Genesis 4:14

Behold, thou hast driven me out - In Genesis 4:11, Genesis 4:12, God states two parts of Cain' s punishment:

1.The ground was cursed, so that it was not to yield any adequate recompense for his most careful tillage.

2.He was to be a fugitive and a vagabond having no place in which he could dwell with comfort or security.

To these Cain himself adds others.

1.His being hidden from the face of God; which appears to signify his being expelled from that particular place where God had manifested his presence in or contiguous to Paradise, whither our first parents resorted as to an oracle, and where they offered their daily adorations. So in Genesis 4:16, it is said, Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and was not permitted any more to associate with the family in acts of religious worship.

2.The continual apprehension of being slain, as all the inhabitants of the earth were at that time of the same family, the parents themselves still alive, and each having a right to kill this murderer of his relative. Add to all this,

3.The terrors of a guilty conscience; his awful apprehension of God' s judgments, and of being everlastingly banished from the beatific vision. To this part of the punishment of Cain St. Paul probably alludes, II Thessalonians 1:9 : Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. The words are so similar that we can scarcely doubt of the allusion.