The Better Sacrifice
I have been interested in Cain and why God rejected his sacrifice. What is the symbolic meaning and what’s up with the whole blood animal sacrifice business. Most of my references below are from Wikipedia…
Cain and Abel were the first and second sons of Adam and Eve in the religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.[1]
Their story is told in Genesis 4:1-16 and the Qur’an at 5:26-32. In all versions, Cain, a farmer,[2] commits the first murder by killing his brother Abel, a shepherd,[3] after God[4] rejects Cain’s sacrifice but accepts Abel’s.[5]
Behind the Names:
Cain and Abel are traditional English renderings of the Hebrew names Qayin (קין) and Havel (הבל). The original text did not provide vowels.[14] Abel’s name has the same three consonants as a root thought to have originally meant “breath”, but is known from the Bible primarily as a metaphor for what is “elusive”, especially the “vanity” of human enterprise.[15]
Abel is here thought to derive from a reconstructed word meaning “herdsman”, with the modern Arabic cognate ibil, now specifically referring only to “camels”. Cain, on the other hand, is thought to be cognate to the mid-1st millennium BC South Arabian word qyn, meaning “metal smith”.[21] This theory would make the names merely descriptions of the roles they take in the story—Abel working with livestock, and Cain with agriculture—and would parallel the names Adam (“man”) and Eve (“life”, Chavah in Hebrew). A few scholars suggest the pericope may have been based on a Sumerian story representing the conflict between nomadic shepherds and settled farmers.[12][13]
So now back to some unresolved questions…Why would God require an animal sacrifice and reject plant sacrifices.
Here is What I Have Found As Biblical Based Explanations (from https://www.gotquestions.org/animal-sacrifices.html):
When Adam and Eve sinned, animals were killed by God to provide clothing for them (Genesis 3:21). Cain and Abel brought sacrifices to the Lord. Cain’s was unacceptable because he brought fruit, while Abel’s was acceptable because it was the “firstlings of his flock” (Genesis 4:4-5). After the flood receded, Noah sacrificed animals to God. This sacrifice from Noah was an aroma that was soothing to the Lord (Genesis 8:20-21). God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham obeyed God, but just as Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac, God intervened and provided a ram to die in the place of Isaac (Genesis 22:10-13). The sacrificial system reaches its climax with the nation of Israel. God commanded the nation to perform numerous different sacrifices. According to Leviticus 1:1-4, a certain procedure was to be followed. First, the animal had to be spotless. Next, the person offering the sacrifice had to identify with the animal. Then the person offering the animal had to inflict death upon it. When done in faith, this sacrifice provided forgiveness of sins. Another sacrifice called the day of atonement, described in Leviticus 16, demonstrates forgiveness and the removal of sin. The high priest was to take two male goats for a sin offering. One of the goats was sacrificed as a sin offering for the people of Israel (Leviticus 16:15), while the other goat was released into the wilderness (Leviticus 16:20-22). The sin offering provided forgiveness, while the other goat provided the removal of sin.
The animal served as a substitute–that is, the animal died in place of the sinner. Animal sacrifices have stopped with Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was the ultimate sacrificial substitute and is now the only mediator between God and mankind (1 Timothy 2:5). Animal sacrifices foreshadowed Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf. The only basis on which an animal sacrifice could provide forgiveness of sins is the fact that Christ would sacrifice Himself for our sins, providing the forgiveness that animal sacrifices could only illustrate and foreshadow.
Here is What I Received After Some Prayerful Contemplation and a Hour Drive in the Hills
1) It is about connection and empathy…closeness to life
2) In the act of destroying life, which we animals do in survival (dog eat dog), we must identify with the life taken to remain connected to God
3) It is easier for us homo-sapiens to identify with animals since plants can regenerate after what seems like a visible destruction/harvest, they don’t bleed red, and they don’t make sounds of protest or move to defend themselves, fighting back tooth and nail (unless they are poisonous or have thorns, then they seem like real scrappers)
4) When in the act of killing, in order to remain connected to God, we must humble ourselves and grieve it’s loss – not taking the animal for granted or treating it as an object for our consumption or use, but appreciating its service to us through our humility and gratitude to ours and the animal’s creator.
This type of spiritual relationship between man and animals exists in many primative religions. For example – many Native American tribes included numerous ceremonies and rituals with their way of life and showed respect for everything they killed for sustenance. Animals had to be treated properly because they could represent spirits, as well as plants which could give evidence of the supernatural and the land which could reveal God. (from http://bama.ua.edu/~joshua/archive/aug06/Nathan%20Sherrer.pdf)understanding of hunting as a reciprocal
relationship between the hunter and the hunted.
They also think of game animals as those that give
themselves to the hunter for sustenance. Thinking
about a successful hunt as primarily the receiving of
a gift puts the emphasis, not on the actions and skill
of the hunter, but on the violation of the animal who
is killed. To give thanks for such a favor, the hunter
in return reciprocates by observing a series of ritual
gestures that communicate his respect and gratitude
to the animal. The act of hunting itself involves a
reciprocal obligation for hunters to provide the
conditions in which animals can grow and survive
on the earth. They also believe that humans and
animals are in communication with each other on a
more or less friendly basis under normal conditions.
Communication breaks down when humans fail to
respect the animals by neglecting to observe
hunting etiquette or rituals of reciprocity.
5) As we have the power to take the life of the animal, so does the creator have the power to take our life. To remain close to God, we must be aware of this daily and be grateful to the life we live in every moment. To live in spiritual peace, serenity and joy we also must be aware of our ultimate service to the creator and trust in his consumption and use of us as divine. To God’s will be true.
6) In this constant connection to God and awareness of the ephemeral nature of physical life and death, we renew ourselves at every sacrifice…substituting the slain animal for our own death and in eating of the flesh and wearing the skins, we continue to live.
7) The animal is now one with God in the spiritually divine realm. We intake the animal and humble ourselves as sinful and imperfect, blessed to partake of such a pure being that is now with God. This act revives us and purifies our sinful nature
Jesus is God’s animal sacrifice for us and his constant washing of our sins – our constant connection to him. Pure and real vision of God’s love and nature in human form whom we can truly identify.
In short, to remain close to God, after the fall, we must be humble in our power to create or destroy life and treat it with reverence, not taking any moment of living for granted. We must not objectify any living thing as our possession and feel entitled to freely use, consume, waste, take for granted or abuse any physical essence given to us by God to serve and care for. We must empathize and identify with Gods living creature and be attune to the web of connection between us. Of course it is easier for us to identify with other humans and then animals. But this also applies to all forms of life in our fallen Eden. And it also includes ourselves. In the attempt to become close to God we also become aware of ourselves as beloved to God and treat our own bodies with reverence. Not cutting ourselves off from our soul being and thus keeping us connected to Gods source of life. Not starving for source and becoming an undead, seeing others as objects for our consumption for spiritual survival. The latter being a pure bondage suffering in the utter loneliness and emptiness of evil. God wants us to be aware of our spiritual connection to him and other living creatures at all times while limited in our physical being doing the business of earthly animal survival.
Just some prayerful thoughts…about some odd judeochristian religious stories and ideas…
Thank you God
