This is one of those frustrating Bible stories where we aren’t told nearly as much as we want to know. Cain and Abel both make offerings to God. Abel’s offering is accepted and Cain’s isn’t? Why not? We don’t know. How does Cain know his offering isn’t accepted? We don’t know! Where the heck are Adam and Eve while all this is happening? We don’t know that either! What we do learn is that God is very, very concerned about us when we have gone in the wrong direction.
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Parents, all scripture is from the ESV unless I say otherwise)
So, today we’re finally starting Genesis chapter four with a teaching called, “the first kids” which is ironic because by the time we hear about Cain and Abel, they are already adults. In fact, have you ever noticed that there are almost no kids in Bible stories until they are already older? Now, I know you look at picture books and they show Isaac as a child, and David as a young teenager but Isaac was probably in his thirties when Abraham was told to sacrifice him on Mt Moriah and David was wrestling bears with his bare hands (get it? Bare hands against a bear? Nevermind.) so he was full grown as well. Joseph was seventeen when he was sold into slavery. Sometimes kids will show up as side characters but they don’t ever have anything to say. When you compare that to our modern world, it probably seems strange but remember that the Bible is a history book. A theological history book that teaches us about God and how He deals with us and so it isn’t going to show Him dealing with children in the ancient world. God holds adults to a different standard than kids, obviously, and so we are going to learn a lot more about God’s kindness and mercy in how He deals with people who are full grown and should know better.
We do see a few exceptions—like the prophet Samuel. We also see Jesus in the Temple dazzling the elders with His wisdom when he is twelve years old. And we see how ancient people treated children when the disciples tried to shoo them away when their parents brought them to Jesus to be blessed. What did Jesus say? “Do not stop them from coming to me, my Kingdom belongs to the people who are most like them!” God loves children. He loves you. Even if you sometimes think no one else loves you, He does. He made you for a purpose—a purpose that you probably have no clue about yet but he does. Your job is to learn to trust Him and allow Him to show you what He has in store for you as you grow older. But you don’t have to figure it out for yourself. You do what you are talented at.
Speaking of being talented—Cain and Abel, by the time their story in the Bible begins, have very important talents. Cain is good at farming and Abel is good with livestock, meaning farm animals. You know, one of the strangest things in the English language is that they call what Abel was doing “animal husbandry.” I mean, it sounds like you have an animal for a husband. Imagine being married to a billy goat. I don’t know why they call it that but it always makes me laugh thinking about someone getting married to a chicken or a cow. The English language is weird.
These jobs were very important. Although people wouldn’t be allowed to eat meat until after the flood, animals were still very important. Just try to keep warm in the winter without wool. And I imagine they would drink the milk from cows, sheep and goats and maybe make cheese. When the animals would die, their skins could be used for leather and for tent-making. And Cain was growing crops—probably planting fruit trees, and barley and wheat and maybe some of the other kinds of things that grow well in that region. The Bible talks about the seven species of the Holy Land—barley, wheat, pomegranates, grapes, almonds, olives, and figs. Maybe he was growing those! It would have been very hard work, after all, he didn’t have a plow or a tractor. Everything had to be done by hand. They even had to make their own tools. Cain wasn’t a slacker, that’s for sure.
Now, when Cain was born, his mom Eve said something very interesting, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” And when Abel was born, we don’t have any evidence of her saying anything and—now, this is really weird, she doesn’t name either one of them. Usually, when a child is born in Scripture, it says, “And he was called..” or “His father named him…” or “His mother called him…” or whatever. But not here. In fact, given what Abel is called, we aren’t even sure that’s what his name really was at all. Cain comes from the word meaning “to get” or “produce” and so when Eve said “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord” it’s like she is saying I have “cained” a man with God’s help. So, his name sounds like the word that means “got.” Aren’t you glad your name isn’t “got?” And Abel’s name is worse. Abel is the Hebrew word for “a puff of wind.” You know, something that is here one second and gone the next—which is kind of what is going to happen to him because you already probably know that Cain is going to get angry and murder him. So, was his name really Abel or did Moses just call him that because that described his life? We don’t know. Get used to it, there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know. There’s also a lot of things we think we know because of picture books but when we look at the Bible we say, “Oh, it doesn’t actually say that at all!” People like to fill in the blanks. So do I, but I will try to point it out when I do it, okay? I want you guys to learn how to think critically so you can ask the right questions.
And you might be asking, “Where the heck are Adam and Eve during all this ruckus that’s about to happen??” And that’s a good question. Adam lives to be 930 years old and I imagine that Eve lived about as long. And at the end of the chapter, they pop back in again to have another kid. But like they are absentee parents for almost the entire chapter—now, to be fair, it was probably because Cain and Abel were grownups by this time. What we do know about Adam and Eve is that God hasn’t abandoned them because Eve says that God helped her to have her son, Cain. And who knows, maybe Eve thinks that he might be the man whom God has sent to crush the head of the serpent like He promised. I always wonder if, when she told the kids about their life in the Garden and that rotten snake, if she also told them the story about God’s promise that one day the Serpent would be destroyed. I wonder if she was angry about the Serpent and being kicked out. I wonder if she told Cain that he would be the one to take revenge on the Serpent. We don’t know. But for some reason, Cain became a really hostile person. And not only hostile, but violent.
One day, Cain and Abel both brought a minchah to God, which is a word that means an offering. It isn’t one of the specific words for a blood offering (and we will talk about that next week because we’ll be talking about the Passover) so it doesn’t have to be an animal and, in fact, usually this word means a grain offering to God or some other sort of gift to God or another person. Let’s read those verses:
Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.
So, when we see that Cain brought an offering of the “fruit of the ground” to God, well, there’s nothing wrong with doing that. Leviticus 2 is all about that. There was a minchah offering with every animal offered to God and part of that minchah went to the priest. Every animal offering had grain and wine that went along with it. So, there doesn’t seem to be anything about this offering that isn’t technically acceptable. I know in picture books they will show Cain with a tray of fruits and veggies but that’s just someone’s opinion. If he was offering grain, then he was actually just doing exactly what is commanded later. We have no reason to assume that God didn’t like what Cain offered. I am going to tell you something—we ask these questions because we are really confused and that’s okay but when that happens, we have to look at what actually is talked about—because that is what God wants us to notice.
Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground and Abel brought the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions. Later on in the Bible, we will see that all the firstborn of the livestock animals had to be given to God. And that would have been a hard thing to do. That means that when a cow or a ewe or a nanny goat had their very first baby, that baby belonged to God. And giving up that baby would have been very hard because animals in those days were like money. You were rich if you had a lot of land and a lot of animals. They mostly didn’t carry money like we do. Their money was critters and land. So, when you give up a firstborn animal, it isn’t just that one animal. It’s also all the babies that animal would have had, and their grandbabies and great grandbabies. A female goat has a baby, okay, and if that baby is a girl, so half the babies, then that girl would have babies the very next year. Goats usually have twins but sometimes they can have triplets, and that can happen twice a year sometimes. So, by giving up that one baby girl goat to God, that’s at least three animals by the second year and think about how that will multiply year after year. It doesn’t take long before giving up that one baby goat will cost you a hundred other critters just from that one nanny goat. What seems like a small gift is actually a huge gift! But, it’s a gift that says, “God, I trust you that this goat will have more babies in the years to come so I don’t need this one. I trust that you are the source of all life in this universe and I don’t have to worry about missing out because I know you will continue to bless me.”
Cain, on the other hand, brought an offering from the ground. It doesn’t say it was the first of his harvest. It doesn’t say it was the best either. It just says he brought an offering, that minchah. For whatever reason, which we don’t know for sure, God liked Abel’s offering but He didn’t like Cain’s offering. And, we just have to live without knowing. Because that’s not the important part of the story. To find out the important part, we have to keep on reading:
So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted?”
How did Cain know that God didn’t like his offering? We don’t know that either! I guess it isn’t very important. But what we do know is that it made Cain very angry. The Bible says that “his face fell” which is a strange expression. What does it mean? We aren’t sure because it is the only time this turns up in the Hebrew Bible but we do have the same sort of expression in Greek in the story of the Rich Young Ruler who asks Jesus a question and is so disappointed by the answer that he just walks away. But Cain, he is really angry, so angry that God just flat out ignores him forever. Wait—is that right? No. In fact, God starts up a conversation with Cain. “Cain, why are you so mad? Why has your face fallen (whatever that means)?” But He doesn’t stop there, He tells Cain that all he has to do is what God wants and things will be hunky dory. You know what? God doesn’t just tell us “do right” without telling us what is right. That’s not how He is. He tells us how to please Him. Even though they didn’t have the ten commandments or anything back then, God was still talking to them. He told Adam and Eve how to please Him and so I have to imagine that Cain knew darned well how to present a proper sort of offering to God. But he hadn’t this time. I assume he had been doing a good job before this but maybe his heart wasn’t in the right place this time. God doesn’t want a bunch of sacrifices from people who hate Him, or who are doing terrible things the rest of the time. God wants our love. And when we love Him and then give Him something to show how grateful we are and how much we trust Him? He really loves that.
But Cain hadn’t done that somehow and maybe the Bible doesn’t tell us so that we can think to ourselves, “Am I doing what I am doing for God because I love Him, or not? Am I giving Him my best? Am I just pretending?” If that’s the case then we have to get things fixed. Because the very next verse tells us exactly what happens when we don’t get things fixed:
“And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
This is all very important because it is God telling us, and not just Cain, that we can choose to do good or bad. It tells us that sin, our desire to do bad things, is not looking out for our best interests. Sin feels good sometimes and seems right when we are really angry or feeling like life is unfair but it only makes more trouble. The good news is that God is telling Cain that he is not helpless, he can fight it and he can win—if he wants to. But will Cain want to win or will he choose to lose?
Now, did you notice something? Did you notice that this is the very first time in the Bible that the word sin is mentioned? That’s the Hebrew word chattat. There are three words in the Bible talking about different kinds of bad acts and this one is the mildest. The other words, avon and pesha, are way more serious. So, right here, we see that God doesn’t consider what Cain is doing to be absolutely unforgivable or terrible. Cain has just missed the target he was supposed to be aiming for—that’s what the word chattat means. This doesn’t have to be a big deal. God is telling Cain, “Okay, you know you were wrong, and I can’t just let that slide but you know what to do next time. I love you and I am not giving up on you.”
What we don’t see is a conversation with Abel—had you ever noticed that? Abel is doing okay and so God, like a good father, a good shepherd, is tending to the person who needs His help the most. And since we know what is going to happen, we might want to protest. But that’s not right! He’s going to kill his brother! God should be focusing all His attention on the good kid, that’s the fair thing to do. But would it be fair? We don’t see the world and people like God sees them. God is in the search and rescue business. He looks for the lost sheep and does everything He can to save them. God loved Cain. One bad sacrifice didn’t change that. One bad sacrifice is why God was talking to Cain—because He wanted good things for Cain. But, for such a small sin, just a chattat, just missing the target, Cain got super angry. Cain was overreacting. Cain was treating the rejection of his sacrifice and his actions like the end of the world, like God was wrong and unfair. He wasn’t thinking about the fact that the God of the whole universe loves him so much that he is having a personal conversation with him to set him on the right track. You know, sometimes we punish the people who love us enough to try to talk some sense into us. There’s some Cain in all of us. And so, God’s warning to Cain is a warning to us all. We must rule over our desire to get angry and refuse to do what is right or we will lash out and do even worse things.
I want to talk about the parable of the good shepherd. This is one of Jesus’s most famous teachings and even people who don’t know much about the Bible will often know this one:
15 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” 3 So he told them this parable: 4 “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
Doesn’t this sound just like God going after Cain to talk some sense into him? It’s supposed to because this parable is telling us not only about God’s character but about how Jesus is that good shepherd because Jesus is exactly like God in everything He does. The tax collectors were hated because they were what we call collaborators. That’s a word that means someone who cooperates and works with your enemy. The tax collectors were making money off of taking money from their fellow Jews so that the Roman Emperor and his cronies could live it up. Sometimes they got rich by taking too much. And Jesus was also being seen with other kinds of sinners too. This made the religious leaders furious with Him. They didn’t want anything to do with those people and so they decided that God didn’t want anything to do with them either. But they were wrong. God wants people who are doing terrible things to turn around and do what is right. I mean, why would God want anyone to keep sinning? He was calling to them, through Jesus, just like He called out to Cain! And He still does that to this very day. And maybe we’re like I was the first time I noticed how much special attention God was giving Cain. I said, “But what about Abel!? The guy doing things right?!” But you know what? I was acting just like the Pharisees and Scribes did when they saw Jesus talking to the people they hated.
God loves us, but He also loves our enemies–and He wants them to come to know Him and to change what they are doing and how they are living. If He didn’t love them, He probably wouldn’t love us either because we are not perfect. In fact, compared to God we might as well all be murderers because He is so perfect that we look like the devil himself compared to Him. Well, maybe not that bad, but you know what I’m talking about. No one can brag about themselves compared to God.
In this parable, Jesus tells the story of how God relates to people who are stuck in lives of sin. He talked about a good shepherd who has one hundred sheep and he notices that one has gotten lost and gone in the wrong direction. Anyone who knew anything about sheep would know that it was dangerous for a sheep to be alone. It wouldn’t be long before that sheep was the dinner of a wolf. Just like it wasn’t safe for Cain to be off on His own and angry. Sin was crouching and waiting for him just like the shepherd knew some wolf was probably crouching and waiting for a stray sheep to come along.
Did the shepherd say, “Well, serves that dumb sheep right. That will teach him and the others not to wander off!” Absolutely not. I told you in the beginning of this how valuable every sheep was. No shepherd in his right mind would allow something so valuable to be lost without fighting to get it back. And so, he left the main flock and went searching and didn’t give up until he had found it and once he did—he called everyone he knew to celebrate. And they didn’t celebrate by eating the sheep, I can tell you that right now. People in those days rarely ate any meat at all. Most Jewish people in the first century only had lamb once a year—on the Passover, which we will talk about next week. Animals were too valuable to waste by eating them.
But what I want you to understand is that no matter what you’ve done, God loves you. All He wants is to be able to love you and for you to love Him and for you to do what is right. He doesn’t want sin because sin always hurts others or ourselves, even if we don’t realize it at the time. He knows what’s best and He wants to guide us just as much as He wanted to guide Cain. And we can choose to run from Him but He still loves us and won’t stop wanting us to come back to Him. We’re going to see that happen a lot. God doesn’t give up on people. So, I don’t want you giving up on yourself, not ever. God loves you and He is always calling us His sheep in the Bible. I guess that makes us very valuable to Him. And he knows right where you are. You can’t hide from Him or go anywhere that He can’t see you, hear you and find you. All you have to do is call Him and He is right there.
I love you. I am praying for you. And I hope you have a wonderful week studying the Bible with the people who love you.