Building Without Remembering
Genesis 4:17–26
Cain leaves the presence of the Lord and does not fade into obscurity. He prospers. He marries. He has children. He builds a city. Civilization gets underway quickly, and it gets impressive fast. Music is invented. Tools are forged. Livestock is managed. Culture expands. Humanity learns how to live efficiently east of Eden.
That detail should slow us down.
Genesis is careful to show us that advancement and godliness are not the same thing. Cain’s line is creative, innovative, and productive—but also increasingly violent, self-focused, and unmoored from God. The first city is not built as an act of faith; it is built as a refuge from fear and wandering. Cain names it after his son, not after God. Memory matters. What we name things after reveals what we want to last.
Lamech embodies where this road leads. He takes two wives, disregarding the pattern God set in the garden. He boasts about violence with disturbing pride. His words are poetry—but not the kind that heals. The first song in Scripture celebrated companionship and gift. This one celebrates revenge. Lamech does not just inherit Cain’s sin; he amplifies it. What began as resentment becomes swagger.
And yet—this is crucial—Genesis does not dismiss the achievements of Cain’s descendants. Music is still music. Tools are still useful. Cities still function. Scripture never says these things are evil in themselves. The problem is not culture. The problem is culture detached from worship.
That tension feels uncomfortably familiar.
We live in a world very good at building things—platforms, brands, careers, identities. We know how to produce and protect and entertain ourselves. But Genesis presses the question: What happens when we get better at making things than at making room for God?
Then the story pivots quietly.
After the noise of Lamech’s song, Genesis introduces another birth. Seth is born to Adam and Eve as a gift—appointed by God in place of Abel. The line of promise is not extinguished. Loss does not get the final word. God’s purposes continue, sometimes quietly, sometimes through grief.
Seth has a son named Enosh, a name that carries the weight of human frailty. And then comes one of the most hopeful lines in early Scripture: “At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord.”
While cities are rising and violence is being celebrated, a small community turns its attention upward. They begin to speak God’s name aloud—to proclaim who he is, to depend on him openly, to mark their lives by worship rather than accomplishment. Genesis places this moment deliberately beside the rise of civilization to show us the contrast.
Two ways of being human develop side by side.
One builds without reference to God.
The other builds—but refuses to forget him.
This is not a call to abandon culture or retreat from the world. It is a reminder of priority. Music can be beautiful, but it cannot replace prayer. Tools can be powerful, but they cannot heal the human heart. Cities can protect us, but they cannot give us rest.
Genesis 4:17–26 asks a question that every generation must answer: What do we reach for first—what we can make, or the Name we must call?
If you feel surrounded by noise, ambition, and constant production, take heart. God has always preserved a people who remember him. Sometimes they are small. Sometimes they are quiet. But they are never insignificant.
You do not have to outbuild the world.
You do not have to outshout it.
You only have to keep calling on the name of the Lord.
In a world busy constructing its own permanence, that simple act still matters most.
MICHAEL WHITWORTH is the author of 40+ books and commentaries exploring the depth and wonder of Scripture. A graduate of Freed-Hardeman University, he preaches for the Newport Avenue Church of Christ in Bend, Oregon. When he isn’t writing, he finds joy in simple things—reading a good book, capturing landscapes through his camera lens, or guzzling coffee (with a jar of M&Ms close by).
