This sheet on Genesis 4 was written by Jeremy Benstein for 929 and can also be found here
Who is the Tanakh's first killer? If you said Cain, you're off by a few verses. It was Abel, who slaughtered lambs for his sacrifice.
Despite the "dominion" that God granted human beings over nature, He explicitly said, in Genesis 1:29, that "every seed-bearing plant... and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit, shall be yours for food." Whatever mastery over the world might mean, it clearly did not extend to killing its other inhabitants, even for sustenance. Much-maligned Cain, then, was doing the good work in tilling the ground by the sweat of his brow, fulfilling God's prophecy, or curse, or simple description of the Real World in Genesis 3:17-19. It was Abel, shepherd and sympathetic victim, who introduced the taking of life. And though the first slaughter was apparently for sublime ends - worship, not appetite - the first human murder was not long in coming.
It has been suggested that Cain ended up killing precisely because he was a vegetarian. A radical animal liberationist, in fact. Cain, the theory goes, saw no moral distinctions between humans and animals. Initially he killed neither. But once he saw that Abel's sacrifice of lambs was not only acceptable, but preferred to his own, he concluded that all was permitted, even slaughtering his own baby brother.
Or maybe it wasn't as it seems, a cold-blooded murder? Maybe this first taking of life wasn't born of hatred and resentment, but of a tragic love, and a desperate, anguished desire to appease the Divine Parent. Abel sacrificed a few of those cute little lambs, that he must have been quite fond of. Maybe Cain drew the conclusion, logical as it was horrifying, that he too should sacrifice something dear to him. Offer it up.
God responds a little differently to this sacrifice – but it's too late, and the world goes downhill from there. Cain's descendent Lemech makes violence a credo, and the world becomes filled with lawlessness, until given the divine boot, and reboot, with Noah and the Flood. Only then (Gen 9:6) is the commandment clearly stated, poetically but crystal clear, and the underlying reason reiterated: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; For in His image did God make man."
Dr. Jeremy Benstein is the managing editor of 929-English, and is the author of a new book about the Hebrew language, "Hebrew Roots, Jewish Routes: A Tribal Language in a Global World" (Behrman House, 2019).
929 is the number of chapters in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, the formative text of the Jewish heritage. It is also the name of a cutting-edge project dedicated to creating a global Jewish conversation anchored in the Hebrew Bible. 929 English invites Jews everywhere to read and study Tanakh, one chapter a day, Sunday through Thursday together with a website with creative readings and pluralistic interpretations, including audio and video, by a wide range of writers, artists, rabbis, educators, scholars, students and more. As an outgrowth of the web-based platform, 929 English also offers classes, pop-up lectures, events and across North America. We invite you to learn along with us and be part of our dynamic community.
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