Why Did Cain Kill Abel?

For a more detailed version of the reading presented here, see David J. Zucker, “My Punishment Is Too Great to Bear: Raising Cain,” Biblical Theology Bulletin: Journal of Bible and Culture 50.1 (2020): 7–21. Deep appreciation to the editors of TheTorah.com for adding some supportive material to this article.

Translations of the Genesis story are from Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses, The Schocken Bible 1 (NY: Schocken, 1995), with adjustment of names to standard English spelling.

The biblical text also does not note how they would know which sacrifice YHWH favored.

Ephraim A. Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 30, n. 4. The midrashists make a value judgment and claim that these were more or less leftovers. Cain brought “inferior crops” Abel brought “the fat ones [interpreted as “the best]” (Genesis Rabbah 22.5, cf. Song of Songs Rabbah 4.16.1). Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer chapter 21 suggests that Cain only brought the remnants of a meal and some flax.

Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 B.C.E.-50 C.E.) describes Cain as a “self-lover” who is faulted for bringing his offering “to God after some days and not at once.” Additionally, Cain’s gifts were merely “fruits, and not the first fruits.” (The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain / De Sacrificiis Abelis et Cain) 13 (52) See also 27 (88).

Twentieth and twenty-first century writers likewise denigrate Cain’s offering. Ephraim Speiser writes of the “manifest contrast … between the unstinted offering on the part of Abel and the minimal contribution of Cain.” Speiser, Genesis, 30 [n. 4]. Umberto Cassuto suggests “Cain was indifferent,” while Leon Kass writes that “Cain’s gift was indifferent or worse.” Moshe David (Umberto) Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part 1, trans. Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1961), 205; Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 136.

This view is expressed by Josephus (Judaean Antiquities 1:54) and by Abraham ibn Ezra (long commentary, ad loc.). See also R. Joseph Albo’s philosophical argument to this effect in Sefer HaIkkarim (3:15).

Gerhard von Rad also writes: “each one honors God separately from the other … … [nothing] in the ritual nor in Cain’s attitude [provides answers as to why] the sacrifice of blood was more pleasing to Yahweh. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary. Revised Edition, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972), 104.

It is unclear that Cain is being described as angry. See discussion in, Nahum M. Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary – Genesis (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 33, n. 4.

The “narrative is characterized by gaps, silences and fateful unexplained actions that provoke more questions than solutions.” Yoel Duman and Jo Milgrom, “Having Left the Garden: Cain and Abel,” Tali Virtual Midrash (2007). The article is currently available on Mikranet.

This is also the reading found in the Greek Septuagint (διέλθωμεν εἰς τὸ πεδίον), and similar locutions are found in the Latin Vulgate (egrediamur foras), in the Syriac Peshita (נרדא לפקעתא), and in the various Jerusalem Targums: Neofiti (איתה ונפק תרינן לאפי ברא), Pseudo-Jonathan (איתא וניפוק תרוינן לברא), and the Fragmentary Targum (איתא ונפוק לאפי ברא).

R. Ovadiah Sforno suggests that Cain took Abel out into the field שלא בפני אביהם ואמם “away from their father and mother,” i.e., in order to kill Abel secretly. Sforno then points to Deuteronomy 19:11 which deals with premeditated murder.

Translation from Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture, ed. Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2013) 1.300.

Josephus is reading the Hebrew word חלב as milk as opposed to fat. This is not based on the Greek, which reads τῶν στεάτων αὐτῶν, “their fat.”

Louis H. Feldman translation, from Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 3: Judean Antiquities, Books 1-4 (Leiden: Brill, 1999). Name spelling has been adjusted to standard English spelling. For discussion of Josephus’ interpretation here, see Louis H. Feldman, Studies in Josephus’ Rewritten Bible (Brill: London, 1998), 8.

Translated from Gary A. Anderson, in Outside the Bible, 2.1342–1343.

See Anderson’s comments ad loc.

The angel further says that Adam should be consoled since God will give him a third son, Seth, who will be righteous like Abel. Adam is further warned to tell no one of this and let matters take their course:

And the time arrived when Abel was killed by Cain his brother and he (i.e. Adam) told her (Eve), “God has established an end for all human beings. Was death anything else but the killing by which Abel has been killed by Cain and Cain’s jealousy delivered him to death because (Cain) was of a perverse race?”

Adam attributes Cain’s jealousy here to the fact—a popular theme in many midrashim—that Cain’s father was Samael or Satan, who seduced Eve when he took the form of a snake. For some discussion of this, see Rachel Adelman, “Reintroducing the Myth of Fallen Angels into Judaism,” TheTorah (2015). We find this referenced in the New Testament First Epistle of John as well:

^{1 John 3:12} We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.

While 1 John’s approach expresses the idea that Cain was simply rotten to the core, and hated his brother’s goodness, in early Christian writings “Genesis 4.1-16 is offered as the classic example of envy by Patristic writers in moral exhortation against that emotion.” A. Kim [Harkins]. “Cain and Abel in the Light of Envy: A Study in the History of the Interpretation of Envy in Genesis 4.1-16.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha. (2001) 12, 70. [65-84]. Kim mentions Basil, Cyprian, Jacob of Edessa, John Chrysostom, Didymus of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, and Symmachus among others.

The problem begins early in Cain’s life (ch. 76):

…Cain was hard-hearted, and ruled over his younger brother. And oftentimes when his father made an offering, he would remain [behind] and not go with them to offer up. But, as to Abel, he had a meek heart, and was obedient to his father and mother, whom he often moved to make an offering, because he loved it; and prayed and fasted much.

The text exists in Arabic and Geez. The English is from Solomon C. Malan, trans.; The Book of Adam and Eve: Also called The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (London: Williams and Norgate, 1882), with modernized English.

Satan’s speech is:

Since Adam and Eve love your brother Abel much more than they love you, and wish to join him in marriage to your beautiful sister, because they love him, but wish to join you in marriage to his ill-favored sister, because they hate you. Now therefore, I counsel you, when they do that, to kill your brother; then your sister will be left for you, and his sister will be cast away.

The text is working with the assumption, popular in Jewish interpretation, that each son was born with a sister, since otherwise, how could this family of boys reproduce and create humanity? Genesis Rabbah (22) also includes the suggestion that they fought over one of the sisters:

ועל מה היו הדינין, אמר ר' הונא תאומה יתירה נולדה עם הבל, זה א' אני נוטלה וזה אומר אני נוטלה, זה א' אני נוטלה שאני בכור וזה א' אני נוטלה שנולדה עימי. ויקם קין וגו'

What were they arguing about? Rav Huna said: An extra twin sister was born along with Abel. This one said: “I will take her.” And this one said: “I will take her.” This one said: “I will take her because I am the first born.” This was said, “I will take her because she was born along with me.” “So Cain rose up…”

Abel then makes it a habit to offer this three times a week. Cain, however, after much coaxing, offers “the smallest of his sheep” and God does not accept it “because his heart was full of murderous thoughts.” When the children grow up, and it is time to marry, matters come to a head. Cain is furious, and goes to his father’s altar himself, makes an offering, and does not allow Abel to. Abel then builds his own altar, and again, Abel’s offering is accepted while Cain’s is rejected.

After the final rejected offering, Satan comes to Cain and tells him how proud Adam and Eve are of Abel, how they smothered him in kisses, and are not happy with Cain, and the die is cast (ch. 78): “When Cain heard these words of Satan, he was filled with rage, and he let no one know. But he was laying wait to kill his brother…”

Neofiti, Pseudo-Jonathan, and the Fragmentary Targum.

The Hebrew text is Pseudo-Jonathan. The translation is based on, John W. Etheridge, The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch with the Fragments of the Jerusalem Targum from the Chaldee (London: Longman Green, 1862) but adjusted.

P. S. Alexander. “Jewish Aramaic Translations of Hebrew Scriptures,” in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, eds. Martin Jan Mulder, Harry Sysling (Assen/Mastrich: Van Gorcum/ Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 231–232.

Don Isaac Abarbanel (1437–1508) suggests in the name of Rabbi Nissim Gerondi (14^th cent.) that Cain was paranoid about Abel’s motives:

ורבינו נסים כתב שקין... חשב מצד סכלותו שמה שלא שעה אל מנחתו לא היה מצד עונו וחסרונו אבל היה בסבת הבל כי הנה ארכו הימים כל א' באמונתו ולא נתעורר הבל להקריב קרבן כי אם אחר שראה את קין מביא מנחתו שאז נתעורר גם הוא להביאה ושעשה זה להבאישו בעיני השם ולהתנשא עליו עם היותו קטון ממנו ושלכן הביא ממבחר צאנו ומחלביהם לבעבור לא תהיה מנחת קין נערבת כשתוקש אל מנחתו

Rabbenu Nissim writes that Cain thought, due to his foolishness, that the reason God did not accept his offering wasn’t because of his own sin or his lack but was because of Abel, for they had lived many years, each in his faith, and Abel never thought of bringing an offering until he saw Cain do bring his gift, then he was aroused as well to bring one, but he did it to make him [Cain] look bad in God’s eyes, to show him up, to make him look smaller than him. Therefore, he brought from the best of his flocks and their fats, so that Cain’s gift would not be pleasant [to God] when compared to his gift.

This doesn’t exonerate Cain, but it mitigates his actions as having been based on his (false) perception of what happened with the sacrifice.

Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982), 56.

Angela Kim explains, the “narrative projects the theologically troubling possibility that God is capricious insofar as the reader is given no explanation for his rejection of Cain’s sacrifice. The murder of Abel casts further shadows upon YHWH’s justice since he does nothing to prevent it. This is aggravated by the fact that YHWH decides to let Cain, the murderer, live in exile with a mitigated punishment (a protective sign).” She goes on to address the problem of “the disproportionate lack of interaction between the brothers prior to the murder.” She notes that many “interpreters attempt to resolve the problems that are generated by the brevity of the Hebrew text by magnifying elements of sibling rivalry and envy between the brothers. By so doing, they deflect attention away from the more serious problem of YHWH’s capriciousness.” Kim, 70, 75.

Dan Ornstein, Cain v. Abel: A Jewish Courtroom Drama (Lincoln: University of Nebraska/Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2020).

For a complex reading of Cain’s response to God, discussing whether he repented or not, about which the text is also unclear, see Eliezer Finkelman, “Cain’s (Im)Penitent Response to his Punishment,” TheTorah (2016).