The Fortified Place

 DEVOTION

GENESIS

THE FORTIFIED PLACE

Gen 4:17-18

17 Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. 18 To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.

NIV

Strange times and strange things happen. First, Cain was not alone in his banishment, for it would not be possible there were a whole different family in existence at this time, although we are not told how much time had elapsed since Adam and Eve had been banished from the garden. Still, it would make sense Cain took his sister as a wife and she went with him. This is not acceptable in our times, and we are not sure when God put an end to this needed act for mankind to fill the earth. From this record, we note their firstborn son was given the name Enoch. There are others with the name Enoch, but on this occasion, it is interesting this name in Hebrew means dedicated. We wonder if because of Cain’s fear of God, and of his crime against his brother, he could not serve as the priest of the family, or patriarch and so he dedicated his firstborn to God. This city is not a city of our times, but simply a walled enclosure, perhaps made from timber, or maybe stones, but it was a fortified place to defend against attack by others who could do him and his family harm. Life has not changed in the sense that we each have some fortified city that we feel defends us from the attack of others. First, in the physical sense, we have our homes, of whatever kind that is, with our locked windows and doors, giving us a sense of security so we can safely lay our heads down at night. Of course, this type of defense can be penetrated if someone truly wants to do harm to us. Second, we have built ourselves another type of fortified place, and that is within ourselves. We can build our façade so others cannot truly know our weaknesses and thus exploit them for their personal gain somehow. We build walls around our inner person, not allowing anyone to get too close to us, to do any harm in our personal space. Sure, we might get our feelings hurt, or feel offended by what someone says, but we will not really let them be too close to our inner self, we will defend ourselves at all costs. We and God are the only two who truly know who we are, and even then, there might be times we try to shut God out, thinking we can defend ourselves, or lick our wounds by ourselves. We know as part of the body of Christ, we should live transparently with each other. However, we would never be that way in the outside world. Still within the body of Christ in reality, we are going to live within our fortified place, the safe place within our wall.