Two offerings
Humanity’s first vocation involves guarding and serving the trees that emerge from the ground (Genesis 2:15). God provides these trees to humanity for food. A serpent appears and tempts the couple to eat from a special forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity regards the serpent’s offering and takes the forbidden fruit. Subsequent to taking the fruit, God curses the ground. Humanity is banished from the presence of God.
In the garden, humanity partners with God to bring plant life into the world. When God acts independently, he forms life by separation. Consider: The man was formed from the ground (Genesis 2:7). Animals were drawn from the earth (2:19). God separated woman from man (2:21) This first death, banishment from God’s presence, like the first life, is a separation.
After the fall, both life and death would involve joining seed. Humanity’s seed mirrors the day 3 plant seed. The contained female seed is joined with the scattered male seed[1](Genesis 1:11). After taking from the tree of knowledge, man knows the woman, they become one flesh, their seed are joined; a son is born, then another. Later, the older son Cain kills his brother Abel, and Abel’s blood is swallowed by the ground–a violent joining. Subsequent to Abel, all death is a joining, and our bodies join the ground.
The first birth elicited wonder. Eve exclaimed “I have gotten a man!” Both names given to the woman by the man reflect Adam’s wonder for the prevailing means of emerging life (Genesis 2:23, 3:20). The woman was separated from the man. Adam calls her, Isha (Woman), because she was separated from Ish. After the fall, a new humanity emerges from joining, a sexual union. So the man knows the woman, whom he now calls Hava. Hava (Eve) is derived from a verb for ‘knowing.’
In the course of time, Cain and Abel offer bounty from their vocations to God. Cain offers produce that is nursed from the ground, while Abel offers from the firstborn of his flock. God regards Abel’s offering, not Cain’s.
Yet the text is silent about the crucial distinction between the two offerings. Why does God reject Cain’s offering? God’s judgment seems arbitrary. This article adopts the vantage of Cain and Abel to offer an explanation. I will propose an explanation, then survey other instances in scripture where God creates a new humanity. At each instance we find sacrifice and we find God calling that humanity to a new vocation. In each new vocation, humanity partners with God to multiply and serve an advanced form of creation.
Original vocation
Humanity’s first vocation involved sharing in the miracle of seeding the ground, then nurturing that seed into a sprout, then a tree. Humanity partnered with God in bringing new life into the world.
Humanity’s idyllic beginning ends after taking the forbidden fruit. God casts humanity from the garden and curses the ground. Outside the garden Cain resumes the vocation given by his father, serving the ground. Abel’s hand is applied to a new vocation of husbanding animals. In the course of time, both offer bounty from their work to God. God looks favorably on Abel’s offering, but disapproves Cain’s. The story is familiar, Cain becomes jealous, rises up, and kills his brother.
Afterwards, God reiterates his curse of the ground. God doesn’t intensify the curse, but he personalizes the curse to Cain’s labors.. “It shall no longer yield to you its strength.” God frustrates Cain’s labors, forcing his hand from participating in the old vocation. Cain even complains that God has driven him from the ground (Genesis 4:14).
Like in the garden, Cain then goes out from the presence of God. It is then that Cain participates in the act of bringing life through joining. He knows his wife, they become one flesh, bear a child, and humanity begins to multiply. He moves from the field and begins a city.
Abel’s vocation
Abel raised flocks. This is a curious choice of vocation since humanity didn’t begin to eat meat until after the flood (Genesis 9:3). What motivated him to choose this vocation?
Scripture does not record any births of animals in the garden. As far as we know, all animals in the garden were brought forth when God separated them from the ground in Gen 2:19. Like Noah, Abel emerged into a post-garden world with only the creatures carried over from the old. The purpose of God’s cursing of the ground appears to have been to direct humanity’s hand outside the garden to serve in perpetuating life by sexual union.
Imagine Abel’s wonder: Abel parades a lamb in heat before a ram, they come together, then after some period, a new life emerges through the birth waters, a microcosm of Creation. Abel’s vocation involved nurturing this new form of life. Abel partnered with God in perpetuating life. Unlike Cain’s produce from the ground, this was novel. There was no guarantee–only promise–that further life would be brought about.
Imagine then, the ordeal of taking this first animal creature formed by sexual union and putting it on the altar and offering it to God. To offer the firstborn from his flock would have required Abel to have faith in God’s promise of furthering life.
Noah was commanded to build an ark and bring living creatures through the dark waters of the flood. Noah’s ark was the womb in which the life that would populate the new world was gestated. Like Adam and Abel, he was a partner with God in multiplying a new form of life. Upon Noah emerging from the Ark, Noah took an unspecified number from the seven pairs of clean animals and offered them to God as a sacrifice. This sacrifice was a demonstration of trust that God would fulfill his promise to sustain and perpetuate the new life in his care.
The examples of Noah and Abel begin to form a pattern. Humanity partners with God when a new form of life is brought into the world. God looks favorably on humanity’s trust in God’s promises.
Tokens of faith
Abel was offering the first and thus far only member of his herd to proceed from sexual union. Abel rightly identified the source of this new form of life, the act and the spark, as God. By faith and without direction, he volunteers this first single instance of new life back to God, and it is credited to him as righteousness (Hebrews 11:4).
Abel’s offering of the first of a new form of life became an expectation in the remainder of scripture. The first issue of any womb in Israel belonged to God (Exodus 13:1,12-13). This meant sacrifice. This law nurtured Israel’s expectation that God would perpetuate life even in the face of death. God repeatedly demonstrates his commitment to creation and humanity, by perpetuating the first and often only instance of a new form of life. Abel demonstrates trust in God’s commitment through his offering.
When God calls Abraham, God promises him that a miraculous seed would proceed from his old body and Sarah’s dead womb. This birth was wonderful. The seed of Abraham was given a vocation reminiscent of Adam’s in the garden. They were tasked with serving and guarding the place where God placed his presence. (Genesis 2:15, Numbers 3:3,7). This is the same charge given to Adam with respect to the garden. Adam served the seed of plants, Israel tended God’s tent and nurtured the messianic seed. They also served humanity, they were to be a light to the gentiles, preserving the cultic rituals that pictured God’s desire for humanity to dwell forever in his presence.
This family tree of Abraham is rooted in the heavens, its fruit brings everlasting life. This peculiar people will continue to multiply through sexual union, but each act of union will be downstream from an act of cutting or separation, circumcision, a remembrance that this life starts with the solitary action of God.
After miraculously quickening Sarah’s aged womb, the promised son is delivered, he grows, and then God commands Abraham to sacrifice this first and only promised child. An angel arrests Abraham’s hand as he sends it to slay his son. Like Abel, God regards Abraham’s sacrifice. Abraham believed God’s promise of innumerable seed, and it was counted unto him for righteousness (Genesis 15:6).
Abel’s premonition
John reprises imagery from the garden in the last chapter of his Revelation. In Revelation, John describes Jesus with two familiar metaphors: the tree of Life and the firstborn Lamb of God.
- John describes Jesus as the tree of Life (Revelation 22:1,14). In his gospel, John quotes Jesus when he says “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” (John 6:54) John alone records blood and water emerging from his side as he hung on the cross (19:34). John maps these descriptions onto the tree of Life in the city of God whose leaves bring healing and has the river of life flowing from it.
- John also describes Jesus as the firstborn lamb of God (Revelation 5:6,14:1). Jesus is the firstborn form of life resulting from the joining of God and that seed from Abraham nurtured by Israel, gestated in a virgin. It was the most wonderful birth. Jesus passes through the baptismal birth waters uncorrupted, free from erosion, sustained not on that which comes from the dead earth, but sustained and satisfied by the word of God. He is the first instance for the new humanity. He is the pinnacle of creation, he subdues and has dominion over the chaotic forces, he guards and serves, he alone resists the devil’s temptations.
Like Abel, God offered the firstborn a new form of life, born from woman and God’s spirit, as a sacrifice. God allowed Jesus, this singular uncorrupted higher form of life, to be sacrificed. The sacrifice of Jesus was in kind with those of Abel, Noah, and Abraham. With it came the promise of a new humanity saved by his blood and nourished by his flesh. The Old Testament sacrifices outlined the shape of a new form of life that emerges from death. Each of the patriarch’s sacrifices prefigures an aspect of Jesus’ sacrifice.
- The firstborn from Abel’s flock was the first animal life from sexual union. Jesus is the firstborn from the union of God and the holy seed nurtured by Israel.
- Noah sacrificed the clean animals that passed through the flood into a new world. Jesus is the first to pass through death into the presence of God.
- Abraham was called to sacrifice the first of a promised nation that would camp in the presence of God. Jesus is the sacrificed seed who carries the church through death to live in the presence of God (Rev 21:9-27, 22:3-5).
Jesus went to the cross for us. We are drawn from the cursed ground. We will return to the ground. Humanity devises methods to forestall death. We seek our fountains of youth in supplements and surgeries.. But Jesus takes us through death.
Death has no hold on one nourished by the word of God, which is Jesus. The word of God called the habitable land from the dark chaotic waters on the third day. God calls forth Jesus from the cursed ground on the third day. God preserved Noah and his family in a wooden ark through the surging flood. Similarly Jesus preserves those who cling to him, the tree of Life, the firstborn lamb on the cross.
The Christian vocation
When God asks Cain ‘where is your brother?’ He responds ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ to which Scripture loudly declares, “Yes!” The hands of Christians were primarily designed not to garden or husband cattle, but to nurture and care for the ones made in his image. Our vocation is to fish men out from the chaotic world, each believer is called to shepherd his church (Matthew 4:19, John 13:34).
As history unfolds, God directs each new form of humanity towards the care of a higher form of life. Adam tends the third day plants of the ground. Abel tends the sixth day creatures of the field. Abraham’s seed was to be a light to the gentiles, servants of men, the second act of day six. As Christians, we serve those who rest in God’s presence, day seven (Hebrews 4:11).
We image God by partnering with him in the multiplying of the new uncorrupted life that emerged from the joining of God and the seed nurtured by Israel. This new humanity is called to separate itself from the world. Abel marveled when the first ewe dropped through its mother’s birth waters. Similarly, we rejoice when one passes through the baptismal birth waters to new life. God regards the offering of the hand employed in the multiplying of this new life.
Cain had faith in what he had seen, an old form of multiplying from the ground. Abel had faith in the persistence of a new form of life. This is our faith. This faith holds to the promises of God, even when faced with the cold darkness of death.
[1] “Fertile Meaning” Scott Fairbanks https://theopolisinstitute.com/fertile-meaning/