The LORD said to Cain: "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it."

Each of us carries both Cain and Abel within, and every day we struggle against straying onto Cain's path. History is full of people who took that path, leaving nothing behind but blood and death. What does it mean to offer a right sacrifice? It means falling to your knees and asking the Lord to kindle the sacrificial fire. It means giving the Lord the best of what we have.

The story of Cain and Abel is one of the Bible stories I knew best as a child, and I thought I understood it very well. I thought the story was simple and that there was really little more to it than: "Thou shalt not kill", the fifth of God's commandments. Looking more closely, though, hardly anyone can truly say they understand this story. To say we understand it would be like saying we understand Evil itself. With this text I want to scratch the surface of the story and lay out a few things I find interesting. I hope the reader, too, will find something useful here, and that it will prompt some reflection.

After being expelled from Eden, Adam and Eve are on the earth. Eve bears Cain, and then Abel. In a sense, we could say that Cain and Abel were the first human beings. Adam and Eve were created directly by God's hand. They lived in the Garden of Eden, the garden of paradise (Gk. paradeisos), and walked and spoke with God directly. Cain and Abel come into the world as all the rest of us do, and live on the earth. Cain and Abel are certainly the first people to come into the world after the Fall. The Fall, in the broader theological sense, denotes the condition of the whole human race as a consequence of the original sin of Adam and Eve.

Cain was a tiller of the soil, and Abel a keeper of sheep. This "keeper" should be understood as a shepherd. The trouble with shepherds is that we modern, city-dwelling people don't carry the right picture of them in our heads. We usually imagine shepherds as people who sat on the grass all day under a tree, watching the sheep graze. But it was nothing like that in those days. Shepherds had to be ever watchful and on guard over their flock. They had to know how to defend their flock and fight off jackals, hyenas, wolves and lions, depending on the region they were in. Often all they had was a staff and a sling, or a knife. A shepherd had to be brave, capable, and watchful over his flock. This tells us a great deal about Abel's character.

"In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions."(Gen 4,1 - 16) Cain and Abel offer their sacrifice on the same altar (as we see in the picture above), which symbolically means that the Lord gives them the same opportunity to offer a sacrifice pleasing to him. The biblical writer says nothing about what Cain's sacrifice was like. Abel's was of the finest possible quality. Abel gives his very best to please God. Nothing is said about Cain. We cannot draw any conclusions about Cain's sacrifice. Perhaps Cain really did try, and perhaps he worked hard to make his sacrifice pleasing to God.  We cannot say, just because the text is silent, that Cain offered up a head of lettuce and two rotten potatoes as his sacrifice.

"and the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard."() Here we come upon the privileging of the younger son. This appears several more times later in the Bible. The eldest son is privileged in the eyes of men, but the Lord does not care for human rules. The LORD said nothing about Cain and his offering. Cain's sacrifice may well have been quite good, of real quality. But Abel's was better. Abel's pleased God more. In the picture above, Abel is shown on the left, humbly on his knees in prayer, and from the cloud the Lord helps him kindle the sacrifice. Cain is bent over the altar, angrily forcing himself to light the fire alone. He does this so that he can later take all the glory for himself. He does not succeed, and only chokes on the smoke.

From the etymology of their names we know that Cain's name can be translated as "He who desires to possess the whole world", while Abel's name means "He who is worthless." And indeed, Cain behaves as though Abel were worthless, yet Cain, as one who must have everything, cannot bear not to have God's praise. Likewise, what is worthless in the eyes of man is exalted before God. One of Cain's possible responses to the whole situation could have been: "Well, clearly I'm doing something wrong. I had better improve my sacrifice and make it better." He could have fallen to his knees and said to the Lord: "I was wrong all along. I was offering the wrong sacrifices. Abel deserves everything he has." But that is not what happened. "So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell." Cain is not happy. And that is easy enough to understand. Cain complains to God the way people usually do when their plans don't work out and they feel hard done by. The same holds for people who don't believe in God. I imagine it is harder, if you're an atheist, to work out whom to blame, but that doesn't mean the feeling isn't there. The same drama plays out.

The LORD said to Cain: "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it." This is the key part of the story. The Lord tells Cain that the rejection of his sacrifice is entirely his own fault, and the Lord completely distances himself from any responsibility for it. He tells him that he is not all he could be. It is really worth stopping to think carefully that when we make sacrifices in life, when we work hard at something and it doesn't turn out the way we wanted, it may not be because God hates us and disapproves of what we do, but simply because our sacrifice is not as good as it could be.  

Also, the Lord tells him that he himself is the architect of his own downfall. The original translation of this verse speaks of a beast that comes with lust, and Cain lets it in and enters into a creative union with it. It means that Cain has thought it all through and has chosen to let evil thoughts flow, multiply and grow into the worst horrors. This is the very last thing Cain wants to hear. Of all the bad news he could have received, this is the worst, especially coming from God himself. He wants to hear that God is to blame for his sacrifice being rejected, that it is unjust that Abel came off better, that life has no meaning because things are not going well for him, and that everything is really a mistake that needs to be destroyed.

You can find Eric Harris's diary entries online. Harris thought exactly this, and wrote it down before killing thirteen of his schoolmates in a mass shooting. So there is nothing in this story that isn't real. And Cain finally accepts the catechesis of the Evil One, decides to raise his hand and destroy the one he admires most. He decides to kill the one whose place he wants to take. He does all this regardless of what it will cost him, and in defiance of the Lord. That is what Harris did too. He says so himself in his writings. That is why mass killers kill themselves after, not before, their crimes. Because, we might say, if they are so unhappy with their reality, why not simply commit suicide in their basement instead of having to go out and kill? Because that does not achieve anything like the effect they want. Mass murder says: My life is worth nothing to me, but neither is anyone else's, so I will take my revenge as far as I can, and just to show you how little I care, I will finish myself off at the end too. People always say they don't understand how something like that could happen to someone. I don't believe that. Whoever says they cannot see how it could happen to them either isn't being honest or simply doesn't know

"Cain said to Abel his brother: "Let us go out to the field." And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him." And so Cain kills his brother Abel. Let us just consider what this murder means. Cain was envious of Abel, which means he actually wanted to be like him. Abel was, in a sense, his goal, we might say the meaning he was striving for. With Abel's murder, meaning disappears from Cain's life. What does Cain have after that? Nothing. Because everyone needs a goal, a meaning in life  that would drive them forward every day. In Abel we can see Christ, who laid down his life for us. Abel gives the best of what he has, placing everything before the Lord, just as Christ placed his life before the Lord for us. Abel also dies as a righteous man, and because he is righteous. We can say that Abel, through his righteousness, spoke the truth to Cain about himself. Christ, too, was crucified because he spoke the truth to the Jews. That is why they killed him, and that is why Cain kills Abel too. In fact, it is even worse than that. Cain kills his brother in order to take revenge on God for not looking upon his sacrifice. He raises his hand and tries to harm his own Creator, which makes the story even darker. God drives him from his presence. Cain loses all connection with the Lord. That is why Cain later says: "My punishment is greater than I can bear." After that, everything goes downhill. Cain's descendant Tubal-cain is born, who according to tradition was the first blacksmith to forge weapons. Cross-generational vengeance grows ever greater. Then comes the flood. It is remarkable how the story spills over from an individual sin into a general catastrophe.

What should we take from this story? Well, there are no literal Cains and Abels on earth. Each of us carries both Cain and Abel within, and every day we struggle against straying onto Cain's path. History is full of people who took that path, leaving nothing behind but blood and death. What does it mean to offer a right sacrifice? It means falling to your knees and asking the Lord to kindle the sacrificial fire. It means giving the Lord the best of what we have.

Cain – Lovis Corinth, oil on canvas, Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf