Sin is personified by God as a beast crouching at the door, poised to overpower Cain. Just as Adam was tasked with ruling over the beasts of the field, so Cain must rule over sin. In the very next verse it is Cain who rose up against his brother, himself acting with animalistic violence.

Cain’s violence towards his brother is a result of passive submission to the violence of sin. Like his father before him, he acquiesced in the creature’s evil design. As such, his violence was first a weakness, a capitulation to an aggressor that he could, with God’s help, have overcome. And so, rather than fighting sin, he fought his brother. As Gen. 6:5, 11-12 makes clear, violence and oppression is the outworking of evil desires, of minds and hearts breached by sin, which colonises its receptive host.

It’s unclear how the serpent (Gen. 3) and the shadowy beast (Gen. 4) are related, except that they both belong to a kingdom of darkness that opposes the reign of God and his vice-regents. Later in Scripture, especially in the Psalms, the imagery of snakes reappears alongside lions and wolves and other beasts as enemies of God’s anointed Son. Deception and violence (the snake and the beast) remain the enemy’s modus operandi and the way by which he spreads his dark rule over the earth.

The sons of God are called not simply to resist their power but to subdue it. We are called to rule. But if we give the beast entrance, we ourselves will become beastly. Those who use force to overpower the weak have themselves been overpowered. The corruption of mind and heart that leads to violence involves a willing submission to the power of evil.

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