The first couple, Adam and Eve, gave all future gardeners a difficult time by introducing thorns, thistles, and sweat to the gardening process. As if that were not enough, their firstborn, Cain, inflicted a reputation that gardeners and farmers are still working to overcome.
Cain was a tiller of the soil. His younger brother, Abel, kept flocks. As the story unfolds, Cain brings some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to God. Able brings fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.
“The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.”
Cain’s attitude continues to deteriorate, to the point that he attacks his brother and kills him. When God questions him, he gives that infamous line, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
So what was Cain’s big problem?
It was not that he was a farmer. Farmers are okay. And there is nothing in the text to suggest that God was unhappy with what Cain offered. Scripture does indicate that God was unhappy with what Cain was, and with the way his offering was given.
The brief writing of Jude describes some ungodly men who, among other things, behaved “like unreasoning animals.” They had “taken the way of Cain,” who apparently had no sensitive heart for God, but was a brute—an uncaring, unspiritual person. Cain’s problem was not that he did not offer an animal, but that he behaved like one. The Apostle John tells us that Cain belonged to the evil one. It’s what grew in his heart, not in his fields, that created a problem. No wonder his offering was rejected.
“By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man . . .” (Hebrews 11:4). What a contrast between these two brothers! Faith and righteousness were foreign to Cain.
By some perverse quirk of humanity, Cain took sides with the evil force that had tricked his parents in the Garden of Eden. At that early stage in human history, Satan had a convert. His name was Cain.
I reject the way of Cain, and refuse guilt by association with this man. He may have been the first farmer, but he miserably failed his opportunity to set the standard for future workers in the soil.