Why did God reject Cain’s offering? The story does not say.
Possibilities:
The story is simply an instance of God’s favor being ineffable and inscrutable and arbitrary, a matter of free grace on His part alone, not earned, but bestown for His own reasons. Why would God favor a slippery character like Jacob over Esau?
Abel made his offering in a spirit of pious humility, Cain with pride and self-satisfaction. (Got that one from a DC Bible comic book – aimed at children; it completely glossed over the “sodomy” aspect of the story of the destruction of Sodom.)
In a Medieval mystery play I once saw (and took part in) during college, Abel is all pious (and the papier-mache lamb he offers burns to ash at the first touch of the match), but Cain makes his “tithe” in a niggardly and grudging spirit, stripping the sheaf of grain he brought down to a single straw (which then fails to burn when he lights it).
Cain offered “the fruits of the soil.” Vegetables won’t do. Vegetables don’t bleed. God demands blood sacrifice in atonement for sin. (Got that from one of Jack Chick’s comic books; don’t know if it’s original with him. In doctrinal terms, obviously relates to the blood-atonement of Christ.)
There has always been conflict between pastoralist animal-herders and settled farmers. (To this day; see the recent bloodshed in Darfur, Sudan.) It’s farmers who make civilizations. Pastoralists view civilization as decadent and corrupt. (See the Chinese vs. the Mongols, Turks, etc.) And, of course, the two sides are always competing for land and water. The story dates from a time when the Hebrews or their forebears were pastoralists.
Perhaps it’s a difference in the quality within their means? Abel gives “fat portions” from the firstborn of the flock, while Cain brings just “some” of the fruits of the soil. Maybe if Cain had brought the best of his produce (or Abel had offered the sickest and runtiest sheep) it would have been accepted? Pretty much just an equivalent to the spirit of the giving argument, really.
Except, like you said, the text also says “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door”
Blood is a big deal in Jewish ceremonial law, because “the blood is the life” (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:11, Leviticus 17:14, Deuteronomy 12:5). Cain’s sacrifice is rejected because it doesn’t have blood, so he sins by shedding his brother’s blood. In Genesis 4, the Lord says
Both Cain and Abel spill blood on the ground, but Abel does it the right way, and Cain the wrong way, so the ground won’t produce for Cain ever again (the ground won’t bring forth “life” for him). Abel’s life properly belongs to God, but Cain spills it, and thus comes under God’s curse.
Genesis is full of these really old and interesting stories, that are just sort of presented but not always explained.
When the Bible was written I think the priests got to eat the sacrifices when the ceremony was over. They clearly would prefer the more valuable meat than the less valuable vegetables, and this story is to remind people why they have to give their best to God.
This is what I was always taught in (Baptist) Sunday School. The key portions being exactly what you have highlighted - “some” vs. “fat portions”. The nature of the offering (meat vs. veggies) was never considered relevant by my instructors. The implication is also that Cain knew what he was offering was unacceptable (which is why God asks why he is angry and tell him if he just did what was right he would be accepted). Of course then Cain flips out and goes all fratricidal and then all bets are off.
I see that others were taught the “blood” lesson so perhaps that was just glossed over in my (admittedly pretty young) Sunday School.
Definitely. People were very serious about Bible study back in, say, the Middle Ages. No budding theologian was supposed to read the book of Genesis before the age of 30. It is a very challenging book.
It’s interesting that in many primitive cultures, there is a strong cultural expectation that meat is to be shared, but not vegetables. This makes sense because fruits and vegetables are pretty much a function of time and labor, while meat is a high-calorie windfall that comes unpredictably, often in amounts too great for one family to consume, and cannot be stored. Thus, hoarding meat is extremely antisocial, while making claims on someone’s vegetables is a presumption on their time.
I am sure I am not mixing this up. I do not have a cite at work, but I recall this restriction is mentioned in Smalley and is also commented on by Augustine. There were no universal curricula for anything, but I certainly do recall that Genesis was treated with especial caution and was only considered suitable for mature theologians.
Sort of like how Scientology doesn’t mention space aliens and evil overlords nuking enemies buried in a volcanoes until you’re already deeply invested in the church, huh?
Not at all. Theological students heard passages from Genesis all the time in the lectiones. It’s not as if they were ignorant of the creation story or anything.
It’s more like how you don’t learn partial differential equations until you have already learned calculus. You may have disdain for the subject matter, but there were (and are) important tools and techniques of logic and theology that you just have to master before you tackle the hard problems.
I always interpreted “fat portions” as being meat with a lot of fat on it. So Abel was giving “some” of his harvest, just as Cain was. It just had lovely fat on it, which grain and vegetables won’t have. Is there some biblical reference to the smell of the sizzling fat in the sacrifice rising up and pleasing the Lord? Not necessarily in Genesis. Or am I mis-remembering?
Another way to look at it would be that you have to be heavily invested in believing before you can strongly embrace pure rubbish. This isn’t rocket science, it’s a book written by primitives. It’s not hard to understand because it’s deep. It’s hard to understand because it’s self-contradicting, poorly organized and translated twice at least.
You can’t really get it out of Genesis, but it doesn’t really have to do with Abel’s sacrifice, but more to his faith. Grain sacrifices later become acceptable (Leviticus) as sacrifices, but in the quote from Genesis it says, “The LORD looked with favor on Abel **and **his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.” This implies that he already favored Abel. Hebrews 11:4 also mentions that Abel’s faith was stronger than Cain’s.
Basically, they say that Able was the first to think “Gee, I sure am grateful to God, why don’t I sacrafice one of my sheep?”*
Cain saw that this was well accepted, and says to himself, “Aha. So God is like a vending machine. Put in a sacrafice, get blessing. I could probably spare a few vegetables for future good crops.”
Thus, Able offers his sheep out of gratitude; the material benifits are incidental. Cain scrounges up a few cucumbers as a bribe.
At least, that’s how I understand it. For an explanation from a real rabbi, see David Fohrman’s serialized series The World’s First Murder. (The links that connect the parts seem to be missing, so look for parts 2-15 here). It’s really good- he takes all the weird stuff and textual anamolies, and actually gets them to make sense. For that matter, read part 1, Serpents of Desire, which does the same thing with Adam and Eve.
*The question of what the point of burnt offerings is is a topic for another day.
I think you have a lot of opinions without much direct experience of the exegesis of a book like Genesis.
There are many complicated problems that are completely unrelated to its internal contradictions. Even for someone like myself, an atheist, it has a tremendous amount to offer. For example, I reread the story of Jacob’s marriage suit recently. On the surface, it is very opaque and difficult to understand. It is quite easy to just dismiss it all as primitive bullshit that makes no sense whatsoever. I thought about it harder, looked at some interesting commentary, and had some really interesting and useful insights into my own life.
There is a fine line between making an argumentum ad populum and saying that quite frankly, that there is probably something more than trash in a book that has survived critical scrutiny for milennia. Plenty of other self-contradictory books by primitives don’t get read anymore and their religions have died out.