Over the past week or so, I have been mulling over the question: Why was God pleased with Abel's offering and not Cain's? (See Genesis 4:1-8, esp. vv. 3-5)
Now, I've been in church my whole life so I am pretty well-versed in the stories of the Bible. When I was little, my Sunday School teachers told me that Abel offering was pleasing to God because he brought the best of his animals while Cain just offered up some of his fruit. The New Living Translation definitely supports this view:
3 When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. 4 Abel also brought a gift—the best of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, 5 but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected.
However, most of the more literal translations of the Bible simple say Abel brought the "first born" of his flocks and leave out the phrase "the best of" (NIV, NASB, ESV for examples). So, while I can see some Biblical evidence for this viewpoint, it doesn't seem like the complete story...
When I grew older and actually started listening to what the pastor was saying in "big church", I heard commentators on this passage say that Abel's offering was accepted because it involved the shedding of blood which foreshadows Jesus's blood shed on the cross for our sins. This made a lot of sense to me and seemed to fit with the theme of the Bible. However, as I started looking into this claim for myself, I found other passages in the Bible where crops were a completely acceptable offering to God. As Derek Kidner writes in his commentary Genesis:
It is precarious to claim that the absence of blood disqualified Cain's gift (cf. Dt. 26:1-11); all that is explicit here is that Abel offered the pick of his flock and that Cain's spirit was arrogant ([Gen.] 5b; cf. Pr. 21:27). (pg. 75)
In Walvoord and Zuck's The Bible Knowledge Commentary, they comment on the content of the sacrifice, but use completely different logic and reasoning:
...the narrative lines [Cain] up with the curse; he worked the soil (lit., ground, Gen. 4:2; cf. 3:17). Abel, however, seems to be lined up with man's original purpose, to have dominion over life (cf. 1:28); he kept flocks. (pg. 34)
This statement seems to ignore that fact that, even before the Fall, God also instructed man to cultivate and keep the Garden. So, where does this leave us?...
Though he was using this story to comment on man's relationship to technology, John Dyer, in his new book From the Garden to the City (http://fromthegardentothecity.com/), provided me with the answer that finally gave my heart and mind peace: "...the issue was not between crops and blood but between faith and faithlessness" (Chapter 5).
To support this claim, Dyer goes on to quote Hebrews 11:4:
"By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts"
as well as I John 3:12:
"We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous."
In some ways, it seems strange to me to look in the New Testament to explain something from the Old Testament. I mean, if you want to know the facts of a story, you ask the witnesses to the event as soon as possible. The more amount of time that passes, the less accurate information tends to be. But, then I realized that this isn't just any crime scene. This is God's revelation to all of mankind.
Every answer I heard to the question "Why was God pleased with Abel's sacrifice and not Cain's?" was, in some part, true. The reason that my mind wasn't satisfied with answers is because they were just commenting on the facts themselves. I was looking for the meaning of it all. Moses's purpose in writing Genesis was to communicate the history of the world and the law of God to the Israelites. We are in error only if we don't look beyond the facts and fail to read God's Word with the light of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Once I finally sought the complete answer to my question, I realized that it had been right in front of my face the whole time. I had just failed to read the rest of the story... :-)
"Abel went out of his way to please God (which meant he had faith in God, Heb. 11:6), whereas Cain was simply discharging a duty. Abel's actions were righteous, whereas Cain's were evil (I John 3:12)." Walvoord & Zuck, The Bible Knowledge Commentary, pg. 34
"The New Testament draws out the further important implications that Cain's life, unlike Abel's, gave the lie to his offering (I Jn. 3:12) and that Abel's faith was decisive for his acceptance (Heb. 11:4)." Kidner, Genesis, pg. 75
Wow! Great post. I, too, have had this question. Thank you for sharing.
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