The Two Seeds: Literary Connectivity in the Genesis Narrative and Its Implication for the Image of God Debate

The narrative in Genesis makes a cohesive argument concerning the image of God that often conflicts with modern inclusivist sentiments that posit a single humanity that is unified under God. That argument can be seen in its literary development.

In Chapter 1, man is made “as” God’s image and “like” His likeness in terms of his submission to the creation mandate that commands him to be fruitful and multiply and wrestle the world out of the hands of chaos in this way (vv. 26-31). In contrast, however, he decides to follow the serpent’s path to be “like God/gods” (3:5) instead of being “like” His likeness, and in doing so, creates two humanities (v. 15), an offspring of the woman and an offspring of the man. 

These two seeds are contrasted in both the narrative to follow in 4:1-16 and the two genealogies in 4:17-24 and what is often considered to be contained in Chapter 5. The genealogy in 4:1-16 presents Cain’s line first with Cain who is a murderer of his brother and then ends with Lamech who murders a young man, thus creating an inclusio that indicates that the entire line is portrayed in the light of these murders. 

What I want to show here is that Seth’s genealogy does not end in Chapter 5, but rather in Chapter 9, thus creating an inclusio that portrays Seth’s line as carriers of the image of God, producing life in accordance with the creation mandate, as opposed to the line of Cain that is portrayed as destroying human life and living outside of the creation mandate.

First, it must be pointed out that the genealogies typically begin narratives in Genesis that are simply long comments about the last person mentioned in the genealogy. Shem’s genealogy through Terah’s, which begins in 11:10, ends with Abraham’s death after a long narrative about him in 25:11 and could be said to continue on in Isaac and Jacob’s genealogies with large narratives in between.

Second, this observation can also be supported by the fact that everyone else in the genealogy is presented in both their birth and death, their entire life, with their death signifying the end of their part in the genealogy. Until their death is mentioned, the genealogy remains on their story. Noah’s death is not given until Chapter 9.

Finally, as indicated before, this would parallel Cain’s account that presents his entire line as anticreational, since an inclusio is created between the statement of Adam as made “as God’s image” and “like God’s likeness” in the beginning of the genealogy and the restatement of the role of the image given to Noah at the end of the genealogy, as well as its contrast in Noah’s son Ham and grandson Canaan, before his age and death is finally recorded in 9:29. 

The fact that this is likely means that the author is attempting to display Seth’s line as the image of God in their creative activity of having “others sons and daughters” and preserving humanity through righteousness and finding favor with God, as Noah does. Cain’s line is the contrast, therefore, of being the image of God, and the narrative would make little sense in this literary contrast if it presupposed that both the line of Cain and the line of Seth were all the image of God and a singular humanity.

Hence, John rightly sees that the story of Cain and Abel is the story of the two seeds, the children of the devil and the children of God, one that murders and one that gives life. Their genealogies (Abel being replaced by Seth) display the same.