Why did Cain destroy his brother Abel and what punishment did he receive?

Conversations with the priest. Why did Cain kill Abel?

In the St. Petersburg studio of our TV channel, the rector of the church in the name of the Holy Great Martyr Barbara in the village of Rakhya, Vyborg diocese, priest Oleg Patrikeev, answers questions from viewers. – The topic of today’s program: “Why did Cain kill Abel?”
Father Oleg, the topic for discussion can be anything, even very provocative, but you always deal with it easily... Everyone knows well that Cain is bad, Abel is good, and in general this whole story is about a murderer and his victim. That's all. This could be the end of the program, but it turns out that everything is not so simple. This story is imbued, paradoxically, with love. Or am I wrong?

– Of course, love is present, as in any action of God about man, but not in such completeness as we would like. You are right: there is love, which says that God loves even a murderer. How to recognize this? We can talk about this in this conversation, touch on this deep topic. In the film "The Island" it sounds a little ironic. Let me remind you a moment. The monk asks his abbot: “Why did Cain kill Abel?” This question discouraged him, because, in principle, this is “school” theology. You right now said that all this is known, understandably, but if we conduct an investigation into this murder: invite specialists...

- ...prosecutor, investigator, lawyer?..

- No, first - go to the place to look at the reasons. When there is a murder, first they look for who needed it, that is, there are practically no witnesses. Except God. Cain did not testify against himself. He initially denied the murder. And who needed it? Here lies a long-standing enmity or friendship with the devil. We watch the temptation of Eve in paradise. Do you know the first commandment that God gave in paradise not to eat fruit from the tree of good and evil until the moment? This is the commandment: be fruitful and multiply.

And if you imagine a fantastic story that Cain was conceived in paradise and heard Eve’s conversation with the devil, it would be the “Gospel of Cain.” It would be interesting to look at this situation through his eyes. It's scary to imagine yourself in his place. But what influenced a person’s choice?.. We know that the devil was expelled from paradise along with Adam and Eve, was their intelligent companion, was present in their world, just as God is constantly present in the world. But Cain’s communication with the devil was apparently very well established, since he started such a game. The Lord invites both Cain and Abel to sacrifice. Now the sacrifice begins. We take on the whole performance. The creator allows players to play freely. By their will. But at the same time there is a commandment of God: do not kill. They knew about it. It was taboo. Killing a person was unthinkable. Why did Cain do this?

We move on to the birth of Cain. Doesn’t it sound beautiful: “you are the firstborn”? And my brother is the second. You must rule the world, and he must be subordinate. This submission is brotherly love. Abel is a simple shepherd. Maybe he's plain. He is a simple man who tends sheep. We must remember that the Old Testament was given to us as a type. We must apply types not just to that time...

- It happened and passed...

- Yes, it happened and passed. Killed him and that was the end of it. Case is closed. Cain and Abel are no longer there. The “case” is on the shelf. But the first murder continues to work. So, the temptation of Cain was approximately the same as the temptation of Christ in the desert. I guess so. He fell for these devilish embellishments: you are the firstborn, you must rule, but your brother interferes with you, he will always interfere with you, he will be your rival; you need to remove it, especially look - your sacrifice is not accepted, God does not love you. There is so much hatred through such seemingly kind words of the devil: “This is your fate. You can change it. Bow down to me. I will give you all my power, all my wealth." The same temptations happen to every person every day. The prototype of Cain is like a constant personification of evil and good. A source of evil and good appeared on earth.

Now all humanity chooses which way to go: good or evil. Open the news feed, let's see if Cain is alive. Look how many murders, sufferings, and terrible crimes there are today. Who does this if not the spirit of Cain?.. This is a prototype of our fall. When does the fall of man occur? If a thought comes from the devil, we are not yet dirty, we are still clean. It’s like a dog barking on the side, we don’t run to figure out why it’s barking. We're passing by. This is how thoughts come from the devil, and a person either accepts them or not. Discuss and then do - this is where human sinfulness begins. The Orthodox teaching about salvation lies precisely in the fact that there is a struggle with thoughts. But God knows that man accepted these thoughts.

- He said: “Your sin lies before your doors.”

- Step over.

- Be master over him.

“He even tells you what to do.” It gives a person the opportunity to choose between good and evil. The devil incites that he is the firstborn and all nations should worship him. Because they heard another prophecy: “The Savior will be born from a Virgin.” The seed will be born that will erase the head of the serpent. He can even turn this commandment into a plus for himself: “You will defeat me with this, you are the one who was born to defeat me. You will return to heaven again. Kill him. And I will be amazed by this action of yours.” The devil convinces beautifully. Look at the Cainists who performed in huge squares and were followed by people. We know them. These are terrible wars, this is what happened during the Great Patriotic War... Who were they following? For Cain. And in every era there is a Cain who wages such a war, speaking eloquently, but where does he lead? To war. Kill. We had this in 1917. And it continues. I don’t exactly feel it, but at least I understand that Cain’s spirit is somewhere here.

– I’m interested in one more question. When Cain had already committed this sin and renounced it, he acted like Adam: “I am not my brother’s keeper.” He also found himself before the Lord, deceiving Him. Adam deceived God: I am not to blame, but Eve is to blame, she gave me the apple - the woman you gave me. It's the same here. Why did Cain ask the Lord to give him a seal that no one would kill him? He already assumed that he was the father of murder, as they say, and could be killed himself? Did he imagine what might happen to him? Is this an epiphany?

– I think that the first people were prophets, that is, the Holy Spirit revealed the future to them.

– Question from a TV viewer: “Please explain the meaning of this statement: what is the profit from intimacy on earth when we are strangers to each other in heaven?”

– I would like to ask: where did you get this quote from? It could be a philosophy: beautiful and correct. “All marriages are made in heaven” - there is such a philosophy. All good deeds are done in heaven. Heaven, the angelic world, is in constant goodness. It is the angelic world that is bright. Therefore, the spiritual world is ahead of us not only by a moment, but perhaps by centuries. Angels, like chess players, know several steps ahead how their opponent will play. By laying out all the options, they understand how to make the next move. Likewise, the angelic world knows how this or that situation will end.

The angelic world has the opportunity to tell us something. This sixth sense is especially developed in women, and men listen to the voice of conscience (angels), so they have the opportunity to choose. It's easier when there's a hint. And another hint is the Gospel: when we don’t know what to do, we need to look at how Jesus Christ would act in such a situation. This would be the most magnificent answer for our thoughts. Everything is written in the Gospel, there are answers to all questions. If we absorbed it into ourselves so that it began to grow into us, then we would have a good anti-aggression: the thought does not come into your mind (and our mind is fallen, it already has problems, with a virus), but enters the gospel compartment, it is processed there and gives you an answer. That is, this is the help of a friend. You no longer need to choose 50x50. Your friend has already answered you.

– Cain probably couldn’t make this choice.

- This is free will. This is an amazing quality of a person when the Lord gave him complete freedom even in evil. A person has the right to choose evil. A person cannot help but break the law, he does not know how. We have practically no experience of holy life, although we have textbooks on how to be saved, how to live. But there is no such textbook on how to become a saint.

“Perhaps this can be understood not only with the help of textbooks.”

- Of course, this is our life.

– Recently I was at a service, and Bishop Ignatius said that the temple is a school of life. If we come here to understand something, to learn something, then the Lord helps us. And if we come in order to “skip” the service, then we will remain poor students. So, if we return to our topic, then we are always interested in Cain, for some reason we are very little interested in Abel.

Here I would like to talk about the most modern moment in the conversation about Cain and Abel - this is a sacrifice to God. Psalm 50 says: sacrifice to God spirit ; God will not despise contrite and humble heart (that is, He will not reject it, if only our heart is humble to the end). There is a very interesting thing here: Abel made a sacrifice with all his heart: he brought the firstborn sheep, that is, the first children in this flock that were just born. This is a very serious sacrifice - dedicating the most precious things to God: “Look, Lord, how great You have arranged: what You have given us is multiplying. How wonderful it is!” And what happens with Cain? Why didn’t the Lord accept his sacrifice?

– There are several answers from exegetes that talk about what fruits Cain brought and why the Lord did not accept them. Cain's conversation with the devil and his thoughts came before the sacrifice. If only an unwanted victim forced one to kill, then God would be guilty of not accepting the sacrifice. If He had accepted the sacrifice, both brothers would have lived in joy and love. And since there was a moral lesson here and the Fall began before the sacrifice, we get a different result: Cain made the sacrifice with different feelings .

- Not from the bottom of my heart.

- He was already dreaming of something else: he wanted to be the first, he was already infected with the devilish thought of being the first - this is pride...

– Question from a TV viewer: “Why wouldn’t God, who knew everything in advance, accept Cain’s sacrifice? Did He really care what the sacrifice was? In the Jerusalem Temple there was a slaughter of animals, there was a stench, blood flowed like a river. Did everyone there really make sacrifices from the heart? But for some reason He accepted these sacrifices.”

– We are talking about this now: is it really God’s fault that Cain killed Abel? But the Lord looked at the heart even before the sacrifice and saw there the germ of sin, devilish pride, where there was already a thought. And in Abel He saw something Divine. The prototype of the Divine is Christ. Cain killed the anointed one, the man who was a shepherd, a shepherd. Who is a shepherd? Here again is a prototype: a shepherd tends a flock. The good shepherd gives his life for the flock. Here we must intersect the Old Testament with the New, then an understanding of what happened, who Cain was, and what he brought will be revealed to us. He was a farmer. Agriculture appeared much earlier than animal husbandry.

We must look at when it was written and for whom, so that it is clear that Cain (farmer) is an image of Egypt, which was engaged in agriculture. Who is Abel? This is, of course, a type of Israel being moved. People have no place of their own; they were persecuted even then.

Here is another prototype of the fact that Egypt is the devil: he again rebelled against Christ, against his anointed one, as David says... To whom did Cain sacrifice? Is it to God? Of course, he killed for the devil, who demanded this sacrifice: “Kill.”

We must understand the anthropology of man: where do our thoughts come from? Break it down into sections so that everything is clear. There are only three sources of thoughts, acceptance of information. The first is from God. This is pure information that we read in the Gospels, the Bible, it is not distorted. Second: we talk to each other as people. We transfer information to each other, we speak, but with a slight distortion, because each person is a slightly distorted truth. We can lie, retell something like a broken phone... And the last information, of course, is from the devil, which after the Fall a person accepts freely. Its "intelligent nature", roughly speaking, is mental. And he can give us his thoughts. We accept them as our own, and sometimes even as Divine revelations. But they are very far from the truth, because they confuse a person.

There are signs of how to determine where the thought came from. This is very important to understand. Discernment of spirits is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that the apostles spoke about: discern whether these spirits come from God. Every thought is an evil or good spirit.

– Question from a TV viewer: “Why did God leave evil – Cain, and kill good ? And he made a covenant not to touch him.”

– We are coming to an interesting moment. Why not punish evil? Where is God's justice? This question worries a lot of people. I have already said in some program that God’s justice is His love. Even Cain, the criminal who killed the first man who committed the first crime, He loves. How does this love manifest itself? He gives Cain a seal that protects him from attackers or from blood feud (there is such a revenge, it’s called ancestral), so that Abel’s descendants do not avenge his death. And this was not just a ban. For the one who kills Cain, it would be a sevenfold grave sin. This prohibition, as I understand it, was transmitted orally.

What kind of seal did Cain have on his face (or on his clothes)? Orthodox exegetes say that it was perhaps an expression of fear on the face. When a person commits a crime (especially if a child does something, you can see how his face changes, so it takes two seconds to figure him out), fear appears in him, this is the mark of Cain. When a person commits a sin by his own movement of the heart or by the trick of the devil, by temptation or by his own personal will, the conscience begins to work very hard. A person sweats... Nowadays criminals are identified by their heartbeat, by their eyes. The lie detector instantly calculates the slightest movement of the heart. And you want to deceive God. He has such a detector...

– I thought how much symbolism there is, an appeal to today. Cain had a moment when he talked to God. He talked to Him face to face and could say: “Lord , forgive me! " Could he say that ?

- No.

- I didn’t say.

– I couldn’t say.

“But he had the opportunity.”

– It’s always there.

- Another. “Leave your victim,” we say. But he left another victim, and as a result, a crime gives birth to a crime. This chain is endless. He could always stop her, just like we can. This is our “sacredness”...

- “Cursing” is the same word.

“We can always, at any moment, stop, but in our wretchedness we don’t do this.”

– The fact is that it is a person’s choice when he deeply worships the devil (and what happened here was not just worship, but service to the devil, they were combined). During baptism and during communion we are united with Christ, but here a combination took place with Satan. Why am I so firmly convinced of this? Because the Apostle John the Theologian in the First Epistle says: “love one another, not like Cain, who was of the evil one.” That is, he has already outlined its role in the human race. There are so-called sons of disobedience, they are like fallen angels, already rooted in evil. But at the same time God tolerates them. God tolerates the devil too. If He tolerates the devil, of course He tolerates people who are created in His image and likeness. He wants no one to perish, but for everyone to come to Him. Even the most seasoned criminal has the opportunity to stop Cain in himself. The criminal on the cross was practically Cain. This is the last Cain, perhaps, who showed in his family that even a criminal can enter heaven.

“But there was another robber there.”

- But he did not repent and died as Cain. Cain can only be overcome within oneself through repentance. The spirit of Cain is often present in our showdowns, there is also envy... But Abel was simple.

- And envy comes from pride??

– Yes, it is impossible to envy without pride. We envy and judge always out of pride, because we see people we don’t like or who are better than us. We envy, but pride rules it. And the first proud man is, of course, the fallen angel of Satan, who, because of his pride, and then because of envy of man, fell into the underworld.

The movement for our repentance is like a type of Cain. What to repent of? This is a movement in the opposite direction, towards one’s fall from grace. I do not repent for Cain. It turns out that he “ran through” me too: envy, lies, other sins. All this comes from just one source - the source of the devil. But humanity was infected by this source from Adam and Eve. They are the original source. Eve thought that this was the firstborn born of the Most High. They placed all their hopes on him, that he would save them, return them to heaven. They, the parents, may have said (like some parents now): my savior in the family, the smartest, handsomest, the best, he needs to go to the best institute... And then the parents become old and turn out to be of no use to him, they end up somewhere on back streets or in a hospice (good or bad).

This worship of man is a big mistake. It happens precisely because a person’s thinking has changed. The divine presence of the Holy Spirit disappeared, man was left alone with himself and nature. Therefore a multitude of natural gods arose which man had to explain; he has lost contact with God, with revelation...

– Question from a TV viewer: “Perhaps the story of two brothers - Cain and Abel - is a striking example of how parents should not raise their children ? Especially if there are two or more of them in the family.”

– This is exactly what we are talking about now. The exaltation of one favorite leads to the anger of another. How to share love? I have six children, and each one must be given the same lollipop, because even if you give a different type of lollipop, the child automatically becomes envious. How to remove it? We are born with this, children envy each other, they can fight in the sandbox over a new car. Where do children get this from? It’s not that they see the example of their parents (that comes later), but when they are little? We are born with it. The Lord says that sin comes from our youth, that is, we constantly, even in our youth, sin. God is patient with us and expects true repentance from us.

Ninety percent of people come to God precisely from that carob dump, like prodigal sons. This is a beautiful prototype, this is my prototype, my movement. I must do this every time I knock on the Lord. Repentance must be daily: I have sinned against You and against Heaven. And in return we receive communion again. “Go and sin no more.” But we are falling again. It is impossible to do everything in one day. Even the Apostle Paul, who saw the risen Christ, said about himself that he was the chief of sinners. He felt his sinful nature. He said that he had the thorn of Satan in his flesh. It's in our human nature. We must know our anthropology. We must understand that all our toys prevent us from getting off the ground. We must remove everything unnecessary in order to somehow rise above this earth. Alas, often we only pretend that we are taking off, we think about it, but in reality everything pulls us down.

– Every time during the liturgy, a bloodless sacrifice is performed. Unlike the fat calf of the Old Testament, we offer a bloodless sacrifice - bread. I suddenly felt amazing, touching from this. How much the Lord, out of His love, has done for us...

- Yes. The Lord cancels all sacrifices. He doesn't need anything now. There was no need then either. Sacrifices were offered to God so that man himself could feel the presence of God in his life. Only for this reason does the Lord accept the sacrifice. How was the prophet Elijah’s sacrifice accepted? This was necessary for the people.

“We ourselves need this sacrifice.”

– The Lord needs to see our heart; this manifestation of our love can be not only in sacrifice, but also in other offerings. Abraham sacrificed his son. This is madness - to lay your son on the altar! This is a prototype of the sacrifice that Christ made - He sacrificed Himself. In every moment of the Old Testament, the Lord takes upon Himself this sacrifice: “I am the Sacrifice, I am going to the slaughter, whoever believes in Me will not die and will live forever.” It completely changes a person’s entire thinking, and now the mind of Christ must be present in a baptized believer. He cleanses us from this sin, from this filth, from death. For a believer, even death does not become an obstacle to the love of God. The apostle writes about this: “Who will separate us from God?” Neither death, nor cramped space, nor width, nor depth of two and a half meters, because the Lord is preparing another act of creation - the resurrection of the dead. There will be a wonderful apocalyptic picture, I can’t even imagine it, although it is in the Old Testament. There is a type of how the dead are raised. These are all our relatives, loved ones, loved ones.

– And in new bodies.

– Yes, they will rise in renewed bodies, in this beauty. What love of God! He creates everything new and He Himself speaks about it. After His coming, a new era begins, and it is designated as such - from the Nativity of Christ. Even ask an unbeliever what year it is, and he will answer: 2020 from the Nativity of Christ. Yeah, that means you still believe!

- Marvelous.

We constantly return our thoughts to the first terrible event in the life of mankind - to the act of Cain. Is it possible to conclude that the cup of patience of our wretchedness will again be so fulfilled that we will again be ready to endure a new flood? ?

– You shouldn’t be afraid of this, because it’s written in the Gospel. We have been given a prophecy that the world is preparing to burn. In this fire everything will become clear. Fire cleanses, and it will become clear whether your work is made of straw or gold, with what kind of heart it was all built...

I think we must understand that the movement towards repentance prolongs the life of humanity. A person finds the strength to repent, change his sin, change the situation in which he currently finds himself. The pandemic has shown us that it is through repentance that it is possible to change the situation in the world, let alone in the home. In the home people are reconciled through repentance, in monasteries it is the same: “forgive me, brother, bless me.” There are two words in monasteries, there are no others. Why is this being said? What if he stepped on your foot? And if he stabbed you or spat in your face, what should you do? "Forgive me, bless me." This humility defeats all the devil's tricks. The devil doesn't sleep. He is on vigil, he knows the entire Old Testament, the New Testament, almost all the prayers (but he cannot repeat some). There is no need to convince him that God exists, there is no need to explain it. He believes, but trembles.

– There is one more point. We do not place anything in Abel’s virtue other than the fact that he made a sacrifice from the heart. Who is Abel ? A man with a pure heart, nothing more. He is not a hero of our time. Now there is a lot of discord in our world, which we multiply with swearing, gossip and other things. We multiply Cain's deed. But we are not interested in Abel. No one talks about how wonderful it is to be like this...

-...a loser.

- Well, yes, you chose a good word.

- Youth. If you put on a TV series how well Cain healed later, you might think: he made progress! Look, civilization. He invented the first drums, tambourines, there is music, shows, circus; he built the city. The entire civilization that now exists, this whole show, the soap bubble - it’s all his doing. But among this metropolis, among the spiritually terrible streets leading to hell, there are streets leading to heaven - churches. Notice that as soon as a church is planned in some metropolis, what problems immediately arise. “How can she stand here, we should rest here... And where will our dogs go?..” Thousands of activists are against the construction of the church. Why? Because the Church is the light of God. Why do you need light in the dark? It's easier to do your dirty deeds in the dark. But in the light it will be difficult to do them. Here the priest is driving past the school, he will go into the school and put him to shame a little; will tell you that you need to repent. Why do I need it? I live my life.

- “I’m not a saint.”

- Yes. And this is where our love ends. Love ends and the whole world ends. The world rests only on love. All fights and wars are due to lack of love. What does a person need from another person? Give me either your love, or your property, or the land on which you live...

- “Give up your life.”

- Naturally, you bother me. This is already the suffering of all humanity, this is a cancer that is devouring humanity. It can be treated either with chemicals or by burning it out of the body. There are two organisms in the entire Universe - the Body of Christ and this fallen world, which is in the mud. At the same time, the Lord accepts into His Body through repentance and baptism. Man is renewed, and even the criminal repented and was baptized in his own blood. His legs were broken, he began to bleed, and he was baptized; this is called baptism in blood. He was accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven through such baptism. The strongest purification is terrible wars. But God forbid, as they say. It is better to come to the temple with your own feet than to be carried.

- Summarize. Cain killed Abel - why ?

– The first murder committed by humanity on earth was committed out of envy. A man envied another for his good deeds. Saint John speaks about this. He says that Abel's deeds were good. It’s not just one thing – things were good. And Cain's deeds are evil. He was already evil by nature, so this murder lies at the feet of everyone who takes advantage of this evil. A person who envies, who still cannot get rid of pride and passions, is not far from these terrible sins. We remember the year 1917. People entered the church, and two days later they killed the priests - the same people who had just received communion. What is this if not evil? You need to sincerely repent of this. This must be personal repentance. Not general, but personal.

– The seal of Cain is washed away only by our repentance.

- Yes, a very correct conclusion.

Presenter Gleb Ilinsky

Recorded by Margarita Popova

Fratricide

4:8 And Cain said to Abel his brother, Let us go into the field. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

The words “let’s go into the field” are not present in the Hebrew text now, but only the previous ones are read: and Cain said to Abel his brother. This speech, obviously incomplete, some try to explain without addition as follows: and Cain spoke with Abel, his brother, that is, he showed him an appearance of affection and sincerity, so that the more likely, the more inadvertently, he would commit his malice over him. Others say this: Cain spoke contrary to Abel, his brother, that is, he expressed his indignation to him with complaints and reproaches. But in the Samaritan text and the Greek, Syriac and Latin translations, the very words of Cain to Abel are read: let us go into the field. The previous word said רמא and the subsequent ones when they were in the field show that this addition belongs to the integrity of the Holy. text. According to this consideration, the true circumstance noticed here by Moses is that Cain, in order to freely commit fratricide and hide it from exposure, insidiously summoned Abel to a secluded place.

The type and weapon of the murder are unknown, except that it was connected with the shedding of blood, as the continuation of the narrative shows (11, 12).

Cain and Abel. Titian, 1542-1544