Cain and Abel: A Story of Rebellion, Judgment, and Grace

so let's take a look at the story of Cain and Abel in that connection of course the sin is Cain's murder of his brother Abel why does he murder him he murders him because God preferred Abel's sacrifice over Cain's but why did God prefer Abel's sacrifice over Cain that has been the focus of some discussion and debate over the years and it illustrates actually a very important characteristic of Hebrew narrative style as the famous literary critic Robert altar put it every culture and every time period tells us stories and writes its poems in different ways and and not radically different ways like we can't understand a Hebrew story coming from background and reading English literature but there are different features and characteristics and and one of the features that alder noted in Hebrews storytelling or narrative style is what he called the reticent narrator the narrator doesn't make his presence known in an explicit way by making evaluations or are talking about character motivations or even giving a lot of physical description there's some of that but not a lot not as much as you'd find for instance in the 19th century English novel so we have to look for the subtle clues that the narrator puts in the text and so when we read in Genesis 4 we read that and pick it up and the second half of verse 2 it says now Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil in the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as offering to the Lord and Abel also brought an offering that portions from some of the firstborn of his flock did you notice it Abel brought the best he brought an offering which was from the firstborn of his flock fat portions whereas Cain brought some vegetables all right so Cain brings the ordinary Abel brings the best this reveals their heart and of course God then confronts Cain and Cain of course could have repented and responded with a proper offering but rather than that he goes out and he murders his brother sin God then tells Cain that he will judge him how by making him a wanderer in other words expelling him yet further out from Eden and indeed that's what happens at the end of the chapter Cain becomes a wander but we see to the token of grace Cain responds to God's judgment by talking about the dangers out there from other people violence and God shows his care for the sinful Cain by giving him a token of His grace which is by giving him some kind of mark and we don't know what the mark was and unfortunately there have been unjustified speculations about what the mark was that's not important to our understanding of the story what is important is to identify it as a token of God's continuing grace

Channel: zondervan

Views: 28,660

Keywords: cain and abel, book of genesis, creation story

Id: 6Cy-bxpx8Zk

Length: 4min 22sec (262 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 23 2019