The late Meredith Kline is one of my favorite Old Testament scholars. Someone once commented to me that his writing is what you get if you mix Tolkien and biblical studies. I appreciate both his detailed exegetical attention and his awareness of the broader theological discussion.
In his article, “The Oracular Origin of the State,” Kline argues that the origin of the state traces all the way back to God's speech to Cain in Genesis 4:15. The purpose of this article is to briefly lay out Kline’s argument and then respond.
The Argument
Kline argues that “Genesis 4 exhibits a legal-court pattern closely paralleling the judgement pattern in Genesis 3,” such that, “[w]ithin the judicial process, Gen 4:15 is a response of the judge to a complaint against his judgement.” He then engages in a close exegesis of Cain’s appeal and God's response.
Cain’s Appeal
Kline sees in Cain’s appeal a general statement followed by an explanation in ABAB pattern:
General statement: My punishment is greater than I can bear.
A: Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground,
B: and from your face I shall be hidden.
A’: I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth,
B’: and whoever finds me will kill me.
It is the B clauses that are key for understanding God's response in v. 15. Kline argues that the phraseology of being hidden from the face of God is judicial terminology, and cites examples from the Psalms, Isaiah, and Job in support.
Kline suggests that in Cain’s appeal exposes his unorthodox theology, in that he believes that being exiled far from Eden (God's sanctuary) will put him out God's judicial oversight and therefore unable to appeal to God and be heard (as the blood of Abel was). As a result, the expectation of Cain in B’ is that Abel’s relatives – which is all of humanity – “will be let loose in a mindless blood feud to take vengeance on him.”
God's Response
Kline notes that the very fact that God replies at all to Cain’s complain is evidence that his complaint is not wholly true, God has not hidden His face from him. However, God's reply makes no modification to the A clauses, but does correct Cain’s misconception expressed in the B clauses.
And it is this response, framed as an oath (Kline cites the use of לָכֵןin Gen. 30:15, Ex. 6:6, Judg. 11:8, etc. as examples of this language) that, Kline argues, “is…to be seen as the promulgation of a law – a law that envisaged the establishment of an entire law-order.” This law order is one in which there is a divine legal provision for the punishment of murder and therefore the establishment of a structure of justice which, according to Kline, “was to be more precisely defined by subsequent revelation.”
Kline then goes on to argue that the language of “sevenfold” indicates that the punishment envisioned is divine justice. He points to the number seven as a sign of God's work in creation, to its connection with the year of Jubilee which is in turn connected to God's vengeance (Isa. 61:2), to the sevenfold punishment for sins that is part of the covenant curse (Lev. 26:24), to the punishment of the Gibeonites (2 Sam. 21:1ff), to the psalmists appeal for God's justice (Ps. 79:9-12), and to the use of seven in the book of Revelation for the avenging judgements of God.
He then argues, following Mendenhall, that the root nqm points to a political-judicial context, not a blood feud. He says,
The fact that nqm is used in the penalty clause of this divine prescription is, in the light of Mendenhall’s study, highly significant as a further confirmation that Gen 4:15 contemplates the establishment of an institutional structure for a legitimate judicial office in man’s fallen world.
He then argues that, in the context of Genesis 3 and the common grace-common curse along with the institution of the family as the societal framework for man’s cultural occupation, “The Gen 4:15 disclosure supplemented that with its intimation of the emergence of the authority-structure of the state as a further provision of the common grace of God.”
Kline sees this divine institution perverted by Lamech later in Genesis 4 and then further by the royal tyrants in Genesis 6:1ff. After the Flood, God makes the Noahic covenant as a common grace covenant in which “the stipulation concerning the state’s avenging function is presented in terms drawn from Genesis 4” (Gen. 9:5-6).
In light of this, Kline interprets the “sign” given to Cain in 4:15b as a “recapitulation of God's response” and points to evidence that the word “sign” could refer to a verbal reality rather than a visual reality.
Kline sums up God's response to Cain thusly,
God’s legally formulated response to Cain’s complaint (Gen 4:15a) gave solemn assurance that his face would not be hidden (cf. v 14b), for he would establish in his common grace the political order of the state as an authority ordained of God, a minister of God to execute his vengeance in this world.
Response
What shall we say in response to this? Has Kline found that much searched after divine institution of the state in Genesis 4:15?
No. Though we may agree with nearly all of Kline’s exegesis of this text, it is fundamentally irrelevant to the institution of the state for the following reasons.
First, Kline gives no definition of the state. He does not state precisely what this institution is that God has supposedly ordained in Genesis 4:15. He admits that the structure of the legal order is more precisely defined by further revelation, but then only cites one text (Exodus 21:20) which does not define the state.
If a state is an organization that claims a territorial monopoly on the legitimate use of violence – then Kline’s entire paper is almost beside the point. Granting all of Kline’s exegesis, his argument says nothing about the envisioned judicial order being territorial nor monopolistic. Neither does Genesis 9 say anything about those aspects either, a text which he views as reestablishing this judicial order after the Flood.
The simple fact is that Genesis 4:15 says nothing that would lead one to conclude that the legitimate use of violence is to be restricted in definite geographical areas to one special class of people.
Second, Kline assumes a false dichotomy, that the only two alternatives are lawless chaos and the existence of the state. He says that Cain’s complaint was that he would “be exposed to absolute anarchy” and “abandoned to the mortal perils of a lawless world, and that God's response to Cain assures him that he will not be “a prey to anarchial terrorism,” since “the world would not be a lawless chaos.”
This is, however, to assume that there is no other alternative between the state and lawless chaos. However, as many have aptly shown,1 law emerges organically and polycentrically from dispute resolutions in a society that acknowledges property rights. This is not to deny that there is a real, objective divine justice against which human laws must be measured, but only to say that the production of human civil law is not dependent on a centralized monopoly of legislation like the state.
Third, Kline’s own argument undermines his thesis concerning the origin of the state, namely, that God's response to Cain, “simply tells him that in that event [his murder] there will be divine vindication.” Indeed, the whole context of Genesis 4:15 is, according to Kline, to do with vindictive justice, that is, justice that repays a wrong. He agrees with Mendenhall that the use of nqm indicates a context in which the vengeance is legitimately exercised “for defensive or punitive vindication.”
However, this view of justice as retributive or vindictive cannot be made to square with the state – because the state does not restrict itself to the punishment of wrongs. Indeed, the state routinely engages in actions that, far from being instances of retributive justice, would be considered criminal if performed by anyone other than the state. The most prominent example of this type of action is taxation. If Bob has done Steve no wrong and Steve exacts money from Bob under the threat of violence, we would typically say that Steve robbed Bob. However, when the state exacts money under threat of violence form those who have done no wrong, we use the euphemism of taxation, instead of calling it what it really is, extortion.
In conclusion, though Kline’s article is intriguing and, I think, largely exegetically correct, the conclusions he draws concerning the state are baseless and have no real connection to his exegesis.
Bob Murphy, Chaos Theory, (see also this video on Law without Government); David VanDrunen, Politics After Christendom, chapter 10: “Customs and Laws”; Gerard Casey, Libertarian Anarchy, chapter 5: “Law without Orders”; Hans-Herman Hoppe, “The idea of a Private Law Society.”