The view that he was bad from birth has little following within modern scholarship, but popular perception of the story treats him as a chronic case of badness and beyond redemption once the murder is committed.
This response is itself one way to deal with bad people - categorise them. Separate them out from the others, as if goats from the sheep who have not crossed the line into badness. If they are very bad, confine them in a goat-hold or, if only partially bad, simply label them with the stigma of goat identity.
Reactions to the fate of Cain among today's readers, and in church tradition through the centuries, sound strident notes that are in harsh harmony with some contemporary voices. These are the voices that are arising in Western societies facing increasing social violence.
We are told with regard to Cain: he is a criminal; he should by rights have died for what he did; his banishment is a lesson for us all.
Regarding those who commit violent acts today, we hear it said: they should be punished; lock them up and throw away the key; if there is no justice there is no closure for victims.
Vengeance says, not in this case the Lord, but the culture. Or rather the culture is presuming that vengeance is what the Lord says.
Maybe this call to deal to bad people can be traced to early instincts. Children speak the phrase 'that's not fair!' from a very young age so perhaps this is a primitive force. The importance of getting as much as the person next to us (often a sibling) may be something deep within us, even prior to any influence or example. The question whether the cause is innate or environmental - nature or nurture - is probably academic because of how early it is ensconced in life. I, as a little child, demand consistency to ensure that I get what I need and from that it is a short step to demanding what I need because it is what I deserve. It is then another short step to carry this across to what happens when things go wrong: if I get into trouble for something I do, then others should get into trouble too when they do the same sort of thing. The sense that everyone should get their 'just desserts' becomes linked to punishment. So also does justice.
What can satisfy this demand for a justice that closes the case? What can establish a fairness that ties up the loose ends and puts an end to complaint?
Some sort of payment seems to suggest itself as a way to put the situation in order. It seems to need pay-back or retribution to put the wrong-doer back on the positive side of the tribute ledger. This may relate to the tendency in human experience to simplify very complex realities - e.g. actions, interactions, desires, intentions, effects and consequences - in an attempt to make them manageable. That is, the complexity of decisions and circumstances, of personalities and potentialities, are simplified into the notion that good people do good things and bad people do bad things. Good people gain credits from the good things they do and can be seen as rewarded by the society that benefits from their good deeds (through conferring prosperity or status) or they are somehow rewarded later, with the help of an after-life of reckoning. Bad people do things to their discredit because their actions do damage, and any damage done must be paid for by the bad people in order to level the accounts.
But why is this call made to extract payment in order to equalise the situation? How come we think it will work?
It seems to me to be part of a wider call for law and order. It is part of wanting to ensure the kind of security that goes with set systems and the guarantees of clear-cut rules. We have a hankering for certainty, and a deep-seated desire to know what will come next and be sure where we stand with it.
But this is not the most constructive way to react. The lesson for Cain to learn is that there is no certainty about what will happen and why it will happen. There is nothing to gain by doggedly pursuing the need to know: one simply has to learn to live with what happens as it happens. In the face of this mysterious unfairness of the world and how we interact with it as individuals and communities, we are wise to take it on the chin, so to speak. We are wise to join Qohelet, the writer of Ecclesiastes, and embrace the goodness that life has to offer:
What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures forever. (Ecclesiastes 3:9-14a)
Despite appreciation of this as wisdom for constructive living, the impulse to vengeance seems to hold considerable ground. It is hard to let go the focus on sorting out the past and the urge to comprehend the basic incomprehensibility of existence remains strong. Now the urge to ask more questions and discover new knowledge and skills is constructive and enhances the life-options of the people involved. But there is a limit. Qohelet has probed deeply into the logic of the world, in the philosopher's endeavour to uncover a rational system driving all things and actions. He has found that there is no all encompassing rational system to be found: the world is only as logical as it is found to be, as a philosophy teacher at Otago University used to tell us.
This is the way it is, yet Qohelet does not give into this fundamental irrationality. Even if unfairness proves to be something fundamental and mysterious that does not mean we should be resigned to suffering nor try to live in detachment from the suffering:
We want to know what Qohelet really believes. But Qohelet goes no further. He is at a dead end. He is frustrated and his readers should be too. Life is frustrating, and Qohelet refuses to make it any easier for us. His only response - not solution - is to urge us to embrace the good things that come to hand. We must tend our garden, though it will wither.
Qohelet confronts the end of life and its comprehensibility, but then, as confronted and not denied, it is no longer just an end but an "edge", a "threshold" on which this new move of embracing life can be made.
But this "dead end" which can be experienced as 'edge' retains the fractures and disjunctures that threaten a final end. It is not emotionally neutral and not easily emotionally calm. It brings to mind another question relevant to Genesis 4:
One answer relates to the incomprehensibility of unfairness. If one assumes that life is supposed to be fair - if one presumes it can be made to fit the logic of rationality - the only way to stave off the "dead end" of irrationality is to fight against it. This fight feeds an anger that lashes out in the belief that for every action there needs to be an equalising reaction. Something must be done to make this bad situation right for me here and now. But equality cannot be the main matter at hand: indeed it is not among the realistic expectations of the world we live in and its pursuit for its own sake is damaging.
The concept of equality functions well as an ideal against which to assess the world at a particular point in time. It is helpful to check whether there is something in the unequal situation that could have been, could in future be, different. The purpose then is to use human energies positively for the future, to help produce future situations that are more likely to be life-giving and put limits on the death-dealing. That is, justice can be done for the sake of a better future in terms of life, not death.
But when equality is claimed as one's possession or right, it promotes reaction to past situations rather than pro-action for the future, the reaction of endeavouring to equalise the situation. The goal is to achieve closure to past events - somehow. But this can use up so much energy tracking to an end that produces no new life or happiness and often more death and anger, that there is little energy left for pursuing new openings.
Seeking payment to reinstate order takes a past-centred perspective and produces a kind of lifeless equality. In contrast the advice to Cain points to the future, encouraging him to seek a way of responding that would equip him well for subsequent situations and would keep his resource base strong (that is, keep him on the land and keep him connected to others). What he needs is a store of experience in coping with whatever happens without falling apart. He needs confidence in his ability to feel the pain and unfairness of life yet get on with living by getting on with the people and world around him. He needs the means to pick up the pieces - to restore himself to functioning life again.
There is injustice in Cain's situation of receiving a bad report for his crops and there is order that needs to be restored in the light of this injustice. There is also order that needs to be restored in the light of the injustice perpetrated by Cain in killing his brother.
But it is not the kind of order reinstated by payment to level the balance of accounts, but another kind. It is like the order that in physics and chemistry is called negentropy - order that holds energy ready for action.
It is the stored supply of potential energy that converts, when it is released, into motion or heat and thereby generates new actualities. Building up negentrophy is a continual process of re-ordering, the most widely experienced example of which is the order-restoring that goes with housework. On planet Earth living organisms keep putting order into this energy system which on the inorganic side keeps increasing in disorder (entropy). Entropy, the reduction of stored forms of energy and the associated increase in dissipated, dispersed forms, is given some pause by the efforts of living organisms building up stored energy (negentropy) to sustain their existence.
Housework likewise re-orders by re-producing the kind of negentropy that is called tidiness and cleanness, in response to the recurring entropy of dirt and messiness. Doing housework adds to the potential energy of the situation - notably to the potential energy of the people whose house and home it is - by renewing the living space in which they find themselves reordered and restored. Note that this also happens whenever the soil is tilled and cared for, when, like Qohelet, we "tend our garden, though it will wither".
The issue remains open.
But at least if it is recognised to be a real question, and not already answered by systems of payment and expectations of vengeance, then we may be able to start negotiating some restorative resolutions.