Where we are
Genesis 4 starts cold: "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived." No altar, no angel, no explanation of why anyone is sacrificing anything. Moses 5 fills in what got dropped — and what got dropped turns out to be the entire meaning of worship. Before the chapter ever reaches Cain and Abel, it shows you Adam and Eve building an altar outside the garden, offering sacrifice for years without being told why, and then an angel arriving to explain the why. And the why is Christ.
This is one of the richest chapters in the Pearl of Great Price, and it does two big things at once. It establishes worship — sacrifice was instituted at the edge of Eden, not invented at Sinai, and it was always a pointing-finger toward the Only Begotten. And it establishes worship's dark twin — the first murder, the first secret oath, the first counterfeit. By the end of the chapter you've seen both altars a person can approach: Abel's, and Cain's. The whole rest of scripture is lived out between them.
Six movements: Adam and Eve outside Eden and the angel's question (vv. 1–8); the gospel preached to Adam, and Eve's gladness (vv. 9–15); Cain and Abel and the offerings (vv. 16–25); the conspiracy and the murder (vv. 26–41); and the line of Cain down to Lamech (vv. 42–59). (Guardrail from Moses 1 still standing — and this chapter is a good place to test it honestly, because its closest old-book parallels come from a book Joseph could have read. I'll say so plainly.)
The altar, and the question (verses 1–8)
Outside the garden, Adam and Eve work — and the text is careful to say they work together: "Eve, also, his wife, did labor with him." The marriage from Moses 3 survives the Fall; the partnership doesn't get demoted. And they worship: they're told to "offer the firstlings of their flocks." So sacrifice begins here, at the very edge of Eden — long before Moses, long before the Levites. Then comes one of the most quietly profound exchanges in scripture:
And after many days an angel of the Lord appeared unto Adam, saying: Why dost thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me. And then the angel spake, saying: This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father. — Moses 5:6–7
Look at the order of things. Adam had been sacrificing for "many days" — and he didn't know why. "I know not, save the Lord commanded me." He obeyed first, and the understanding came later, as a gift. That's not a small detail; that's the shape of the whole spiritual life. "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine" (Jn. 7:17) — the doing comes before the knowing. And when the meaning finally arrives, it's Christ: every lamb on every altar was a similitude, a small rehearsal pointing at the one real sacrifice still to come.
The gospel preached to Adam, and Eve's gladness (verses 9–15)
Then the Holy Ghost falls on Adam, and he prophesies — and his first words after the Fall are not regret but praise:
Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God. — Moses 5:10
"Again in the flesh I shall see God" — that's Adam prophesying the resurrection, at the first altar, with the same faith Job will voice generations later: "in my flesh shall I see God" (Job 19:26). But it's the next verse, Eve's verse, that's the showpiece — and it's one of the most important things any woman says in all of scripture:
And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient. — Moses 5:11
She was glad. Read that against twenty centuries of Christian tradition that made Eve the woman who ruined everything, and you feel how radical it is. Eve looks back at the Fall and counts four gifts where the tradition counted only ruin: children, the knowledge of good and evil, the joy of redemption, and eternal life for the obedient. And notice — she says it first. Adam blesses God in verse 10, but Eve delivers the theology of it in verse 11. This is the verse Lehi is quoting, generations later, when he says "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy" (2 Ne. 2:25). Lehi's famous line is Eve's line first.
And then, right on schedule, the adversary shows up again — this time going straight to the children: "I am also a son of God… believe it not." It's the third time in these chapters Satan has appeared, and his method keeps adapting: he demoted Moses, possessed the serpent for Eve, and now he works the next generation directly. The discipleship life includes his recurring visits as a feature, not a glitch. The whole defense is in three words about the faithful here: "they believed it not." You don't have to out-argue him. You have to not believe him.
Cain, Abel, and the first counterfeit (verses 16–41)
Eve names her firstborn Cain and hopes out loud that he might be the promised seed — "I have gotten a man from the Lord." But Cain's first recorded words are a sneer: "Who is the Lord that I should know him?" And from there the chapter walks into the first murder. But Moses 5 shows you something Genesis leaves out — the mechanism. Cain doesn't just snap in a jealous rage. He enters into a deal:
And Satan said unto Cain: Swear unto me by thy throat, and if thou tell it thou shalt die… And Cain said: Truly I am Mahan, the master of this great secret, that I may murder and get gain. Wherefore Cain was called Master Mahan. — Moses 5:29, 31
Everything that will later destroy whole civilizations in the Book of Mormon is already here, in seed: a secret oath, sworn on the body, with death as the penalty for telling, hidden from family, and a motive of gain. "Murder and get gain" is the whole engine. The Gadianton robbers who bring down the Nephites aren't inventing anything new; they're running Cain's program. This is the chapter the Book of Mormon keeps pointing back to when it warns about "secret combinations."
The Lord's questions to Cain are the questions sin always has to face. "Where is Abel thy brother?" — and Cain gives the oldest dodge there is: "Am I my brother's keeper?" (The answer, of course, is yes. You are his keeper because he's your brother; that's the whole point.) And then: "The voice of thy brother's blood cries unto me from the ground." Innocent blood has a voice. Murder doesn't go quiet; it cries. The only blood that ever speaks louder is Christ's — "the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel" (Heb. 12:24). Abel's blood cries for justice; Christ's cries mercy, and out-cries it.
The line of Cain runs down to Lamech, who takes the oath and the violence and inflates them — "if Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold." Hold onto that number, because Jesus will pick up the exact same phrase and flip it: how often shall I forgive, seven times? "Until seventy times seven" (Matt. 18:22). Lamech multiplies vengeance seventy-sevenfold; Christ multiplies forgiveness by the same figure. Same words, opposite directions. The Cainite line counts up its revenge; the gospel counts up its mercy.
The old books on Adam's altar and Cain's oath
Now the honesty the project runs on — and this chapter is exactly where it has to bite.
Let me be plain about Moses 5, because the temptation in this kind of work is to overclaim. The closest parallels to its sharpest material — the secret sworn oath behind the first murder, the crying blood of the victim — come from 1 Enoch, and 1 Enoch was in print in English in 1821, nine years before Joseph translated this chapter. There is no evidence he used it, and the specific Cain narrative is its own thing. But I'm not going to pretend this chapter is a case Joseph "couldn't have known." What Moses 5 offers is a coherence — the secret oath as a counterfeit covenant, sacrifice as a similitude of Christ from the very first altar — that reads as revelation rather than borrowing. The genuinely unavailable convergences, the ones that are hard to explain at all, are waiting in the next two chapters, where Enoch steps forward. I'd rather earn your trust here so the strong cases land there.
How this chapter changes the reader
Moses 5 sets two altars in front of you, and you spend your life choosing between them.
Abel's altar is worship as similitude — every act of devotion a small rehearsal of Christ, offered in obedience even before you fully understand it, with the understanding promised to the ones who keep offering. That altar runs straight through to the sacrament tray on Sunday; the same gesture, the same pointing finger. Cain's altar is the counterfeit — the secret oath, the hidden deal, the gain that costs a brother. And the unnerving thing the chapter teaches is that the counterfeit looks like the real thing turned inside out: it has its own oaths, its own penalties, even its own master-titles. You don't tell them apart by how religious they sound. You tell them apart by the fruit, by whether they hide, by whether the payoff is gain.
And between the two altars stands Eve — glad. Not naive, not in denial about the cost, but clear-eyed and glad, because she can see what the hard road bought. That gladness is the disciple's paradigm: to look square at a painful, necessary passage and recognize the joy on the far side of it. Adam blessed God. But it was Eve who said why.