Imagine we are standing before God right now, and He is asking us the same question about anyone that we have murdered with our thoughts or words in the past. The righteous Judge is looking in our heart and asking us to give account for our stewardship accountability for what He has put into our care. The thing that He cares the most about, His prized possession, the Body of Christ. Maybe someone said or did something they should not have done. We retaliated. We attacked their character with murderous words. Maybe, just like Cain, deep down we are envious of success or recognition, friends, possessions. But regardless of why we thought or said negative things, the righteous Judge is asking us, Where is so-and-so, your brother or sister? Why have you alienated them? Why have you murdered them with your thoughts and your words?
As we examine Cain's flippant response, Am I my brother's keeper? we find that exact same word we looked at earlier in Genesis 2:15 as God assigns Adam and Eve as stewards to tend and keep everything He places into their care. Keep, shamar, hedge, guard, protect, preserve, save, watch over. Cain's response reveals what was in his heart. He did not acknowledge any accountability for watching over his younger brother. He did not acknowledge that he truly was a steward, his brother's keeper, and he failed. He failed at being a faithful steward over that relationship.
God did not ask questions because He did not know the answers. He was not trying to figure out whether Adam was hiding in one or another of the trees. Later in the account of Cain and Abel when Cain was displeased that his offering was rejected, God asked him a series of questions.
So in both those incidences God asked a lot of questions.
In II Samuel 12:9, God asked David through Nathan, Why did you despise the word of the Lord? by doing what is evil in His eyes. In Isaiah 6:8, God asked Isaiah, Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us? And in Matthew 16:15, the Lord asked, Who do you say I am? The apostle John recorded many of Christ's questions as well. God asks questions to get us to face the situation. He asks us, we have to answer, and whatever we answer better be the truth. And then even if we answer the truth, often we have condemned ourselves, but that is one of the main reasons God asks questions - to get us to face the situation ourselves to more deeply realize what we have done.
This is what Jesus asks us when we have been trying to go it on our own, Have you been successful? Are you satisfied? Questions like that. He asks these questions through His inspired written Word so that we might recognize our hunger, need, failure, and need to turn to Him.
One of the earliest questions raised in recorded history was, Am I my brother's keeper? recorded in Genesis 4:9. This question relates to our moral obligations toward others.
