Genesis 4:2-4
The firstborn of the flock
He brings the best rather than the convenient. The account notes the quality of the gift before it notes the response to it.
People of the Bible
Abel
A shepherd whose offering was received and whose blood is still being answered.
Abel keeps flocks and brings the firstborn of them. His gift is received, and that is very nearly everything the account says about his life. What it says about his death takes far longer. His blood is described as crying out from the ground, which turns a private murder in an empty field into something the whole earth hears. He is the first person in Scripture to be killed for being accepted.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Abel
- 01
- 02
Genesis 4:4-5
Received
His offering is accepted and his brother's is not, and the difference sets everything after it in motion.
- 03
Genesis 4:8-10
The voice from the ground
He is killed where no one could see. The account insists that it was seen anyway.
Why it matters
Abel is the Bible's first witness that a life can be short and still count. He is named again in the New Testament as an example of faith and as the beginning of a long line of the righteous who were killed, which makes his one recorded act, bringing the best of what he had, weigh more than the length of his story.
2 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
