The First Murder: The Story of Cain and Abel

 

The First Murder: Cain and Abel

Why did God accept Abel’s sacrifice and reject Cain’s?

Is God unjust?

 

The story of Cain and Abel is found in Chapter Four of the Book of Genesis of the Bible. Cain is the first child, the firstborn of Adam and Eve. He is born in a fallen state, since his parents had been banished from the Garden of Eden by then, and the story of his life pretty much follows the same pattern of sin and disobedience. Abel, his brother, is born after some time and it’s pretty obvious that they grow up amidst fierce sibling rivalry. Abel tends the flocks and Cain works the field. Once they come of age, they both bring offerings to God. Cain brings ‘some of the fruits of the soil’, while Abel brings ‘fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock’. 

Now, here’s the part that’s confounded people for ages: The Bible says God looked with favour on ‘Abel and his offering but on Cain and his offering He did not look with favour’.

Hmm…food for thought? Was God unjust? Didn’t each brother offer something derived from his labour? So, why did God favour one over the other?

Two interesting themes emerge from the answers:

The value of sacrifice and

The importance of thought control

 

THE VALUE OF SACRIFICE

We all make sacrifices in our lives. We all give up the immediate gratification of our desires (at some point or the other) to ensure future prosperity.

The first act of worship in the Bible involves giving up something valuable. Abel gives choice pieces of the firstborn of his flock. Much like you’d offer the best portions of meat or chicken to an honoured guest. Also notice, that God looks upon ‘Abel and his offering’ with favour. Shepherds have a special place in the Bible. David was a shepherd and Jesus is The Good Shepherd. They're portrayed as tough, self-reliant and responsible for the lives of others. David tells King Saul how he rescued his sheep from lions and bears (1Samuel 17:34-36). ‘When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it’. Whoa, that’s a powerful image. Not like our assumptions of the character of a shepherd, huh?

It's reasonable to assume that Abel, too, would’ve had to fend off wild animals while tending to his sheep. This wasn’t paradise, after all. Abel is referred to as ‘righteous’ (Mathew 23:35), a man of faith ‘by faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous when God gave approval to his gifts’ (Hebrew 11:4). So, we get the picture of Abel as a righteous, good and responsible guy. God approves of him and his offerings.

Cain, on the contrary, seems to have been a jealous, brooding sort of guy, who was easily pissed off. Some people have argued that God rejected his offerings because they came from the ground, which was cursed. But this isn’t indicated at all. God tells Cain clearly: ‘If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?’ The same view is expounded in St. John’s first letter (1John 3:12) when he writes: ‘Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his own brother. And why did Cain slay him? Because his own deeds were evil, while those of his brother were righteous.’ So, it wasn’t just his offering; Cain himself was out of favour with the Lord.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THOUGHT CONTROL

Having been rejected by God, Cain is very angry and his face is downcast. The Lord warns him: ‘Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it’ (Genesis 4:7). One would think such a warning is sufficient for a man to get his act together but Cain is not amenable to reason. He doesn’t want to change. He does not repent, either. Neither does he seem to be bothered about giving God an offering that would please Him. He’s just mad angry and goes on to murder his brother, the righteous Abel.

Right here in the first book of the Bible, we’re shown the importance of controlling our thoughts. There are many, many exhortations about the need to renew our minds and take bad thoughts captive. Every action begins as a thought and the Bible tells us over and over again how important it is that we recognize this.

2 Corinthians 10:5 talks about ‘bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ’. The book of Romans says: ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind’ (12:2). Proverbs 3:7 ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he’.

The Mark of Cain

Cain doesn’t control his thoughts, but keeps his envious wound festering and then slays Abel. God asks him: ‘Where is your brother?’ and Cain says the now famous words: ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’

The passage describing Abel’s death and Cain’s questioning by God, mentions the word ‘brother’ six times. It’s a poignant emphasis on the bond between the siblings that serves to heighten the horror of Cain’s crime.

Instead of slaying Cain in an act of divine retribution, God condemns him to the life of a restless wanderer. Cain still doesn’t repent, but complains ‘my punishment is more than I can bear’ and ‘anyone who finds me will kill me.’ Good riddance, one would think. But the Lord does something strange: he puts a mark on Cain so that whoever finds him would not slay him. I think this is amazing: that at the very beginning of the human race, God rules that revenge is not to be encouraged. Slaying man, who is made in the image of God, is never a good thing. Perhaps it’s true that a lifetime of suffering would be worse than a quick death.

A few interesting thoughts:

a) In Dante’s Inferno, the ninth circle of hell, which is the innermost and reserved for the worst kind of sinners, is named Caina, after Cain.

b) Cain and Abel’s offerings constitute the first recorded act of worship in the Bible. Ironically, the first act of worship occasions the first murder!

c) Good Friday is coming up and I’d like to leave you with a profound thought from Dr. Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist whose lectures are popular on YouTube. While talking about the significance of sacrifice, he mentions something unique about the Cross.

That it’s the supreme sacrifice of the Mother (Mary had to give up her son);

The supreme sacrifice of the Father (God gave up his Son) and

The supreme sacrifice of the Son (Jesus taking our place and paying for our sins), all at once!

And that’s the sacrifice that renews and redeems.

 

Jesus and the woman caught in adultery

 

Jesus and the Woman caught in adultery

What and why did He write on the ground?

 

Many stories in the Bible are short and succinct but so layered and complex that each time you read them, you’ll learn something new.

Case in point, the account of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. It’s a short narrative in the Gospel of John, Chapter 8, verses 3-11. For those unfamiliar with the story, here goes:

Jesus goes to the temple courts (of the Temple of Jerusalem, the holiest of places for the Jews) at dawn, where ‘all the people’ gather around him and he sits down to teach them. Then ‘the teachers of the law and the Pharisees’ bring in a woman caught in adultery (caught in the very act, they say). They make her stand before the group and they tell Jesus that she was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded them to stone such women. ‘Now what do you say?’

The Bible states clearly that they were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him (verse 6). To illustrate this further, the Mosaic Law said: ‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife…both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death’ (Leviticus 20:10). In this instance, the man wasn’t hauled up before Jesus. The story doesn’t say why. And, surely, the accusers weren’t following due procedure. They should’ve taken both the man and the woman to the authorities concerned, perhaps the Roman Governor.? Why did they drag the woman to Jesus? He was just a popular teacher, a Rabbi, as far as they were concerned. The answer, of course, is as verse 6 says: it was in order to trap Him.

Instead of replying directly to the Pharisees, Jesus does something strange. He bends down and starts writing on the ground with His finger. When they keep on questioning Him, He straightens up and says the now famous, immortal lines: ‘Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone’. Again, he stoops down and continues to write on the ground. After this, the crowd begins to melt away one by one, the older ones first, until only Jesus is left with the woman standing there. Jesus straightens up and asks her: ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’

‘No one, sir,’ she says.

‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ He declares, ‘Go, and sin no more.’

Before addressing the issue of what He was writing on the ground, it’s interesting to see how Jesus turns the situation around so that the woman could not be put to death. For the Mosaic Law said, ‘No one shall be put to death on the testimony of just one witness’ (Deuteronomy 17:6). Jesus creates the situation where they aren’t even 2 witnesses left to testify against the woman. Also note, Jesus does tick her off: ‘Go and sin no more.’ He doesn't say, you’re alright, your accusers are mean, horrible, hypocrites, which they were, actually. The thing is, sin is not condoned. Ever.

Now, for the question at hand. What on earth was Jesus writing on the ground? And why?

Bible scholars have debated this through the ages and three main explanations have emerged. I’ll give you all three and then give my point of view:

i) Jesus was simply ignoring the woman’s accusers, showing his contempt for their attempts to ensnare Him. He was God, after all! He knew what was in their hearts. It was almost as if He was saying: ‘Uff, you guys are such idiots. Why are you trying to play with me?’

ii) Jesus was performing a sign that’s fulfillment of a prophesy. Jeremiah 17:13 says: ‘those who turn away from thee shall be written in the earth, for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water.’ In John 7:38 Jesus describes Himself as the fountain of living water. So, Jesus was basically writing their sins in the earth. When the Pharisees and teachers of the Law saw this sign performed, they were convicted of their sin, and left the scene. As experts in the Mosaic Law, they would’ve recognized the sign.

In short, Jesus springs a trap on them!

iii) According to Venerable Bede and St. Augustine, when Jesus wrote on the ground with His finger, He was harkening back to the time on Mount Sinai when He had written the Ten Commandments on stone tablets with His finger (Exodus 32: 15-16). It’s like He was saying, ‘I’m the author of the Law and you’re trying to trap me with it?’

The only other time when the finger of God appears in the Bible is in the book of Daniel (5:5) when ‘the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall…’ during King Belshazzar’s banquet. The finger wrote ‘Mene Mene Tekel Uparsin’, which Daniel interprets later as a prophesy of doom against the King, who had stolen gold and silver goblets from the Temple of Jerusalem and then defiled them by drinking wine in them during this feast. That very night, King Belshazzar dies.

*An interesting aside: 2 phrases in this episode became famous in the English language. One was ‘the writing on the wall’ from the above passage. The other is ‘knees knocking together’. That’s in the verse describing King Belshazzar’s reaction to the finger writing on the wall. It says: ‘The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way’.

In both instances (Exodus and Daniel), the finger of God appeared in judgement. But what of the time when Jesus wrote on the ground?

I think Jesus was doing both things: He was sending a sign of judgement against the Pharisees and teachers of the Law and He was reminding them that He- the Lord Almighty- was the author of the Law, so don’t try and mess with Him!

A clip from the TV series 'Jesus of Nazareth' depicting this episode