Thanks for the responses, folks; they have helped me to see that my opening post was very poorly phrased. So to clarify the issue, would it be fair to say that we all agree that 1) Cain's heart was the root of his problem, and 2) this heart manifested itself in offering an unworthy sacrifice.
So there seems to be three options:
1) There was nothing wrong with what Cain offered unto the Lord; the problem was in how he offered it.
2) Cain's offering was unacceptable not because it was "the fruit of the ground", but because it was not the first-fruits of the ground, or "chief part", etc., and not much care was given to it.
3) Cain's offering was unacceptable because he failed to approach God in the manner God had set up (blood sacrifice), and instead approached him in a way of his own devising that he felt God would be obliged to respect.
I confess that 3 makes the most sense to me, but I also confess that I am biased, in that I want 3 to be the case, because I see it making beautiful sense out of Scripture, whereas 2 makes the Cain account to seem somewhat disjointed and out of place. And I am aware that my bias might color my analysis.
Is this something that we simply have to form a tentative opinion on, without nailing anything down as solid?
Bruce, you said:
Quote:
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Beside being an atoning sacrifice, Abel's is "of the fat" or best; nothing at all is said about the quality or first-fruit of Cain's, which was not bloody (a requirement that is simply fundamental).
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The underlining is mine. So are you saying that at least one of the emphases of the text is to undergird the necessity of blood atonement? Do you think applying the
analogia Scriptura in reaching this conclusion is a "lock"? Or is it possible that a worthy grain offering would have been acceptable?
Victor:
I'm going to risk saying something very foolish. I'm an ignorant child of this modern era, and have just now realized that I might have misunderstood the term "first fruits" all of my life. I've been working under the assumption that it was the "first yield" of the harvest. If so, wouldn't "first fruits" be more of a chronological reference than a "quality" reference?
I know that the term is often tied to a sense of "quality" and "the best", but would Cain really have been able to offer "first fruits" year round? I realize I could save myself possible public embarrassment by looking that up right now, but it's pretty late here.
Anyhow, I'm just wondering if the lack of the term "firstfruits" really denigrates the quality of Cain's offering, since, perhaps, it wasn't that time of the harvest.
Thanks again for the replies. There's a bit of fog on this issue, and I want to know, not only what can I believe, or what the text possibly or even probably teaches, but what in fact the text
does teach.