[10] Adam, then, is driven out by God; Cain goes out voluntarily. Moses is showing us each form of moral failure, one of free choice, the other not so. The involuntary act, not owing its existence to our deliberate judgement, is to obtain later on such healing as the case admits of, “for God shall raise up another seed in place of Abel whom Cain slew” (Gen. 4:25). This seed is a male offspring, Seth or “Watering,” raised up to the soul whose fall did not originate in itself.
[11] The voluntary act, inasmuch as it was committed with forethought and of set purpose, must incur woes for ever beyond healing. For even as right actions that spring from previous intention are of greater worth than those that are involuntary, so, too, among sins those which are involuntary are less weighty than those which are voluntary.