The assassination of Abel and the punishment of Cain

The story appears in the Quran, in Surah 5, verses 27 to 31 , tell them the truth about the story of Adam’s two sons: each of them offered a sacrifice, and it was accepted from one and not the other. One said, ‘I will kill you,’ but the other said, ‘God only accepts the sacrifice of those who are mindful of Him. If you raise your hand to kill me, I will not raise mine to kill you. I fear God, the Lord of all worlds, and I would rather you were burdened with my sins as well as yours and became an inhabitant of the Fire: such is the evildoers’ reward.’ But his soul prompted him to kill his brother: he killed him and became one of the losers. God sent a raven to scratch up the ground and show him how to cover his brother’s corpse and he said, ‘Woe is me! Could I not have been like this raven and covered up my brother’s body?’ He became remorseful. The story of Cain and Abel has always been used as a deterrent from murder in Islamic tradition. Abdullah ibn Mas’ud reported that Muhammad said in a hadith. The story of Cain and Abel has always been used as a deterrent from murder in Islamic tradition. Abdullah ibn Mas’ud reported that Muhammad said in a hadith.

History of the story of Abel and Cain

This murder tells the story of the first murder reported in the Bible. Among all the murders perpetrated since the dawn of time, there was necessarily one that was the first. Abel and Cain therefore has a certain historicity.  The teachings of this short story are much richer than the facts.

The first difference for God was the nature of the sacrifice. Cain offered the fruits of the earth, Abel a lamb first born of his flock. God preferred Abel’s sacrifice, which provoked Cain’s jealousy. This fact, namely the sacrifice of a lamb pleasing to God, found several repercussions in the Bible…

-Abraham sacrificed a ram, Yahweh having held back his hand to prevent him at the last moment from taking Isaac’s life (Genesis chapter 22).
    The Israelites escaped the last plague of Egypt by shedding the blood of a lamb on the two posts and on the lintel of the doors (Exodus chapter 12).
John the Baptist presented Christ in this way: He saw Jesus coming to him and said, « Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world » (John 1, 29).

The first strength of this antediluvian account was to evoke very early in history our plan of salvation, the only sacrifice that washes away our sins. It was not until the New Covenant and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, that we were able to overcome sin by faith. This offering of Abel, pleasing to Yahweh, prefigured the true message of the New Testament, Jesus came to fulfil on the cross the ultimate sacrifice to wash away our sins.

The fallibility of man

God’s advice to Cain was to pull himself together. In order to implement his plan and strengthen his faith in him, Yahweh used whatever means he deemed necessary. For example, when he asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, he spared Isaac, offering a ram for the sacrifice instead, but his method of testing Abraham’s faith was indeed to ask him if he was willing to sacrifice his own son.

Cain did not listen to Yahweh and out of jealousy killed his brother. From a Christian point of view, this murder is therefore an illustration that sin can only be dominated by the call to God. Yahweh used Cain to demonstrate that we cannot get rid of sin, just as Cain could not dominate himself and came to kill his brother.

The punishment of Cain

Yahweh did not see fit to kill the fratricide, contrary to what he prescribed in the decalogue many generations later in the time of Moses. The only death at this stage of Genesis, that of Abel, was the cause of man’s hand. Sodom and Gomorrah, the laws prescribing that murderers be stoned to death by stone in the name of God, etc., have not yet come into existence.

This divine pre-flood regime came close to the prescriptions of the New Covenant, where the Mosaic Law was brought to a spiritual level. Jesus, God who became man, does not ask to kill but asks to forgive those who offend us. Cain was not killed by God for his crime, he was marked and his descendants were also marked by force of circumstance.

What can we learn from the story of Abel and Cain ?

This story is very short and without a minimum of theological knowledge one completely misses the main teachings it contains. The murder itself is incidental. It is not a story of murder, it is a story of sacrifice, faith and justice.
About Abel’s murder by his brother

Since that first sin, a flood of sin has swept through the world: the assassination of Abel by his brother Cain is just one example. This first murder is presented with singular eloquence in a page of the book of Genesis (Gen 4, 1-8), a page rewritten every day in the book of the history of peoples, without a truce and in a repeated manner that is degrading.

The book of Genesis gives us some details to understand Cain’s journey on the path to perdition: Cain and Abel were children of Adam and Eve. The former cultivated the land and his brother was a shepherd. After some time, Cain offered the Lord some of the produce of his harvest and Abel, for his part, presented the first-born of his flock, offering the best pieces. (Gen 4, 4b)

When Cain saw Abel’s offering accepted by God, he became angry. His anger was therefore born of jealousy; this pain is what St. Paul calls: « The vexation of the world produces nothing but death. « (2 Cor 7:10) The biblical text does not reveal the reason why God preferred Abel’s sacrifice to that of Cain; but it clearly shows that, while he preferred Abel’s gift, he remained in dialogue with Cain.

He warns him by reminding him of his freedom from evil: man, created in the image of God, is in no way predestined for evil. The evil dispositions of his heart were only manifested in the depression that was painted on his face, but this depression was a sign of evil intentions. Here again, as after the fall of the couple Adam and Eve, God, having noticed his irritation, did not leave the sinner to himself; He consented to speak to him to make him aware of his fault and prevent him from going further into evil.

But Cain did not react to this call. Cain did not heed God’s warning, and instead of renouncing his plan, he led his brother away to kill him. Jealousy and anger overcame the Lord’s warning, and so Cain threw himself on his brother and killed him. The book of Genesis, in the account of Abel’s murder by his brother Cain, reveals, from the beginning of human history, the presence in man of anger and lust, consequences of original sin.

Man has become the enemy of his fellow man. Yet if Cain had renounced his jealousy and irritation, he would have been forgiven by God. Cain having refused to mitigate his crime by confessing it, the interrogation gave way to the sentence. The Lord said to Cain: « What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the earth! Now therefore be cursed and cast out of this earth, which has opened its mouth to drink your brother’s blood shed by your hand. No matter how hard you till the land, it will not produce anything for you. You will be a wanderer, a wanderer through the world. Now then, damn you!  « (Gen 4, :10-13a).

What did you do? An indignant question that awaits no answer; it is meant to bring Cain into himself. No witness saw the murder; Cain thought he could hide it by denying it; he had to convince himself with fear of God’s omnipotence and his omnipotence. The innocent blood spilled cried to heaven, the seat of the supreme judge, until it was avenged. As the fault increased, so did the punishment: it was no longer the same as for Adam, the earth became cursed because of his fault, but Cain himself was cursed.

From the first murder, God wanted to cut off individual revenge. The murderer was condemned to leave the land where he had lived for thirty-eight years, knowing that wherever he went, he would never find peace or the fruits of his labour. At the root of all violence against others is the fact of giving in to the temptation of the devil, that is to say of the one who was homicidal from the beginning. From the beginning of the world, the devil was homicidal because the truth was not in him and he never remained in the truth. He is a liar and the father of lies; lies come to him quite naturally.

Scripture attests to the harmful influence of what Jesus called « the homicide of the origin.  » (Jn 8, 44). The demon even tried to divert Jesus from the mission received from the Father. (Mt 4, 1-11). The most serious consequence of the works of the devil is the false seduction that leads us to disobey God. The devil can use us, without our knowledge, to do his work of destruction, of division: an unpleasant word can hurt, an uncontrolled gesture can cause violence, injury and even death.

Links to other Christian Web sites

◊ Irene Merker Rosenberg : click here to read the paper → ‘Cain Rose Up Against His Brother Abel and Killed Him

◊ Zondervan Academic  : click here to read the paper  → Cain and Abel: A Story of Rebellion, Judgment

Cain and Abel