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Why Did God Reject Cain’s Sacrifice?
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Yesterday we discussed why Cain attempted to make an offering to God in the first place. God had not yet commanded sacrifices and offerings, so why did Cain give one to God? In today’s post, we look at the question about why God rejected Cain’s sacrifice but accepted Abel’s.
Various Explanations for why God Rejected Cain’s Sacrifice
Some argue that the problem was with Cain’s offering itself.
God wants blood, we are told, and Cain brought only fruit. Only death atones for sin. Yet nothing is said anywhere in the text about this being a sin offering. And besides, later in the Pentateuch when Moses gives instructions to the Israelites about the sacrificial system, fruit and grain offerings are said to be acceptable to God.
Others take this a step further and point that Abel brought the firstfruits from his flock (whether we understand this to mean the firstborn lamb or the first batch of milk) whereas Cain brought the last portion of his harvest.
But once again, this is not something which is explicitly stated in the text. Since the flood had not yet occurred, it is unlikely that there were seasons, and so fruit would have been produced all year long.
Finally, some argue that it wasn’t fruit from the last harvest of the year (for there was no such thing), but rather, the fruit of the ground, that is, fruit that had fallen off the tree and was lying on the ground, and therefore, not the best part of the harvest.
But again, this explanation is nowhere in the text, and must be read into what is there.
So why then did God accept Abel’s offering but not Cain’s?
God seems to explain why right in the text.
He tells Cain that if he does well, he will be accepted (Genesis 4:7).
We saw yesterday that Cain was trying to give God’s fruit back to Him. God is telling Cain now that acceptance is not dependent upon giving God His fruit back.
The problem with Cain, it appears, was that he was trying to please and appease God by giving God what he thought God wanted, namely, fruit. Cain was apparently trying to manipulate God by giving God back His fruit so that God would allowing Cain and his family back into the Garden of Eden.
By offering fruit to God, Cain was trying to the savior of his family.
God gently rebukes Cain and tells him he is already accepted and loved, that nothing is required. All God wants is for Cain to live well, to do what is right. If he doesn’t do what is right, rather than being the savior of his family, Cain will fall into the same trap that his parents had fallen into, and will become prey to sin. In fact, God warns Cain that sin is already crouching at Cain’s door, seeking to devour him.
The problem with Cain’s offering wasn’t with what Cain offered. The problem was with Cain’s heart in the offering.
Why then does God accept Abel’s offering?
The text simply doesn’t say. But it seems likely that if Cain’s offering was not accepted because he was trying to please and appease God through an offering of fruit, then maybe Abel’s offering was accepted because he had no ulterior motive. He was simply following his older brother’s example.
He saw Cain give fruit, and though, “Oh, is this how we thank God for what He has provided? Okay. I will give something too.”
For Abel, the offering of the firstfruits of his flock (which was probably the first batch of milk) was an act of worship to God and a way of saying “Thank you.” He had no desire to control or manipulate God into doing something for him or for his family. This seems to be how his offering differed from Cain’s, and therefore, why his offering was accepted while Cain’s was not (cf. Heb 11:4).
And of course, we all know how the story ends. Cain, the one who wanted to save his family from their sins, ends up taking his family deeper into sin by becoming the first murderer of the human race. Despite God’s warning about sin seeking to rule over Cain, Cain becomes jealous of his brother Abel, and murders him (Genesis 4:8).
The Sacrificial System in the Bible
Genesis 4 nevertheless begins to lay the groundwork for why the sacrificial system developed and what God thought about it.
Nevertheless, when people give gifts, God is pleased to accept them if they are given with the right motive and intention. He does not want humans to give offerings in an attempt to manipulate or control Him into doing what humans want, or as a way of getting back into God’s good graces.
As God told Cain, we are already accepted. We don’t need to do anything, other than live our life the way God desires. This is what God wants.
Of course, if we do end up giving something to God out of love and thanks to God for what He has given us, God is fine with accepting it, not because He needs or wants it, but because He recognizes such offerings as the acts of worship that they are.
Why Did Cain Offer a Sacrifice to God in Genesis 4?
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Though some believe the first sacrifice in the Bible is found in Genesis 3:21, others say the first sacrifice in Scripture is one chapter later in Genesis 4 when Cain brings an offering of fruit and Abel brings the firstborn from his flock.
But just as people who view Genesis 3:21 as the first sacrifice read a lot of their theology into that verse, we also tend to read a lot of sacrificial and atonement theology into Genesis 4 which is not there. In so doing, we often miss what actually seems to be present in the text itself.
Why Did Cain Make an Offering to God?
Note first of all that nowhere in the text does God command or instruct people to bring sacrifices and offerings to Him. This practice seems to be Cain’s idea.
Why would Cain do this?
Cain, we must remember, was raised with his parents telling him the story about how they disobeyed God and were barred from the Garden of Eden.
Cain knew that the reason his parents were disciplined by God was that they had eaten forbidden fruit. He also knew that when God had explained to Adam and Eve the consequences of their sin, God had told them that the Seed of the woman would set things right (Genesis 3:15). When Eve bore her firstborn son, she named Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord” (Genesis 4:1).
From this it appears that Adam and Eve thought that Cain would be the one who would set things right and allow them to return to the Garden of Eden.
This is the story that Cain grew up with. This is the narrative that guided Cain’s life.
So it is not surprising that as he grew older, Cain looked for ways to get his family back into the Garden. Genesis 4 says that he became a tiller of the ground (Genesis 4:2), and he brought an offering of fruit to the Lord (Genesis 4:3).
Why fruit? Not because God had asked for it. God hadn’t asked for anything. Cain brought fruit because this is what his parents had taken from God.
In effect, Cain was trying to give God back His fruit.
Cain was trying to please and appease God, and hopefully, gain a way for himself and his family to reenter the Garden of Eden. He was trying to fulfill the expectations of his parents.
What about the Offering of Abel?
The text goes on to say that Abel brought an offering also, but since he was a keeper of sheep, he brought “the firstborn of his flock and of their fat” (Genesis 4:4).
We must be careful to not read sacrifice into this. The text does not say that Abel killed the firstborn of his flock. The text calls it an “offering,” which does not necessarily imply a blood sacrifice.
People get the idea of sacrifice from the text because it says that Abel also offered the fat of his flock. How could he have done this if the animal had not been killed?
Some early Jewish and Christian scholars noted that the consonants of the Hebrew word for “fat” are the same as the Hebrew word for milk and curds (Heb., ch-l-v), and so they understood this text to be saying that Abel offered milk products up to the Lord. The Jewish historian Josephus is one such source, who wrote that “Cain brought the fruits of the earth, and of his husbandry; but Abel brought milk and the first-fruits of his flocks” (Antiquities 1.2.1).
Some have also noted that the Hebrew word translated “and” could also be translated as “that is.” When this is taken into consideration as well, Genesis 4:4 could be translated this way: “Abel also brought the firstborn of his flock, that is, of their milk.”
Though some might consider such an interpretation to be far-fetched, we must ask ourselves why the text would refer to the “fat” of the flock if what God really wanted was blood. If it truly is blood sacrifice that God desires, and this is why God accepted Abel’s sacrifice over Cain’s, then wouldn’t the text have been clearer if it has emphasized the blood of the flock instead of the fat?
Furthermore, since everybody at this time were vegetarians (cf. Genesis 9:1-4), it would make no sense for Abel to think of offering a dead animal to God. What reason could there be for God to want a dead animal?
Nevertheless, no matter how we understand the offering of Abel, the real question from Genesis 4 is why God accepted Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s. We will look at this question tomorrow.
What do you think? Do you think Abel killed an animal and gave it to God? Other than tradition, why do you think so?
Did God Perform the First Sacrifice in Genesis 3:21?
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Many believe that the first sacrifice was carried out by God Himself in Genesis 3:21 which says that God made tunics of skin for Adam and Eve so that they could be clothed.
Did God Sacrifice an Animal in Genesis 3:21?
Although the text says nothing about a sacrifice, many believe that a sacrifice is implied.
It is often taught that after the first sin was committed, God wanted to show Adam and Eve that sin has consequences, and so He slew an animal in front of them, and made clothes for them from the hide of the dead animal.
Some have even speculated that the animal was a lamb, thereby presenting a prophetical picture of Jesus, the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 5:6; 13:8).
Furthermore, some have argued that in this death of the animal, God was teaching Adam and Eve the theological principle of substitutionary atonement. He had told Adam that if they ate of the fruit they would surely die, and so after they ate of the fruit, God should have killed them, but instead He killed an animal in their place.
But Did God Really Perform the First Sacrifice?
But is any of this really true? Did God really practice the first animal sacrifice? Was it truly a lamb? Did God intend for Adam and Eve to learn about substitutionary atonement?
Frankly, this seems to be an awful lot to read into one single verse which says nothing other than that “God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.”
The death of an animal is never mentioned.
A lamb is never mentioned.
Substitutionary atonement isn’t even inferred.
So where did God get the skin in which he clothed Adam and Eve?
The text simply doesn’t say.
Maybe he made it.
The word for “skin” that is used can refer to either human or animal skin.
There have been some streams of Judaism and Christianity which believed that prior to the event described in Genesis 3:21, humans did not have “skin” the way we see it today, but existed in some other form. They believed that we were “clothed in light” like God (Psalm 104:2) and that when Adam and Eve sinned, the light left them and they tried to replace the light with leaves (Genesis 3:7), which was an insufficient covering, and so God gave them skin instead.
This view is a little too mystical (or maybe even Gnostic) for most Christians, and yet it cannot be proven or disproven from the text any more than the traditional view that God killed an animal to make clothes for Adam and Eve.
Maybe it was snake skin.
It is interesting to note, however, that one of the more common Jewish explanations of this text is that the skin which Adam and Eve were clothed with was snake skin. The Jewish Targum Pseudo-Jonathan says that the Lord made garments for Adam and Eve from the skin which the serpent in the garden had cast off. This seems pretty far-fetched if you have ever seen the papery skin shed by serpents.
A related view is that since God had said to the serpent, “he will crush your head and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15 NIV), that Adam had taken it upon himself to kill the serpent by crushing its head with his heel, and from the skin of the dead serpent God made clothes for Adam and Eve.
This sounds far-fetched, but it is just as speculative as every other view.
We simply don’t know where the skin came from, or what kind of skin it was.
The simple fact of the matter is that the text simply doesn’t say how God made clothes for Adam and Eve. Therefore, we tread on dangerous ground if we claim that Genesis 3:21 contains the first sacrifice in Scripture, for it says nothing of the sort. All it says is that God gave them skin to wear.
We read substitutionary atonement and the sacrificial system into Genesis 3:21 at our own theological peril.
Was Adam and Eve’s sin really about eating a piece of forbidden fruit?
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This is a guest post from Wesley Rostoll. He lives in in South Africa with his wife and two kids.
Wesley left the institutional church about 5 years ago and has been exploring what some people call organic church ever since. He writes about what he has learned from the experience on his blog.
If you would like to write a Guest Post for the Till He Comes Blog, begin by reading the Guest Blogger Guidelines.
For most of my life I thought that the punishment that mankind and the rest of creation suffered for Adam and Eve’s one act of disobedience in the garden seemed incredibly harsh. When compared to some of the things I had done in my life, it seems like I have done far worse and gotten away with it.
So when God said to Adam that if he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that he would surely die I read it more as a threat than as a warning.
The truth is this wasn’t a case of a petty or offended deity overreacting.
Despite the fact that most of us grew up believing that God could not look upon sin (see my thoughts on that over here), it was not God who hid Himself from Adam but the other way around.
After the fall we see God seeking Adam and Eve out, clothing them when they realized that they were naked and putting them outside of the garden for their own protection (Genesis 3:22).
Nevertheless, we see a drastic change in man and in his relationship with God after Genesis 3. And here is the crux of why that piece of fruit om the Garden of Eden was such a big deal.
When Adam chose to eat that fruit from the forbidden tree, he was essentially choosing independence from God.
Man would now decide for himself what was good and evil.
God tried to warn Adam that going it alone would surely end badly for him and that it was a path that would lead to destruction. It was intended for mankind to draw life from God and bear his image and likeness but the fall changed that.
It is easy to overlook the tragedy of Genesis 5:3. Hidden away in a genealogy list, it tells us that when Adam had sons and daughters they were born into his image and likeness.
Fortunately for us though he loved us enough to send a new Adam, one not born of man but of the Spirit (Matthew 1:18). Hebrews 1:3 tells us that this man, Jesus, was the exact representation of God. Jesus himself said that if you had seen him you had seen the Father. The good news doesn’t stop there either; Paul said that he (Jesus) would be the first born among many and that we who found life in him would be conformed into his image (Romans 8:29), which ultimately restores us back to what was lost in the Garden.
I do not think that it was an accident that Jesus chose the words he did when he said that he is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).
Likewise I do not think that it was a coincidence when he used the illustration of himself as being the true vine (John 5:5) and that those who were in him would bear much fruit.
Today our choice is not so different from the one that Adam faced. We can choose life and we can find it in that vine or we can choose the broad way that leads to destruction.
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