WHAT CROUCHES AT THE DOOR?
by
Alexander Maclaren
'If thou doest not well, sin croucheth at the door: and unto thee shall be
his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.'--GENESIS iv. 7 (R. V.).
These early narratives clothe great moral and spiritual truths in
picturesque forms, through which it is difficult for us to pierce. In the
world's childhood God spoke to men as to children, because there were no
words then framed which would express what we call abstract conceptions.
They had to be shown by pictures. But these
early men, simple and childlike as they were, had consciences; and
one abstraction they did understand, and that was sin. They knew the
difference between good and evil.
So we have here God speaking to Cain, who was wroth because of the rejection
of his sacrifice; and in dim, enigmatical words setting
forth the reason of that rejection. 'If thou doest well, shalt thou not be
accepted?' Then clearly his sacrifice was rejected because it was the
sacrifice of an evil-doer. His description as such is given in the words of
my text, which are hard for us to translate into our modern, less vivid and
picturesque language. 'If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door; and
unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.' Strange as the
words sound, if I mistake not, they convey some very solemn lessons, and if
well considered, become pregnant with meaning.
The key to the whole interpretation of them is to remember that they
describe what happens after, and because of, wrong-doing. They are
all suspended on 'If thou doest not well.' Then, in that case, for the first
thing--'sin lieth at the door.' Now the word translated here 'lieth' is
employed only to express the _crouching_ of an animal, and frequently of a
wild animal. The picture, then, is of the wrong-doer's sin lying at his door
there like a crouching tiger ready to spring, and if it springs, fatal. 'If
thou doest not well, a wild beast crouches at thy door.'
Then there follow, with a singular swift transition of the metaphor,
other words still harder to interpret, and which have been, as a
matter of fact, interpreted in very diverse fashions. 'And unto thee
shall be _its'_ (I make that slight alteration upon our version) 'desire,
and thou shalt rule over it.' Where did we hear these words before? They
were spoken to Eve, in the declaration of her punishment. They contain the
blessing that was embedded in the curse. 'Thy desire shall be to thy
husband, and he shall rule over thee.' The longing of the pure womanly heart
to the husband of her love, and the authority of the husband over the loving
wife--the source of the deepest joy and purity of earth, is transferred, by
a singularly bold metaphor, to this other relationship, and, in horrible
parody of the wedded union and love, we have the picture of the sin, that
was thought of as crouching at the sinner's door like a wild beast, now, as
it were, wedded to him. He is mated to it now, and it has a kind of tigerish,
murderous desire after him, while he on his part is to subdue and control
it.
The reference of these clauses to the sin which has just been spoken
of involves, no doubt, a very bold figure, which has seemed to many
readers too bold to be admissible, and the words have therefore been
supposed to refer to Abel, who, as the younger brother, would be subordinate
to Cain. But such a reference breaks the connection of the sentence,
introduces a thought which is not a consequence of
Cain's not doing well, has no moral bearing to warrant its appearance here,
and compels us to travel an inconveniently long
distance back in the context to find an antecedent to the 'his' and
'him' of our text. It seems to be more in consonance, therefore, with the
archaic style of the whole narrative, and to yield a profounder and worthier
meaning, if we recognise the boldness of the metaphor, and take 'sin' as the
subject of the whole. Now all this puts in concrete, metaphorical shape,
suited to the stature of the bearers, great and solemn truths. Let us try to
translate them into more modern speech.
1. First think, then, of that wild beast which we tether to our doors by our
wrong-doing.
We talk about 'responsibility' and 'guilt,' and 'consequences that
never can be effaced,' and the like. And all these abstract and
quasi-philosophical terms are implied in the grim, tremendous metaphor of my
text 'If thou doest not well, a tiger, a wild beast, is crouching at thy
door.' We are all apt to be deceived by the imagination that when an evil
deed is done, it passes away and leaves no permanent results. The lesson
taught the childlike primitive man here, at the beginning, before experience
had accumulated instances which might demonstrate the solemn truth, was that
every human deed is immortal, and that the transitory evil thought, or word,
or act, which seems to fleet by like a cloud, has a permanent being, and
hereafter haunts the life of the doer, as a real presence. If thou doest not
well, thou dost create a horrible something which nestles beside thee
henceforward. The momentary act is incarnated, as it were, and sits there at
the doer's doorpost waiting for him; which being turned into less forcible
but more modern language, is just this: every sin that a man does has
perennial consequences, which abide with the doer for evermore.
I need not dwell upon illustrations of that to any length. Let me just run
over two or three ways in which it is true. First of all, there is that
solemn fact which we put into a long word that comes glibly off people's
lips, and impresses them very little--the solemn fact of responsibility. We
speak in common talk of such and such a thing lying at some one's door.
Whether the phrase has come from this text I do not know. But it helps to
illustrate the force of these words, and to suggest that they mean this,
among other things, that we have to answer for every deed, however
evanescent, however long forgotten. Its guilt is on our heads. Its
consequences have to be experienced by us. We drink as we have brewed. As we
make our
beds, so we lie on them. There is no escape from the law of consequences.
'If 'twere done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well it
were done quickly.' But seeing that it is not done when 'tis done,
then perhaps it would be better that it were not done at all. Your
deed of a moment, forgotten almost as soon as done, lies there at
your door; or to take a more modern and commercial figure, it is
debited to your account, and stands inscribed against you for ever.
Think how you would like it, if all your deeds from your childhood,
all your follies, your vices, your evil thoughts, your evil impulses, and
your evil actions, were all made visible and embodied there before you. They
are there, though you do not see them yet. All round your door they sit,
ready to meet you and to bay out condemnation as you go forth. They are
there, and one day you will find out that they are. For this is the law,
certain as the revolution of the stars and fixed as the pillars of the
firmament: 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap' There is no
seed which does not sprout in the harvest of the moral life. Every deed
germinates according to its kind. For all that a man does he has to carry
the consequences, and every one shall bear his own burden. 'If thou doest
not well,' it is not, as we fondly conceive it sometimes to be, a mere
passing deflection from the rule of right, which is done and done with, but
we have created, as out of our very own substance, a witness against
ourselves whose voice can never be stifled. 'If thou doest not well' thy sin
takes permanent form and is fastened to thy door.
And then let me remind you, too, how the metaphor of our text is
confirmed by other obvious facts, on which I need but briefly dwell.
Putting aside all the remoter bearings of that thought of responsibility, I
suppose we all admit that we have consciences; I suppose that we all know
that we have memories; I suppose we all of us have seen, in the cases of
others, and have experienced for ourselves, how deeds long done and long
forgotten have an awful power of rising again after many long years.
Be sure that your memory has in it everything that you ever did. A
landscape may be hidden by mists, but a puff of wind will clear them
away, and it will all lie there, visible to the furthest horizon. There is
no fact more certain than the extraordinary swiftness and completeness with
which, in certain circumstances of life, and often
very near the close of it, the whole panorama of the past may rise again
before a man, as if one lightning flash showed all the dreary desolation
that lay behind him. There have been men recovered from
drowning and the like, who have told us that, as in an instant, there seemed
unrolled before their startled eyes the whole scroll of their earthly
career.
The records of memory are like those pages on which you write with
sympathetic ink, which disappears when dry, and seems to leave the
page blank. You have only to hold it before the fire, or subject it to the
proper chemical process, and at once it stands out legible. You are writing
your biography upon the fleshly tables of your heart, my brother; and one
day it will all be spread out before you, and you will be bid to read it,
and to say what you think of it. The stings of a nettle will burn for days,
if they are touched with water. The sting and inflammation of your evil
deeds, though it has died down, is capable of being resuscitated, and it
will be.
What an awful menagerie of unclean beasts some of us have at our
doors! What sort of creatures have you tethered at yours? Crawling
serpents, ugly and venomous; wild creatures, fierce and bloody,
obscene and foul; tigers and bears; lustful and mischievous apes and
monkeys? or such as are lovely and of good report,--doves and lambs,
creatures pure and peaceable, patient to serve and gentle of spirit?
Remember, remember, that what a man soweth--be it hemlock or be it
wheat--that, and nothing else, 'shall he reap.'
2. Now, let us look for a moment at the next thought that is here;
which is put into a strong, and, to our modern notions, somewhat
violent metaphor;--the horrible longing, as it were, of sin toward the
sinner: 'Unto thee shall be its desire.'
As I explained, these words are drawn from the previous chapter,
where they refer to the holy union of heart and affection in husband
and wife. Here they are transferred with tremendous force, to set forth that
which is a kind of horrible parody of that conjugal relation. A man is
married to his wickedness, is mated to his evil, and it has, as it were, a
tigerish longing for him, unhallowed and murderous. That is to say--our sins
act towards us as if they desired to draw our love to themselves. This is
just another form of the statement, that when once a man has done a wrong
thing, it has an awful power of attracting him and making him hunger to do
it again. Every evil that I do may, indeed, for a moment create in me a
revulsion of conscience; but it also exercises a fascination over me which
it is hard to resist. It is a great deal easier to find a man who has never
done a wrong thing than to find a man who has only done it once. If the wall
of the dyke is sound it will keep the water out, but if there is the tiniest
hole in it, the flood will come in. So the evil that you do asserts its
power over you, or, in the vigorous metaphor of my text, it has a fierce,
longing desire after you, and it gets you into its clutches.
'The foolish woman sitteth in the high places of the city, and saith, Whoso
is simple let him turn in hither.' And foolish men go after her, and--'know
not that her guests are in the depth of hell.' Ah! my brother! beware of
that siren voice that draws you away from all the sweet and simple and pure
food which Wisdom spreads upon her
table, to tempt the beast that is in you with the words, 'Stolen waters are
sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.' Beware of the first step, for
as sure as you are living, the first step taken will make the second seem to
become necessary. The first drop will be followed by a bigger second, and
the second, at a shorter interval, by a more copious third, until the drops
become a shower, and the shower becomes a deluge. The river of evil is ever
wider and deeper, and more tumultuous. The little sins get in at the window,
and open the front door for the full-grown house-breakers. One smooths the
path for the other. All sin has an awful power of perpetuating and
increasing itself. As the prophet says in his vision of the doleful
creatures that make their sport in the desolate city, 'None of them shall
want her mate. The wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wild beasts
of the island.' Every sin tells upon character, and makes the repetition of
itself more and more easy. 'None is barren among them.' And all sin is
linked together in a slimy tangle, like a field of seaweed, so that the man
once caught in its oozy fingers is almost sure to be drowned.
3. And now, lastly, one word about the command, which is also a
promise: 'To thee shall be its desire, and thou shalt rule over it.'
Man's primitive charter, according to the earlier chapters of Genesis, was
to have dominion over the beasts of the field. Cain knew what it was to war
against the wild creatures which contested the possession of the earth with
man, and to tame some of them for his uses. And, says the divine voice, just
as you war against the beasts of prey, just as you subdue to your purposes
and yoke to your implements the tamable animals over which you have
dominion, so rule over _this_ wild beast that is threatening you. It is
needful for all men, if they do not mean to be torn to pieces, to master the
animal that is in them, and the wild thing that has been created out of
them. It is bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. It is your own evil
that is thus incarnated there, as it were, before you; and you have to
subdue it, if it is not to tyrannise over you. We all admit that in theory,
but how terribly hard the practice! The words of our text seem to carry but
little hope or comfort in them, to the man who has tried--as, no doubt, many
of us have tried--to flee the lusts that war against the soul, and to bridle
the animal that is in him. Those who have done so most honestly know best
how hard it is, and may fairly ask, Is this useless repetition of the
threadbare injunction all that you have to say to us? If so, you may as well
hold your tongue. A wild beast sits at my door, you say, and then you bid
me, 'Rule thou over it!' Tell me to tame the tiger! 'Canst thou draw out
Leviathan with a hook? Wilt thou take him a servant for ever?'
I do not undervalue the earnest and sometimes partially successful
efforts at moral reformation which some men of more than usual force of
character are able to make, emancipating themselves from the outward
practice of gross sin, and achieving for themselves much
that is admirable. But if we rightly understand what sin is--namely,
the taking self for our law and centre instead of God--and how deep
its working and all-pervading its poison, we shall learn the tragic
significance of the prophets question, 'Can the leopard change his
spots?' Then may a man cast out sin from his nature by his own resolve, when
the body can eliminate poison from the veins by its
own energy. If there is nothing more to be said to the world than
this message, 'Sin lieth at thy door--rule thou over it,' we have no
gospel to preach, and sin's dominion is secure. For there is nothing
in all this world of empty, windy words, more empty and windy than
to come to a poor soul that is all bespattered and stained with sin, and say
to him: 'Get up, and make thyself clean, and keep thyself
so!' It cannot be done.
So my text, though it keeps itself within the limits of the law and only
proclaims duty, must have hidden, in its very hardness, a sweet kernel of
promise. For what God commands God enables us to do.
Therefore these words, 'Rule thou over it,' do really point onwards
through all the ages to that one fact in which every man's sin is conquered
and neutralised, and every man's struggles may be made
hopeful and successful, the great fact that Jesus Christ, God's own
Son, came down from heaven, like an athlete descending into the
arena, to fight with and to overcome the grim wild beasts, our passions and
our sins, and to lead them, transformed, in the silken
leash of His love.
My brother! your sin is mightier than you. The old word of the Psalm
is true about every one of us, 'Our iniquities are stronger than we.' And,
blessed be His name! the hope of the Psalmist is the experience of the
Christian: 'As for my transgressions, Thou wilt purge them away.' Christ
will strengthen you, to conquer; Christ will take away your guilt; Christ
will bear, has borne your burden; Christ will cleanse your memory; Christ
will purge your conscience. Trusting to Him, and by His power and life
within us, we may conquer our evil. Trusting to Him, and for the sake of His
blood shed for us all upon the cross, we are delivered from the burden,
guilt, and power of our sins and of our sin. With thy hand in His, and thy
will submitted to Him, 'thou shalt tread on the lion and the adder; the
young lion and the dragon thou shalt trample under foot.'
Maclaren
Exposition of Genesis
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