Cain and Abel

Feb 17, 2010

To unravel the mysterious offerings of Cain and Abel we need to break the scripture down word by word and understand the symbolic meanings behind the words and phrases. We also need to examine the characters of these two brothers and how they differed.

Abel
Let’s start with the younger brother Abel. The Lord says
Gen 4:2 And Abel was a keeper of sheep,

A keeper of sheep is a shepherd, and the sheep are the congregation.
See:
Nu 27:17 …………….that the congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd.

Nu 31:43 Now the half that pertained unto the congregation was three hundred thousand and thirty thousand and seven thousand and five hundred sheep

So Abel was a God fearing and righteous man, obedient to the Lord and he ministered his knowledge of God with other men. In other words he was a pastor to the people around him.
(If you are wondering “what other men” please see the Trees are nations thread.)
being a God fearing man that he was, Abel brought an offering to the Lord.

Ge 4:4
And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:

God had respect for this offering of Abel, but what was this offering ?
The first word that jumps out at me is “Firstlings”, so let us see what the Bible has to say on this subject. We’ll start by going to the Hebrew meaning of this word.

The Hebrew word for “ firstlings” comes from

firstborn; hence chief: – eldest (son), first-born
A primitive root; properly to burst the womb, that is, (causatively) bear or make early fruit (of woman or tree); also (as denominatively from H1061) to give the birthright: – make firstborn, be firstling, bring forth first child (new fruit).

So these firstlings can be people as we can see by the Hebrew translation. If they are offspring, I cannot conclude.
The next word that jumps out to me is “flock”, again let us go to the Hebrew definition.

Flock is from the Hebrew.
From an unused root meaning to migrate; a collective name for a flock (of sheep or goats); also figuratively (of men):

So we can surmise that this ‘flock’ is either Abel’s offspring, or other men Abel was “shepherding” and ministering to. Later in the scriptures we see that Abel was righteous in doing so and this was expected of him.

Neh 10:36 Also the firstborn of our sons, and of our cattle, as it is written in the law, and the firstlings of our herds and of our flocks, to bring to the house of our God,

Abel’s offering was pleasing to the Lord which means he must have obeyed the first law at this time.
“do not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
Therefore his offering must have been from a people (tree) that God said they may eat(partake) from.

Cain
Let’s move on to Cain’s offering and break down the symbolic meaning of words as we did with Abel, to see why his offering displeased the Lord so much.
Again, let’s start by examining the character of this younger brother Cain.

Gen 4;2
Now Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Now as we understand that, it means he was a farmer, which we know is accepted by the Lord, as he often refers to Himself as” the husbandman.”
I also cannot imagine the Lord being wroth with any farmer or his veggies.
Yes, I hear some of you saying that maybe they were rotten vegetables and not the best pickings from his field, but remember that there is still only one law at this stage and the offering of both men had to be connected to that and of the same nature as each other.

Let’s go back to the first sentence that describes the character of Cain and find the symbolic meaning behind it. the two words that stand out to me are ” tiller” and ” ground”
Let us start with ” ground”, as always it is best to go back to the first occurence of a word to get a better understanding of it’s meaning.
For this we need to go back to Eden where Adam was formed out of the ground, Gen 2; 7
So God formed a body for Adam from the ground. therefore flesh is symbolic of ground. This will become clearer later on.

The word “ground ‘comes from the same word as “man” and “Adam”.
ad-aw-maw’ From H119; soil (from its general redness): – country, earth, ground, husband [-man] (-ry), land.
119 ‘a?dam To show blood (in the face), that is, flush or turn rosy: – be (dyed, made) red (ruddy).

So God gives us a description of the fleshly body of Adam, being ruddy.
Again, “ground” is the symbolic meaning for “flesh”
There is a deeper explanation on this subject in ” Identifying the bible’s creations”

The next word we need to look at is “tiller” or “till’
See:
H5647 aw-bad’
A primitive root; to work (in any sense); by implication to serve, till, (causatively) enslave, etc.: – be, keep in bondage
From
H853 ayth
Apparently contracted from H226 in the demonstrative sense of entity; properly self

So to “till” is to be enslaved and kept in bondage to self, to the flesh.
Was man always in bondage to the flesh?
Let’s see how Adam was in the day that God created Him.

Gen 2:5 and there was not a man to till the ground.

In other words, there was no man in bondage to the flesh at this time.
The answer is no, man was not always in bondage to the flesh as the scripture above shows us.

Let’s see what God did to the man that changed him.

Ge 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,

The word “ formed’ means
H3335 yaw-tsar’
(through the squeezing into shape); to mould into a form; especially as a potter;

So here God, for the first time moulds ( formed) them into fleshly (ground) beings, able to commit physical acts and therefore being able to commit the physical sin. In Gen 2.9 we see that God does the same with the other trees (nations) in Eden.
Then we jump to after Adam and Eve committed the sin which we now understand to be a sexual, physical act with a people God commanded them not to and God says:

Ge 3:17 And unto Adam he said,…….. because thou hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground ( flesh) for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat ( partake) of it all the days of thy life;

As a result of them physically breaking the first law, we see that God cursed our fleshly bodies and that we would wrestle with our carnal desires and Ego all our lives, thus also opening up a door to a myriad of other sins.
The Lord repeats this bondage we will suffer again below;

Gen 3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

So now that we understand that to ‘ till the ground” is to be in bondage to the flesh, let us get back to Cain and his character.

Gen 4:2 but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

So Cain was in bondage to the flesh and ego, unlike his younger brother, Probably someone of weak character, which inevitably happens when we are servers of the ego, which is really Satan, rather that obedient to God. This making him susceptible to commit THE sin, I say The sin because at this stage there is still only one law to be broken, or upheld.

Gen 3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

Cain and Abel’s parents ate of the fruit of this tree and Cain also offered this fruit to the Lord.
let us quickly determine what this ” fruit” is and where it comes from.

EXODUS 21:22
If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her,

ISAIAH 13:18
Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.

So we can see that fruit is offspring and children..

Let’s look at Cain’s offering now that we know the symbolic meanings of “ground” and “fruit” in Biblical context.

Ge 4:3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.

Simple enough, so Cain brought the children of his flesh as an offering to the Lord. but the lord was not happy with this offering.

Gen 4:5 But unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect.

In fact the word “respect” means to look upon and inspect and be bewildered. God was bewildered that Cain knowingly would offer Him an unacceptable offering. We know this is true as God asks Cain why he is so upset seeing he knows what is good and what is not and still chose to offer Him something that is unacceptable.

Gen 4:6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth ? and why is thy countenance fallen ?
4:7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.

Now it’s not that Cain brought an offering of the flesh that made God angry with him as this was expected of him see;

Neh 10:35 And to bring the firstfruits of our ground,………unto the house of the LORD

So considering there is only one law at this, point this would lead us to conclude that, Cain like his parents also” ate of the tree of knowledge” being a nation not accepted by God. We know that in the garden of Eden that some trees were acceptable to the Lord but not the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

We know cain’s parents partook of this forbidden tree and now it seems the sins of the fathers were brought onto their eldest son Cain also. Unlike his parents though, cain took it one step further and had offspring “fruit” from this union and offered them to the Lord. The next sentence also gives us a clear indication of this.

Gen 4;7 And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

God uses He and desire to describe this sin offering, which indicates it is in the form of a people and yes, of course their father, Satan who lays in wait to beguile us into partaking from his seed and offering it to God, exactly as the apostate church does today.
(I will elaborate on the apostate church’s offering in a later topic.)

The bottom line is that if all these symbolisms point to people, then it is obvious some people are not accepted by the God of the Bible.
If this is so, then we must be open to the possibility, that the God of the Bible did not create everybody and that Satan must have a physical seed as stated in Gen 3;15
and that the God of the Bible will never accept these people no matter how we want Him to. The danger lies in us then committing the same sin as Cain and his parents and being expelled from the Lords presence for ever as Cain was in Gen 4;14-16
and his parents in Gen 3: 24.
We will need to go back to Eden once more, to identify the creation of God and therefore then identify the unacceptable offering and the identity of Satan’s seed.

Therefore I ask all you brothers and sisters that earnestly seek the truth of Christ, to turn from our wicked ways and stop offering the sinful offering to the Lord for fear of our eternal lives. Blessed in Christ Jesus and His perfect wisdom.