Letter to Bishop Optimus

Thanks for the Letter and Its Question§1

1Letter 80. To Bishop Optimus. On the words, “Whoever kills Cain will be punished sevenfold” (Genesis 4:15).

In any case I am glad to see these good boys, both for the steadiness of character that is beyond their years and for their close tie to Your Reverence, from which one may expect something great of them. When I saw them coming to me with a letter of yours, I doubled my affection for them. And when I read the letter and saw in it both your provident care for the churches and your diligence in reading the divine Scriptures, I gave thanks to the Lord, and I prayed for blessings on those who brought us such a letter, and before them on the one who wrote it to us.

You asked about that much-discussed saying, repeated everywhere by everyone: what is the solution to “Whoever kills Cain will release seven punishments” (Genesis 4:15)? In this, first of all, you have commended yourself as one who carefully keeps the charge to Timothy, just as Paul gave it to him; for you are plainly attending to reading (1 Timothy 4:13).

Roused in Old Age, and the Plain Sense§2

2Then, too, though we old men were already numbed by time, by the weakness of the body, and by the multitude of our afflictions (for the many that have stirred around us have weighed down our life), you have nevertheless roused us; and, fervent in spirit (Romans 12:11), you are bringing us, who had grown cold, back to a measure of wakefulness and lively activity, like animals that winter in their dens.

The saying, then, can be understood simply, as it stands, and it can also admit a more varied explanation.

The simpler sense, the one that can present itself readily to anyone, is this: that Cain must pay a sevenfold penalty for his sins (Genesis 4:15).

For it is not the part of a just judge to fix equal requitals for equal deeds; rather, the one who began the evil must repay what he owes with something added, if he himself is to be made better by the punishments and to make the rest more self-controlled by his example.

So then, since…

The First Sense and a Deeper Question§3

3…it has been ordained that Cain should pay the penalty for his sins seven times over, the one who kills him, it says, will release him from what divine judgment decreed against him (Genesis 4:15). This is the sense that presents itself here on a first reading.

But since the mind of the more diligent naturally searches the depths, it looks for the justice of it: how are the punishments fulfilled in the “seven times”? Are the sins seven? Or is the sin one, and the punishments for that one sin seven?

Now Scripture always limits the number for the forgiveness of sins to seven. “How often,” he says, “will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?” (it is Peter speaking to the Lord) “Up to seven times?” (Matthew 18:21). Then comes the Lord’s answer: “I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22). For the Lord did not move on to another number, but…

The Number Seven in the Law and This Age§4

4…multiplied the seven and set the limit within it. And after seven years the Hebrew was set free from slavery (Exodus 21:2). Seven weeks of years made up the renowned Jubilee for the people of old (Leviticus 25:8–10), in which the land kept sabbath, debts were cancelled, and there was release from slavery; and in the number seven a new life, as it were, began afresh, with the old in a way reaching its completion.

These things are types of this present age, which circles round through the seven days and runs past us. In it the penalties for lesser sins are paid off, in keeping with the loving care of the good Master, so that we may not be handed over to punishment in the endless age. The “seven times,” then, is used because of its kinship with this world, as with world-loving people, from them…