Abel

Overview

• Abel is the second son of Adam and Eve, a shepherd whose offering God accepted — and who was murdered by his brother Cain out of envy, the first death in human history.
• The Church honors him as the first righteous man and the first martyr, whose blood "still speaks," and reads him as an early type of the innocent Christ, the Shepherd slain by His own.

His Story

Abel (Hebrew Hevel, "breath" or "vapor" — the word of Ecclesiastes, a life here and then gone)[^3] was the second son born to Adam and Eve, a keeper of sheep, while his elder brother Cain was a tiller of the ground; both trades were honorable (Genesis 4.2).[^3] Both brothers brought an offering to God, but "Abel also brought of the firstborn of his sheep and of his fatlings, and God looked upon Abel and his gifts, but Cain and his sacrifices he regarded not" (Genesis 4.3-5). Cain was "exceedingly sorrowful," his countenance fell, and God warned him that he could yet master the sin that threatened him — "be still, to thee shall be his submission, and thou shalt rule over him" (Genesis 4.6-7). But Cain did not master it. He rose up against his brother in the field and killed him — the first death, a murder within the first family (Genesis 4.8). When God asked where Abel was, and Cain answered that he was not his brother's keeper, God said, "the voice of thy brother's blood cries to me out of the ground" (Genesis 4.9-10). Cain was cursed and driven off; and in Abel's place God gave Adam and Eve another son, Seth — "For God has raised up to me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew" (Genesis 4.25).

Why Abel's Offering Was Accepted

It is worth asking why God received the one offering and not the other, because the usual answers miss the point. It was not that grain is a lesser gift than an animal — the Law of Moses itself commands grain offerings — nor that Cain had bungled some ritual procedure, which would make sacrifice a kind of magic that compels God by correct technique. Scripture locates the difference in the men themselves. "By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain" (Hebrews 11.4); and St. John says Cain "was of the evil one and killed his brother. Why did he kill him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother's righteous" (1 John 3.12). The offering was the overflow of a life: Abel gave the firstborn and the fat — his best — out of a faithful heart, while Cain's gift came from a heart already turning wrong. As Fr. Stephen De Young puts it, an unrepentant heart makes the offering void, for God is never compelled by ritual but remains free to accept or refuse — the same warning He later gives Israel, whose sacrifices He rejects while "your hands are full of blood."[^3]

The First Martyr

Abel stands at the head of a long line. The Epistle to the Hebrews names him first among the faithful — "By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain… and through it he, being dead, still speaks" (Hebrews 11.4) — and Christ Himself counts him the first of the righteous slain, naming "the blood of righteous Abel" as the first of all the righteous blood charged against the generation that sheds it (Matthew 23.35; cf. Luke 11.50-51). His blood "cries out from the ground" (Genesis 4.10): the first voice of innocent suffering calling to God, and the first foreshadowing of all the persecution the righteous would endure. The Church keeps his memory among the Holy Forefathers, commemorating "the righteous Abel, son of Adam" on the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ.[^5]

Abel and Christ

The Fathers see in Abel an early portrait of Christ. He is the innocent shepherd, offering an acceptable sacrifice, hated and killed by his own brother for no cause but envy of his goodness — and St. Augustine draws the line directly: Abel, "the shepherd of sheep," prefigures "Christ the Shepherd of the flock of men," slain by His brethren.[^4] The likeness reaches its sharpest point in a contrast drawn by the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Christian, it says, has come "to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better than that of Abel" (Hebrews 12.24). Abel's blood cried out from the ground against the brother who shed it (Genesis 4.10); the blood of Christ, poured out by His own, "speaks better" — for it is the blood of a new covenant, "the blood of sprinkling," a blood that cleanses those it touches rather than crying against them.

Abel's death also marks a beginning that runs through the whole of Scripture. St. Augustine reads the two brothers as the origin of the two cities: Cain, the firstborn and a fratricide, founds the earthly city and builds it walls; Abel, "a sojourner" who builds no city, belongs to "the city of God," the pilgrim people whose home is above.[^4] From the very first family the pattern is set — the envy of the wicked against the good, and the righteous who suffer it as strangers in the world, awaiting the resurrection. See Cain, Adam, Eve, Typology in Scripture.

Sources

[^1]: Genesis 4 (Brenton LXX) — the two offerings (4:4-5), God's warning to Cain (4:6-7), the murder (4:8), Abel's blood crying from the ground (4:10), and Seth raised up "another seed instead of Abel" (4:25). [^2]: Hebrews 11.4 (Abel's faith; "he, being dead, still speaks"); Hebrews 12.24 (the blood that "speaks better than that of Abel"); Matthew 23.35 and Luke 11.50-51 ("righteous Abel," first of the slain); 1 John 3.12 (Cain "of the evil one," his deeds evil). [^3]: Fr. Stephen De Young, The Whole Counsel of God (Genesis 4:1-5) — Hevel ("vanity/breath," the word of Ecclesiastes); both trades honorable; and the offering accepted not because grain is inferior or because Cain botched a ritual (which would make sacrifice magic), but because Cain's heart was unrepentant (1 John 3.12; cf. Isaiah 1); God remains free to accept or refuse. [^4]: St. Augustine, The City of God, Book 15 — Cain and Abel as the origin of the two cities (the earthly and the city of God); Abel the sojourner slain by Cain the fratricide out of envy; Abel "the shepherd of sheep" as a figure of "Christ the Shepherd," slain by His brethren,(Western; cited for the received typology, not a distinctively Latin doctrine). [^5]: Liturgics — "the righteous Abel, son of Adam," commemorated among the Holy Forefathers on the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ.