NOTES for Gen 4:1-26

When reading the parable of Cain and Abel, a question arises: why, after all, did Cain kill his brother? The first and most natural answer to this question is envy. Of course, such an answer is in many ways correct, because Cain truly could have envied Abel, who managed to do what Cain himself did not: offer a sacrifice pleasing to God. It is hardly necessary to prove that envy has led to fratricide more than once in human history, and there is nothing surprising in the fact that the history of fallen humanity begins in just this way. And yet this is not the whole answer. Envy arose here not on ordinary everyday grounds, but on religious grounds; the question was whose sacrifice was more pleasing to God, or, to use modern language, whose faith was more correct. Then the next question arises: why did Cain's sacrifice turn out to be unnecessary to God? Of course, Cain is a farmer, and unlike the shepherd Abel, he brings God not calves or lambs but the fruits of the earth. But it is hard to believe that God would not have accepted his gifts for that reason alone, because, after all, each person offers what he has, and the Bible does not forbid offering God the fruits of agricultural labor. The matter is, evidently, something else, and here the text of the parable itself can help us. It says almost nothing about Abel, but it tells a great deal, and in detail, about Cain. The main theme of the story becomes precisely the account of how Cain learns that his sacrifice has not been accepted, and how he reacts to that fact. How does Cain learn that his sacrifice has been rejected? The text of the parable says nothing about this. A historian of religion would say that ancient people had many ways to determine whether their sacrifice had been accepted. But that is not the important thing. What matters is the very fact that Cain had ways to determine it, and therefore that some religion already existed, because such knowledge presupposes the presence of a religious system. If so, then Cain was clearly religious, which cannot be said of Abel, who simply brings his sacrifice and does not torment himself with questions about whether it has been accepted by God. It would seem that there is nothing wrong with wanting to know whether God accepts your sacrifice. But much here depends on a person's goals and intentions. Cain, for example, on learning that his sacrifice has not been accepted, angrily turns away from God, unwilling even to look toward heaven (v. 5; the corresponding Hebrew word means not so much "became upset" as "took offense and became angry"). He was clearly counting on a certain answer that his religion led him to expect, but the expected answer did not come. Of course, God does not abandon Cain. He explains to him what he must do in order to have normal, full relations with Him (vv. 6-7). But there is no place for religiosity in these relations. They are utterly simple, and at their foundation lies only the right choice between good and evil and consistency in carrying out the decision made. Religion is good because it offers guarantees; but in the relations of which God speaks to Cain, there is no question of any guarantees. There are only relations with God, and nothing else. And it is very hard for fallen man to part with the life preserver that religion, as it seems to him, can become for him: relations with God are unpredictable, while fallen man is seeking precisely predictability, which becomes for him a symbol of reliability. Then one has to choose between God and religion. Cain chooses religion, and then Abel becomes the most terrible threat to his religious well-being, because Abel truly has normal relations with God, and he manages without any religion. For religious consciousness this is a catastrophe, because if such a thing is possible for even one person on earth, it means the end of religiosity, which ceases to be the highest and absolute value. Then only one thing remains: to get rid of Abel, to remove the threat. Thus a spiritual choice determines a moral choice, justifying one of the most terrible sins: fratricide.