doesn’t have an adversary per se; “the Satan” is one of the angels. (In Hebrew, it’s pronounced “sah-tahn,” not “say-tin,” and it’s preceded by the article “the.”) “The Satan” means “the accuser” and his job is to point out people’s shortcomings for potential judgment. He’s not “the devil,” he doesn’t rule Hell, and he doesn’t want your soul. Rather, he’s just the prosecuting attorney in the courtroom trial of our lives. Whether a prosecuting attorney is a good guy or a bad guy depends on your point of view – if you’re on trial for a crime you didn’t commit, he’s your biggest enemy, but if you’ve been mugged, he’s your best friend. Accordingly, what the Satan does isn’t evil per se, we just don’t like it because it’s a threat to us.

As far as Cain, he didn’t want to be killed by anyone! Sure, at that point the world population was pretty small (Adam, Eve, Cain, and a few daughters that Adam and Eve had who are not explicit in the text), but that would change over the course of the next few hundred years. Cain and his wife would have children, Adam and Eve had more children, those children had children.... There was a pretty sizeable population by the time Cain actually died. (According to the Midrash, Cain was the man who was killed accidentally by Lemech in Genesis 4:23-24.) So maybe the population was pretty small when Cain was exiled, but he knew that wouldn't always be the case, so he planned ahead.

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