What Was Wrong With Cain’s Offering?
The story of Cain still fascinates me. What I keep coming back to is God’s decision to regard Abel’s offering but not Cain’s.
Why would God choose one over another? From a lens of hierarchy it makes sense that one would be ranked higher, but why choose Abel’s over Cain’s?
There is an overwhelming emphasis on the word ground in Genesis. It is repeated again and again in the story, which seems to imply significance.
God tells Adam he will toil and sweat as he tends to the ground until he returns to it: “For out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if the ground represents the belonging Adam and Eve believed they had lost. God reminds Adam that he came from the ground and will return to it. It’s almost as though He keeps pointing humanity back to what has always been beneath their feet.
It seemed like a workable meaning to me as I read the story until God rejected the “fruit of the ground” that Cain offered. Why would He reject that instead of Abel’s offering? It seemed like a hole in my theory.
But then I returned to the idea that God is referring to our perception, our way of seeing. By choosing to see through the lens of good and evil, we have rejected the belief that we belong because we exist. We have rejected the ground of belonging and chosen a reality where belonging must be earned.
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I began wondering if by rejecting Cain’s offering, He is pointing us back to something deeper, back to our beliefs about belonging.
And what if it was the way of seeing from which the offerings were given that caused God to respond differently?
Now here I am making a leap, but I wondered if Abel was presenting his offering to God as an expression of his love for Him, while Cain offered it hoping that it would allow him to earn God’s love.
Those are completely different ways of seeing. One offering expands love. The other expands lack.
Perhaps this is what God was reacting to. Because I still can’t imagine that God would choose to regard one material offering over another. Or that He prefers meat over vegetables.
But this is a very human way of presenting gifts. Sometimes we offer gifts out of love, and sometimes we offer them hoping that we will earn love.
And it follows, at least from my sense of logic, that God would reject an offering that was presented with that hope.
God never rejects Cain in the story. Even after he kills his brother, God moves to protect him. But God rejects his offering.
I am left wondering if God rejected Cain’s offering because it came from a place of trying to earn what had never needed to be earned.
If that’s true, He wasn’t rejecting Cain. He was rejecting the belief that love must be earned.
