These readings fulfill a deep need to believe that it is people’s characters and choices, their hard work, that determines their way in the world.
Some contemporary Christian preachers, for their part, have explained that God preferred Abel’s offering because it was better: surely the firstlings of a flock are a more impressive offering than mere plants! Cain had no right to be upset when Abel gave a superior gift. Likewise, in many ancient retellings, God rejects Cain’s offering not because of divine caprice, but because of Cain’s reprehensible character-the first century Jewish historian Josephus, for example, adds that Abel was a lover of righteousness, while Cain was altogether wicked and greedy. This reversal has two effects: it keeps God unimpeachably even-handed, and it returns agency to the people-that is, it suggests it was the Jews who chose God, not the other way around.Īs for Jacob and Esau, later interpretations embellish their characters to make sense of Jacob’s seemingly unmerited divine election: Esau becomes a bloodthirsty, violent savage, while Jacob becomes a morally upright and studious young man, worthy of both his father’s and God’s blessings. In one account, the Talmud relates that God offered the Torah to all the nations, but only the Jews accepted it. Since antiquity, readers of the Bible have struggled to explain these troubling accounts-to discern some coherent, morally explicable reason for apparently arbitrary differences in fortune, and to redraw the world as a fair place after all. None of these moments of favor or rejection seem to be deserved, or related to the deeds or character of the chosen or unchosen. Indeed, the Bible does not clearly explain why Israel itself is God’s chosen people. We are never told why God rejects Cain’s offering, just as we are never told why the younger brother Jacob-not his older twin Esau-is chosen to become the father of a nation. This is the first of many moments in the Bible where God plays favorites. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.” (Genesis 4:3-5) “In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. In the biblical story, both brothers make an offering to God, but only one is accepted: Here, it is not a question of unjust social structures, but inexplicable divine choice. It is also the first story that forces us to face the problem of unfair treatment, of outcomes not directly related to a person’s own choices. In Genesis, the story of Cain and Abel is not only the first account of human violence. This question is as old as the Bible, it turns out. How much is our view of justice determined by how we ourselves have been treated? Journalist Wesley Lowery, who recently tweeted his own arrest in Ferguson, Missouri, commented this week that Americans do not have a “good track record when it comes to recognizing systemic disadvantages from which they benefit.” The NY Times‘ Nicholas Kristof has referred, in the same context, to “ smug white delusion” about race, and racism, in this country. Cornel West, are in lockup in Ferguson: this morsel of biblical scholarship, dealing as it does with power, injustice, and the legacy of religious tradition, seems all the more timely. As we go to press, a group of clergy-protesters, including Dr.