Cain's Offering

Wasn’t Abel’s sacrifice acceptable to God (and Cain’s not) because Abel sacrificed a pure lamb which prefigures the sacrifice made by Jesus Christ?

This was a question posed to me this week after our sermon on Sunday – "My Brother’s Keeper?"

The reason I want to respond to this is to demonstrate how I perform “exegesis” of scripture when thinking through the weekly message and also give an example of how I think the church best interprets scripture faithfully. I take seriously as I know you do Paul’s challenge to Timothy to “rightly explain the word of truth.” (2 Tim 2:14-15)

The question itself is a good question and no doubt there have been theologians who in reading the Cain and Abel narrative in Genesis find in Abel’s sacrifice a “type” of the sacrifice that Jesus made as the holy “lamb of God.” In and of itself there is nothing wrong about making the connection. Jesus was “the lamb”. Abel offered “a lamb.” Jesus was pure. Abel’s offering was acceptable to God and so must have in some manner been a “pure” offering – otherwise it would have been unacceptable. What's called "typological" interpretation of scripture has a long tradition in the history of Christian interpretation of the Old Testament and is a frequent tool of the Early Church Fathers.

Interestingly though, this isn’t the comparison that is drawn by the New Testament writers themselves. Instead Matthew and Luke see the person of Abel himself prefiguring Christ as the innocent and righteous victim of violence.

Mt 23:33 “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? 34 Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation. (cf. Luke 11:47-51)

In Hebrews is found also this enigmatic mention of Abel where again, the blood of Abel himself is compared with that of Jesus again as being prescient of the blood of Jesus that would proclaim loudly a new covenant. If Abel is the paradigm of spilled innocent blood, Jesus is even more so.

Heb 12:22 But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, 23 to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, 24 to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Finally, in the list of those known for having exhibited for remarkable faith in Hebrews 11, Abel is mentioned as one who “by faith” offered a more acceptable sacrifice and as a result thought righteous by God. Still, in answering the question posed – there is no mention here of the reason Abel’s offering was better other than Cain’s except that it was offered in faith with the unspoken corollary that Cain’s was not offered in faith.

Heb 11:4 By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.

Still, we don’t have an answer to our question.

What about grain offerings in the Old Testament? Can we find something that would indicate that a lamb offering was judged better than a grain offering that would explain God’s rejection of Cain’s sacrifice?

A thorough search of “grain offering” yields a number of scriptures that describe method and purpose of these offerings. What we discover is that there is nothing intrinsically more acceptable about a lamb offering than a grain offering. In fact, in Leviticus the grain offering is a “most holy part of the offerings made to the Lord.” (Lev. 2:3)

Consider this passage in Leviticus concerning grain offerings.

Lev 6:14 “ ‘These are the regulations for the grain offering: Aaron’s sons are to bring it before the LORD, in front of the altar. 15 The priest is to take a handful of fine flour and oil, together with all the incense on the grain offering, and burn the memorial portion on the altar as an aroma pleasing to the LORD. 16 Aaron and his sons shall eat the rest of it, but it is to be eaten without yeast in a holy place; they are to eat it in the courtyard of the Tent of Meeting. 17 It must not be baked with yeast; I have given it as their share of the offerings made to me by fire. Like the sin offering and the guilt offering, it is most holy. 18 Any male descendant of Aaron may eat it. It is his regular share of the offerings made to the LORD by fire for the generations to come. Whatever touches them will become holy.’ ”

What we can determine from this and many other instructions about sacrifice in the Pentateuch is that grain offerings were not only acceptable they were in fact pleasing to God. “Whatever touches them will become holy.” (Lev. 6:18)

Let’s put together all of this and try now to answer the question posed. Was Abel’s sacrifice accepted and Cain’s rejected because Abel’s more closely resembled the sacrifice of Jesus?

What the evidence suggests is that grain offerings were pleasing to God and so couldn’t have been the reason behind the rejection of Cain’s offering. The Hebrews writer sheds only a little light on the question by suggesting that it had to do with the faith (or lack?) exhibited by Abel and Cain. But this is ambiguous and could mean many things none of which are explained to us in scripture. What manner of faith was required? Was it a faith of obedience? Had God outlined clearly what kind of sacrifice he desired? Was Cain’s sacrifice given grudglingly rather than a freewill offering? These questions simply aren’t answered. And we can be okay with that.

It’s completely permissible for us to imagine the reason why Cain’s sacrifice was rejected and there are thousands of years of interpretation on Genesis 4 offering a myriad of suggestions . The answer is by no means obvious and so we come to understand that our conjecture is just that – one explanation alongside of many others.

So is it helpful to believe that Abel’s sacrifice prefigured the sacrifice of Jesus? The New Testament writers often used examples and stories from the Old Testament to illustrate the person and work of Jesus. In this particular instance, however, because we have no specifics, it seems better for us to leave the matter as a mystery of the faith (and not one that could result in a more defining “doctrinal” assertion that Paul seems to warn against in 2 Tim 2:14) and see in the passage instead what seems to be the intent of the author of Genesis – to demonstrate that in every instance God is free to act as God chooses. What is pleasing to God is simply that which God wills to be pleasing. (We certainly see this as a recurring theme in Genesis, eg. God's preferring Jacob over Esau or Joseph over his twelve brothers or for that matter Israel over the nations!) In any case – what mattered most to the author of Genesis was Cain’s REACTION to the rejection of his sacrifice and the acceptance of Abel’s. God desired for Cain to see that truly he was “his brother’s keeper.” Amazingly, even with Cain's rejection and subsequent murder of his brother - God continues to keep Cain under grace (Gen 4:15).

I like what Brueggeman has to say on this passage.

The story, too, is so well-known that we must take care not to let it be
routine. The world knows that the murder of a brother is a scandalous,
unacceptable act. It does not require the Bible to announce that
unchallenged norm. Thus, our interpretation must not trivialize the story
by treating it in terms of morality. Rather, we shall follow the contours
of the text closely so that we may move behind any moralizing. The murder
itself is handled quickly [in the text, JTH]. What interests the
story-teller (and therefore us) is the destiny of the murderer, a destiny
haunted by a skewed relationship with God. And that relationship has been
skewed because a brother has been violated. (Walter Brueggeman, Genesis,
Interpretation Commentary, 55.)