Rachel Smith Cobleigh
Midrash on Cain and Abel
October 24, 1999



	When Cain brought his offering of citrons and vegetables to the altar 
of God, he did so with ulterior motives in his heart.  He had seen his father 
talking with God, and desiring such conversation, something that Abel did not 
have either, he determined in his heart to show God his deep piety.  If he 
could but be able to speak with God, he could have something that Abel did 
not have.  Ever since the day of his birth, he had been regarded warily by 
his parents, for his mother had received a vision that he would one day kill 
his brother.  He wanted to demonstrate to them all that he was not the 
dangerous creature that they all treated him as.

	As a youth, their father had separated them, fearing the meaning of 
their mother's dream.  He had favored Abel, the second son, with the tending 
of the flocks, and the gathering of wool for clothing.  Abel was in communion 
with the animals, and they loved him dearly, while they avoided Cain whenever 
he came near.  He therefore found himself an outcast throughout his whole 
life, looking for acceptance, but always seeing the fear behind the eyes of 
all those who looked at him.  He reviled himself, never satisfied with his 
produce because no one else was satisfied with him.

	So Cain purposed in heart to show God, the one who had given the vision 
to his mother, that he was not a dangerous and evil person.  Boldly 
announcing his intentions over dinner one evening, he set out to the fields.  
He went to the old rock-heap where he had thrown all of the stones during his 
plowing, and built it into a respectable altar to God, upon which he might 
place some sacrifice.  But what should he sacrifice?  He looked around the 
fields of dirt beside him, and finding nothing pleasing enough-they were the 
work of his hands, and therefore not good enough for anything of import-he 
decided to go back to the tents and ask his father.

	Adam was resting on his bed when Cain came to ask what he should 
sacrifice to God, and because he was tired after a long day of hard labour, 
Adam mumbled something in his answer about "a lamb" and rolled over.  Cain 
took this advice to heart and went to his brother Abel.  Abel was combing the 
burrs out of a baby llama's coat. 

	"Hey...do you have any lambs that I could sacrifice to God?"

	"You want to kill a lamb for God?  Why not just give him some of your 
pomegranates?"

	"None of them are good enough.  They're not.  Dad said I should 
sacrifice a lamb."

	"He told you to kill one of my lambs?"  Abel looked angry, and he 
yanked out a burr.  The baby llama bleated.  He patted it to soothe it.  Cain 
reached out his hand to pet the llama's velvety nose, but it shied away from 
him and started bleating loudly.

	"Go away," Abel said.  "You're just scaring him.  He's nervous enough, 
you shouldn't upset him."

	"I didn't mean to upset him!" Cain said, scowling at them both.  "So?  
Do you have one?"

	"No," Abel said.  "You should give God something of your own, not 
something of mine."

	"But God doesn't want what I have."

	"How do you know?" Abel asked, continuing his ministrations.  The llama 
had quieted down and was watching Cain with wide brown eyes.  "You haven't 
tried giving it to Him."

	"Because I do.  Because nothing is ever round enough or plump enough or 
sweet enough to please Mom and Dad, so why should God want it?"

	"I like your fruit.  If it weren't for you, we would all be eating the 
nuts and bitter herbs that Mom finds around the bushes."  Abel made a face.  
Cain shook his head and stared at the ground.  Nothing that Abel said would 
make him feel better.  He wanted to feel bad, and he wanted to show them all 
that he could be just as good at what he did as they were at their jobs.  He 
got up angrily, and looked down at Abel, watching with growing anger as a 
number of small animals came near his brother, perching on his knees and 
chittering excitedly, bringing him nuts and small twigs.  Abel was soon 
caught up in tending to each of them, and Cain, forgotten, left the scene 
with a sour taste in his mouth.

	If Abel wasn't going to give him a proper lamb, then he was just going 
to give his fruit to God, just to prove that God didn't want it, and to show 
them all how wrong they had been about him.  He wanted to do right, and it 
was their fault that he couldn't.  Muttering angrily to himself, he went 
through his fields, gathering a few pieces of each kind of citron and 
vegetable, and brought them to the pile of stones that he had made.  The 
night had come, so he left the food there, deciding to offer the sacrifice in 
the morning, and went to his tent.

	Meanwhile, Abel had begun to think about what Cain had said, about 
giving a sacrifice to God.  After considering this for some time, he decided 
to bring a young lamb to God, as a thank-offering for his prosperity in his 
flocks (they had grown tenfold since Abel had formed the first herd).  He 
selected out the strongest male lamb without a blemish on his wool, and tied 
it to a stake outside of his tent.  Then he, too, went to sleep.  He rose 
early the next morning, found a flat stone some ways from their camp, and 
killed the lamb cleanly, performing the first kosher slaughter.  After 
offering a prayer to God, he stood back to see if the Almighty would accept 
his sacrifice.

	Cain stepped out of his tent and stretched in the morning light.  
Yawning and swallowing back the morning-taste in his mouth, he looked across 
the landscape.  He saw his brother standing before a large slab of stone, a 
dead lamb laid on the rock, and anger welled up in his heart.  How dare his 
brother take his idea and use it as if it were his!  Suddenly, to his great 
astonishment, a whipping column of fire shot down out of the clouds and 
consumed the lamb, leaving nothing-not even the blood-behind on the stone 
slab.  Abel dropped to his knees and bowed three times, putting his face to 
the dirt.  

	For a short time after Cain set out from his tent to the altar that he 
had made of ground-stones, all anger towards Abel and his parents was driven 
from his mind, so eager was he to see what God did when he presented his own 
sacrifice.  Excited and hoping for a bigger show of light and fire than that 
Abel's (for the idea was his), he arranged the citrons and vegetables 
carefully around the stones.  He was never completely satisfied with the set-
up, so he kept moving things.  The sun rose higher in the sky, and Abel, 
excited and charged, came up to him, a small coterie of animals trailing 
behind him.

	"Cain!  Do you know what happened to me this morning?  You'll never 
believe this!  God Himself came down out of heaven and accepted my 
sacrifice!  It was incredible!  The light!-and the fire!-and the booming 
crash!-and there was nothing left!  Nothing left, Cain!  Not even a 
drop of the lamb's blood!  I told Dad and Mom, and they said that God blessed 
me!  Can you believe that Cain?  God blessed me!  It was so loud, and 
incredible, and bright, and the heat singed my eyebrows!  Cain, come here and 
look at my eyebrows!  Mom said you can see where the fire of God burnt the 
hairs!  Look!"  At this point in his excited narrative, Abel pushed his face 
close up to Cain, pointing his fingers at his eyebrows.  When Cain didn't 
look up-he was busy re-re-rearranging the food-Abel pushed himself closer, 
getting in between Cain and his view of the stones.  "Cain, look!"

	"NO!" Cain yelled, turning suddenly and pushing Abel away.  Abel, who 
was leaning over, was off-balance, and he fell down, scraping his elbow on 
the stones.  The animals all darted away, frightened.  Abel was too surprised 
to make a noise.  Cain stepped back from his makeshift altar and looked at 
the sky.

	"There!  That's as good as it's going to get!  Do you want it?  TAKE 
IT!"  He shouted, throwing up his arms.

	Nothing happened.

	"TAKE IT!  I don't want it!  It's yours!"  Cain shouted at the empty 
sky.  A cloud drifted overhead, but the sky was silent.

	Cain dropped his arms, feeling the full weight of frustration and 
failure, again.  His face fell, his whole body sagged, and his eyes dropped 
to look at the pitiful collection of citrons and vegetables sitting on the 
uneven rocks.  Having sat in the cold night air, and then in the sweltering 
warmth of the midmorning sun, the food had lost its luster, and had even 
begun to smell a little.  It was not good enough for God, and it never had 
been.  He never had been.  He could never do it right.  Abel was always the 
perfect one, the best one, the favoured one, the one that God blessed.  Abel 
was always right.

	A still, quiet voice broke into his dark thoughts, and it said: "Why 
are you distressed, and why is your face fallen?  Surely, if you do right, 
there is uplift.  But if you do not do right, sin couches at the door; its 
urge is toward you, yet you can be its master."

	Cain's head snapped up, and he spun, looking for the source of the 
words, but there was nothing, and no one.  Abel sat on the ground, holding 
his elbow and looking up at Cain angrily.

	"You didn't do it right, Cain.  That's why He didn't answer."  He 
scowled and looked down at the scrape on his elbow.  A cold certainty came 
over Cain, and he took sure steps over to his fallen brother.  He held out 
his hand to help his brother to his feet.  The animals all around backed 
farther away, and one of the baby llamas started to whimper and bleat.  Abel 
looked at the extended hand for a moment, then took it, and Cain pulled him 
up.

	"Let me show you where I got the citrons; maybe you can help me pick 
out the best ones, and then I can do it right, with your help.  After all, 
you're blessed, so you'd know."  Cain said this thickly, smiling at his 
brother through vision that had narrowed to a darkness centered around his 
brother's now-smiling face.  Abel said something about being happy to help, 
and Cain nodded.  He felt the blood starting to pound in his ears, and the 
funnel of darkness around his brother narrowed still more, blocking out all 
else around them.

	"Come with me," he heard himself saying, and he was surprised at the 
smoothness of it.  "Let's go over there..."  He pointed at some shrubbery in 
a citron tree grove, and they walked over to the spot, each moment moving 
faster than the last.  Abel bent to examine the nearest citron, and began to 
say, "Cain-when the blood-rush pounded like thunder in Cain's ears, and with 
a feral cry, he fell upon his brother.  In the blindness of his anger, and 
the blurred vision of the tears streaming from his eyes, Cain pounded his 
fists into his brother again and again, letting his madness fly through his 
hands and down into the soft flesh beneath him.  Abel had always been 
blessed!  Abel had always been loved!  Abel had always been the best!  Abel 
had always been happy!  Abel had always been--!

	Exhaustion suddenly came upon Cain, and his arms went limp, his hands 
fell away from his brother's body.  He looked down at the blood on his 
fingers and the disfigured mass before him.  Abel's head was split open, and 
the matter within had spilled out and run down his broken neck.  A cold fear 
suddenly clutched at Cain's chest, and a chill ran through him.  His breath 
caught in his throat, and he felt ill.  He began to shake, and he fell, 
trembling, away from straddling his brother's body.  Abel didn't move, but 
his eyes were open in silent horror, and bloody dirt clung to the edges of 
his lips, open in a voiceless scream.  The expression imprinted itself 
forever upon Cain's soul, and he shook uncontrollably.

	His mind would not offer anything up, and so he began to claw wildly at 
the ground, tearing his fingernails and scraping his fingers raw.  He grabbed 
at fistfuls of dirt, throwing it out, and after digging a shallow hole, he 
dragged his brother's body to the edge, folded it into the space, and 
hurriedly kicked the dirt over it, until he could see nothing of the body 
beneath.  Then he stumbled away into the shrubs and retched until his stomach 
ached and his throat was raw.  He dropped to the ground in a pile of bruised 
limbs and bloodied scrapes.  Every moment, his brother's face was frozen in 
his mind, and his stomach continued to heave.  He coughed into the ground and 
inhaled dirt, coughed again.  He couldn't breathe.

	Then the still voice came again, in the whisper of the citron leaves 
overhead: "Where is your brother Abel?"

	Cain's breath caught in his throat, and a terrible shiver ran through 
him, for he suddenly knew who had spoken to him before.  It had not been 
Abel.  It had not been Abel.  Where was Abel?  Where had Abel gone?  Cain 
knew only that Abel was not in the ground a few feet away.  Abel had gone, he 
had terribly, terribly gone, and he would never come back to laugh or talk or 
shout or cry.  Abel was not there.

	"I...do not know," Cain replied, brokenly, his voice a ragged, pain-
filled whisper.  "Am I my brother's keeper?"

	But the voice did not answer him, it only asked another question: "What 
have you done?"  In a horrifying way it whispered to him, each syllable 
chilling his frame.  "Hark, your brother's blood cries out to Me from the 
ground!"  The very dirt that he lay upon was quivering, its form and 
substance quaking underneath him.  He huddled tighter, frozen in fear, as it 
shook, and he shook with it.

	The terrible voice continued, never ceasing: "Therefore, you shall be 
more cursed than the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's 
blood from your hand."

	The earth quaked, shivered.  Clouds swirled overhead, blocking out the 
light of the sun, and Cain grew cold and shivered more violently.  The voice 
whispered: "If you till the soil, it shall no longer yield its strength to 
you.  You shall become a ceaseless wanderer on earth."

	Cain broke into tears, clutching at the dirt that sifted uselessly 
through his fingers, knowing that the only thing he had ever clung to, the 
only thing that he had ever known even a moment of happiness in, was being 
torn away from him forever.  He cried out from his soul in agony, "My 
punishment is too great to bear!  Since You have banished me on this day from 
the soil, and I must avoid Your presence and become a restless wanderer on 
earth-anyone who meets me may kill me!"

	The terrible whispering of the voice ceased, and the ground stilled, 
and the clouds slowed their mad swirling overhead.  There was a quiet, and 
then the wind blew through the trees, the sun was allowed to shine through, 
though only faintly.  When the voice spoke again, the horror of it had gone, 
and what was there was something almost described as gentle.  Cain cried.

	"I promise," it said softly, "that if anyone kills Cain, sevenfold 
vengeance shall be taken on him."  And there was a gentle touch upon him, a 
touch that seared to his very soul, and infused him with enough strength to 
pull himself up off the ground.  Still weary past description, Cain stood and 
stumbled through the grove of trees, following the lines of the field until 
they disappeared into uncultivated lands, and those lands to the distance, 
and that distance to an oasis in the lands east of Eden.


                         *****************

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© 1999 Rachel Smith Cobleigh