Anonymous Asks (367)

“Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The question was glib and rhetorical when Cain asked it of God. He meant something like “Why would you ask me where my brother is? Ask him.” Of course, God knew where Abel was and why he couldn’t answer: Cain had just killed him in an envious rage.

So why are we asking ourselves a question that was first mouthed by a murderous liar trying to deflect?

Mining the Minors: Obadiah (3)

When we read Bible history or doctrine, we take for granted that the tenses used by the writers are important. “Don’t do it” is different from “You did it”. However, when we come to Bible prophecy, that ordinary rule of thumb goes right out the window. Prophetic tenses are all over the place.

Even secular observers can’t miss this odd feature of the genre.

Doesn’t Always Mean What We Think It Means (6)

We have been talking about brothers and brotherhood. Brothers share DNA, parents, history, culture and sometimes values. Ideally at least, brothers feel a sense of high obligation to one another and always have each other’s backs.

Other than in rare cases of Solomonic excess, one only has a few literal siblings. All others are only “brothers” in a figurative sense. On the basis of the Old Testament, I have compared brotherhood to the layers of an onion, in which the highest level of responsibility lies toward those at the center of our lives and radiates out through the “layers” of immediate family, then extended family, tribe and nation.

Doesn’t Always Mean What We Think It Means (5)

The majority of times the word “brother” is used in scripture, it denotes a male sibling, a family relation, someone swimming very close to another in the gene pool, a son of the same mother, father or both. In Hebrew, the word “brother” is 'ach, in Greek it is adelphos.

In this literal sense, Cain and Abel were brothers, Isaac and Ishmael were brothers, James and John were brothers. Little more need be said about that.