And Cain spoke to Abel his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.
The first death in the Bible is a murder, and the killer is a brother. How does a quarrel about worship end with a body in a field?
Cain's offering had already been refused. The path to the field starts there.
If sin begins toward God, it goes on toward man. It does so even when that man is a brother, with all the loving claims of so close a relationship. So the anger at worship that God rejected broke out in hatred of the man God accepted. Murder was the result then, as it has been ever since.
Abel gave Cain no cause. So what set him off?
Cain's works were wicked, and because of this he hated his brother and killed him. He was of that wicked one, and the moral features of the devil were stamped on him. He was marked by sin, hatred, and murder. What provoked him, and set all his evil nature in motion, was what was of God in Abel: "Why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous."
Cain's anger had a target he could not reach. So the anger found the nearest substitute.
Rejected by God, Cain became very angry with God, and took his revenge on the man of faith whom God had accepted. Cain was not irreligious. If he had been, he would not have bothered even to try to approach God. No! He was a religious man, and just because he was, anger and hatred filled his heart. God was beyond his reach. He could not strike at Him. Abel was well within his reach, so the blow was aimed at him. The clearest example of this in the New Testament is Saul of Tarsus. He hated Jesus of Nazareth with an intense hatred, and because Jesus was in glory beyond his reach, he struck at His followers on earth.
The Hebrew says Cain spoke to Abel, then stops without telling us what he said. Several old translations fill the gap with "let us go out to the field." But the silence may say more.
The Samaritan, the Greek, the Syriac, and the Latin all read "Let us go to the field." But it is far more impressive to leave the words as they are, out of respect for the Hebrew. The Hebrew is as striking in its silence as in what it says. What does it matter to learn the terms Cain used to deceive his brother?
The quarrel was about worship. That changes what we call this crime.
Note this well: Abel was murdered in the interests of religion. His was the first of the religious murders that have stained earth's history. Nowhere does the stain lie deeper than in Christendom. Some of God's best wheat has been destroyed in this way.
Abel dies and Cain walks away. That outcome troubles readers. One writer answers it from what is said about the serpent and the woman's offspring.
Here the blood of righteous Abel speaks to us of what often puzzles the soul so deeply — the apparent victory of evil over good. That puzzle is only removed when we see it as the rule that governs this conflict. The offspring of the woman will crush the serpent's head; but first the serpent will strike the heel of the woman's offspring. In Abel's death we may see Christ. His blood indeed speaks better things than the blood of Abel. Yet Abel is still a perfect picture of Him — the first martyr, dying at a brother's hand.
One later death reversed what spilled blood asks for.
The blood of Christ had been shed on earth, as Abel's was by Cain. Abel's blood cried from the earth for vengeance, and Cain became a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. The blood of Christ does not cry that way. It is grace that speaks, and the shed blood cries out to win pardon and peace for those who shed it.
- Blood begins at the altar. The rejected offering came first; the field came second. Sin that starts against God does not stay there.
- Blood is provoked by righteousness. Abel did nothing to Cain. What roused Cain was what was of God in his brother.
- Blood is spilled by religion. Cain was not a man without religion — that is exactly why he killed. God was out of reach, so the accepted man took the blow.
- Blood keeps flowing. Abel's was the first religious murder. The stain has run through history since, deepest where the name of Christ is worn.
- Blood that answers back. Abel's cried for vengeance and Cain became a wanderer. Christ's blood, shed the same way, asks pardon for those who shed it.
And Jehovah said to Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not am I my brother's keeper?
Cain has murdered Abel, and God comes to him with a question, not a sentence. The reply is one of the coldest in Scripture: a flat denial, then a sneer that shrugs off any duty to his dead brother.
God's opening question is not a search for information. Commentators read it as a door held open for a guilty man to walk through.
The LORD was not ignorant, and He was not careless either. But He would bring home secret sin, and give even the guiltiest room and reason to repent. Yet here religious show without reality had hardened Cain's conscience. God's acceptance of the man who stood only in the faith of divine grace made it bitter.
The question put to Cain is not the one God put to Adam. That change of wording shows how far sin has gone.
The questions of the LORD were searching: not, as before to Adam, Where are you? but Where is Abel your brother? and What have you done? Adam went away from God, self-convicted, before God pronounced on his sin and made known the resource of His mercy in Christ. Cain added to his sin against the LORD a sin against man — not a neighbour only, but his brother.
Cain answers a God who watched the whole thing. The lie says as much about his view of God as about his crime.
Though God spoke to Cain directly, Cain showed no faith in God's omniscience. How pointless and foolish it is to lie to God! On top of lying, he asks in irritation, "Am I my brother's keeper?" God did not have to answer this. Cain knew well enough that he was responsible to give his brother some honest care. He had not only neglected that duty: he had been guilty of the total opposite.
The sneer sounds like a question, but the word Cain picks gives him away. A keeper is someone trusted with what belongs to another.
As soon as there was a man to sin against, the trespass happened. The startled earth drank the blood of the first man killed — not by a demon from below, nor by a wild beast from the forest, but by his own mother's son. In the murder of Abel, Cain had trespassed in that "which was delivered him to keep," and he had "taken away by violence" his brother's life. His sullen reply to God's question about his brother, "Am I my brother's keeper?" made it plain that he knew he was.
There is a second edge to the reply. It turns the blame around and aims it at God.
This is the language of Cain: "Am I my brother's keeper?" By these words Cain was laying the burden of Abel's blood on the Lord. He was hinting that the Lord should have been Abel's keeper, since He had shown such respect to Abel and his offering.
Cain's boldness holds while God only questions him. It breaks the moment God speaks as God.
When God said to Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" he replied, "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?" — a flippant answer to God. But then God showed Himself as God: "The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground, and now you are cursed from the ground." At that moment despair came in. Wherever there is pride of heart before God, and God shows Himself, there is despair.
One writer traces God's question forward. God now puts it to the whole world about His own Son.
It is not only sin's testimony against us now, asking what we have done as sinners. We also hear God ask, "Where is Christ?" The Holy Spirit has come, and convicts the world of sin, but more than this. He comes and says to the whole world, on God's part, "Where is my Son?" There is pride too in Cain's reply, "Am I my brother's keeper?" It is as though he said, why should God ask?
- Question, not accusation. God asks where Abel is, though He already knows. The question drags hidden sin into the open and gives even the guiltiest room to repent.
- Question deepened. God asked Adam, "Where are you?" He asks Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" Sin against God has become sin against man — and not a neighbour only, but a brother.
- Question dodged. "I do not know" is a lie told to the God who sees everything, and the word "keeper" proves Cain knew the care he owed and refused.
- Question thrown back. The sneer shifts the blame upward. Cain hints that God, who had respected Abel's offering, should have been Abel's keeper.
- Question answered by God. When God names the blood crying from the ground, the bold man breaks. The same question still presses on the world: "Where is my Son?"
And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.
Cain has just answered God with a lie and a sneer, and God replies with a fact: the murdered man's blood is already speaking. What does that blood say to God, and is there any blood that says something better?
Cain's reply pretended he owed his brother nothing.
Though God spoke to Cain directly, Cain showed no faith in God's all-knowing character. How pointless and foolish it is to lie to God! As well as lying, he asks with irritation, "Am I my brother's keeper?" God did not have to answer that. Cain knew well enough that he owed his brother some honest care. He had not only failed to give it — he had been guilty of the very opposite. God then speaks with solemn words to the criminal's conscience.
One writer hears a second question behind this one, put now to the whole world.
Now it is not only sin that testifies against us, asking what we have done as sinners. We also hear God ask, "Where is Christ?" The Holy Spirit has come, and He convinces the world of sin — but there is more. On God's part He comes and says to the whole world, "Where is My Son?"
Abel himself says nothing. His blood does the speaking, and it is not the only cry God hears.
It is a solemn truth, reader, that sin has a voice, which cries to heaven for God's righteous repayment. The word of God, in both the Old Testament and the New, confirms it. … To Abraham the Lord said, "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to Me." Further, in the New Testament: "Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts" (James 5:4).
Adam's sin brought a curse on the ground. This time the curse lands elsewhere, and one writer links it back to the offering Cain had brought.
The ground had fallen under curse because of Adam's sin. Cain gave no thought to sin or to God's sentence. He brought some of the fruit of that ground, grown by his own work, as an offering to the Lord. This might have been acceptable, had man not sinned. To ignore sin is to show neither repentance nor faith. Without these no sinner can find the way to God… Now the unbeliever's evil was in plain sight: violence, lying and irreverence. And God justly cursed him — not the ground now, but the man who tilled it.
God alone sentences Cain. No human court tries him, and the same writer explains why.
Notice that nothing matching civil government existed at the beginning. Man did not invent it either, through all the centuries before the flood… This is why no man punished Cain. Human punishment became a duty only after God committed the sword to Noah. From then on God solemnly required blood for blood: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image."
Abel's is not the only such cry. One writer sets this verse beside the last book of the Bible, where the altar itself cries out.
For about six thousand years it might have seemed as if God slept. He seemed indifferent to the cruel, heartless treatment of His people in every age. But no! The long, lingering patience of our God has now come to an end… In the first book of Scripture (Gen. 4:10) we hear the cry of the blood of the first of the martyrs. In the last book (Rev. 16:7) we hear the cry of the altar. That altar had testified to the killing of God's saints from Abel onwards.
Another murder took place on this same earth, and its blood also speaks — but not the same word.
The blood of Christ was shed on earth, as Abel's was by Cain. Abel's blood cried from the earth for vengeance, and Cain became a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth — a striking picture of the Jewish people, guilty of the death of Christ. The blood of Christ does not cry that way. Grace speaks, and the shed blood cries to win pardon and peace for those who shed it.
- Question. God's "What have you done?" searches the conscience, not the facts. The same voice now asks the world, "Where is My Son?"
- Voice. Sin is never silent before God. Abel's blood, Sodom, and withheld wages all cry to heaven for righteous repayment.
- Curse. God cursed the ground for Adam's sin. Here He curses the man himself — the man who had offered Him fruit from that cursed ground.
- Reach. No human court touched Cain, since God gave government to man only after the flood. Yet the cry that starts here runs to the last book of the Bible.
- Better. Abel's blood asked for vengeance on the man who shed it; the blood of Christ asks pardon for the very people who shed it.