Heroes of the Faith - Abel

The Hebrews 11 Heroes of the Faith – Abel

Please read Genesis 4 and Hebrews 11 to join in the discussion.

For the past few months, Abel has intrigued me. In a world of sin and depravity, it is much more interesting to try to understand the motivations of good and noble-minded characters, than to adopt the world’s allure to dictators, murderers, and perverts. Righteousness is rarer than evil, therefore far more intriguing.

One might wonder why Adam and Eve’s first son, Cain, would have a rebellious attitude and the second son, Abel, would have a righteous attitude. On the other hand, considering the first couple’s fall from perfection in Eden, I should question how they were lucky enough to get one son who did please God!

One of my rules in study is to do many close readings of a text before trying to figure out interpretation and application. Just absorb the story, and observe the characters, setting, and incidents. From all of that, it is good to take notes of things I see in the text, some obvious, some more subtle. For our purposes here, read both texts in Genesis 4 and Hebrews 11, but save discussion of the Hebrews passage for later.

Here are some things I have noted from Genesis 4:1-7.

· Adam had a healthy (sexual) relationship with his wife.

· Eve recognized her son was a gift from God.

· And again, she had Abel.

· Cain - a worker of the ground; Abel – a keeper of sheep.

· They both brought offerings to God.

· God deemed (v. 4&5) Abel’s offering good, but “for Cain and his offering he had no regard.”

· So Cain was very angry.

· His anger controlled everything about him, “his face fell”.

· In v. 6 God confronts Cain for his anger, and tells him if he does well he will be accepted [lit. “a lifting up of your face”]

· “if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door” v. 7

· “its [sin] desire is to rule over you, but you must rule over it”

· there is no explicit reason given for God’s lack of regard for Cain’s offering.

Also, notice the emergence of a theme that runs throughout Scripture: God favors the younger son. Could this have accounted for some of Cain’s rebellion? Did he perhaps feel deserving of favor by his birth order?

I am going to stop here, at Genesis 4:7, and invite you to comment and share your observations about this text.