The story of Cain and Abel in Genesis is about human sacrifice, not murder.

February 18, 2025

The story of Cain and Abel in Genesis is about human sacrifice, not murder. Not that fratricide is a good thing, but we miss the point of this lesson from the Bronze Age if we moralize rather than mythologize, especially in the full context of today’s mass readings.

The two first brothers embody the two economic options available in Israelite tribal culture: Cain the settled agriculturalist, Abel the nomadic herdsman. Both offer the best of what they produce: Cain “the produce of the soil” and Abel “the first-born of the flock and some of their fat as well.” The LORD famously rejects Cain’s offering and “looked with favour on Abel and his offering.” (Gn 4:3-5 RNJB) Cain famously overreacts, kills his brother out of jealousy, and God exiles him. End of story, right?

Not so fast. Stop for a moment and ask “why?” Why does God accept one sacrifice and not the other? In the logic of the Bronze Age setting, the answer is clear: Abel’s sacrifice is a blood offering and Cain’s is not.

Many pre-Christian pagan agricultural systems practiced blood sacrifice to fertilize their fields. Think of the “blót” ritual in Norse paganism, where the blood of the sacrificial victim offered to the deity is poured into the field to seed it with the victim’s life and ensure a fertile harvest. Literally bringing the ground to life. I’m pretty sure a ritual like this would have been familiar to the original agricultural audience three millennia ago, at least because they probably saw something like it among their Canaanite neighbors. If so, the story of Cain’s attack on Abel is less about sibling rivalry than it is about explaining the agricultural practice of blooding a field and prohibiting human sacrifice to do so.

Read in this light, Cain’s actions are at once both more rational and more insidious. “If you are doing right, surely you ought to hold your head high,” (Gn 4:7 RNJB) God answers the outraged Cain. Cain seems to consider what his brother is “doing right” and decides on a clever way to make his crops into a blood offering too, by blooding the field.

Then (maybe even out of spite) he ups the ante. Forget lambs or goats. If their blood was good for Abel’s offering, how much more will God favor human blood? He invites his brother out into his field and sacrifices him there. Perhaps he is even genuinely surprised when the Holy One objects. Read this way, God’s words sound more confused than angry, describing in shocked tones the natural consequences Cain failed to foresee: “What have you done? Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground. Now cursed are you from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood at your hands. When you till the ground it will no longer give you its strength. A homeless wanderer shall you be on earth.” (Gn 4:10-11 RNJB) I almost imagine the last line ending with “…you idiot.”

Like most other pre-Flood stories in the Pentateuch, maybe this one too explains the origin of a common practice, and then redefines how Israelites are to do it differently than their pagan neighbors: blood sacrifice for fertile fields, okay. Human blood, not okay.

Which seems to make an odd mix with today’s Gospel reading from Mark, in which Jesus refuses to perform a sign from heaven on command to prove himself to Pharisees. “Amen I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation.” (Mk 8:12 RNJB)

On the esoteric level of symbols and syntax, however, these stories are tied more closely than you think.

To answer Cain’s fear that he will become the victim of vengeance or a blood feud, God places a “mark” upon him – probably a tribal tattoo marking him as God’s property – to prevent anyone else from killing him. As a result, Cain and generations (Hebrew: toledoth) of his progeny go on to found the first cities and invent metalworking. Meanwhile, in place of Abel, God grants the first human parents another son, Seth, whose own son is named Enosh (meaning, literally, “man” like his grandfather Adam). “This man was the first to invoke the name of the LORD.” (Gn 4: 26 RNJB)

I know. Still not seeing any connection to the Gospel. Wait for it.

The Cain and Abel story prohibits agricultural use of human sacrifice and then divides the human race into two lineages: Cain’s progeny of materialists (city states and metallurgists) and Seth’s progeny of the spirit-minded (invoking the proper name of the Divine).

Which line does the Divine Logos, the Son, the Second person of the Trinity, choose for his incarnation?

Luke’s genealogy of Jesus (Lk 3:23-38) frames his lineage backward from Joseph to David, up through Isaac, Jacob, and Abraham to Noah, then up through his ancestors to the “son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.” (Lk 3:38 RNJB)

This isn’t by coincidence. The Christian story uses genealogy to interpret the significance of the Incarnation. Consider this.

One of Eve’s first sons dies as a sacrifice, and God grants her another son, a new “man” (like Adam) to restart a righteous branch of the broken human family. God acts all throughout history in that lineage – through floods and patriarchs and kings – until it finally brings forth the Son as a new Adam to restore the broken human family by dying as a sacrifice.

He is born into the lineage that knows God by name. Where before God marked Cain with a sign of his protection, now when challenged to prove his credentials, he refuses to give this generation (toledoth) a sign (mark). “And, leaving them again, he embarked and went away to the other side.” (Mk 8:13 RNJB)

The other side of the sea in the literal reading. The other side of humanity in an esoteric reading.

Read analogically at the level of symbol and syntax, Christ is preparing the Kingdom, refusing to mark the humanity of exploitation and mechanization (Cain’s progeny) with God’s protection, crossing to dwell instead with an attentive, spiritual humanity, a line that was once victimized by Cain but that now knows God by name (Seth’s progeny). There, once again, he will create a new human family by the sacrifice of a Son.

Paired liturgically, these aren’t readings about fratricide and murder.

They are a mirror asking me to reflect: which side of the family am I on? The side that sacrifices others to secure the Creator’s blessing? Or the side that knows the true name of God?