On Cain and Abel 2.20–2.38

"But if you offer a sacrifice of the firstlings of the sheep, roasted in the fire, roasted fat, you shall offer a sacrifice of first fruits", as it is written; this signifies that your faith should be proved as if by fire and be fervent with the Holy Spirit. Indeed Jacob cooked lentils and snatched from his brother the rights of the firstborn's blessing, which a solid faith would certainly obtain. So the one grew strong and lively, while the other, who did not know how to cook his food, wasted away, weary and failing. So let the virtue of your soul be burned by the word of the Lord as by fire. See Joseph burned, as it is written: "The word of the Lord burned him." Let your faith be parched like ears of the harvest; for they display the ripeness of their fruits when the summer season has parched them by the first advance of the sun. So the abundant word of the Scriptures strengthens the soul and colours it with a kind of warmth of spiritual grace; it also strengthens rational discoveries and dissolves all the force of irrational passions. And so Esau, the bonds of his virtue loosened, was dissolved; but those who, with loins girded, were commanded to eat the head of the lamb not raw nor boiled in water but roasted in fire, as you have in Exodus, crossed the seas on foot with a brave and faithful spirit. In the Gospel too the Lord Jesus ate roasted fish, as it is written, in whom the fullness of the Holy Spirit overflowed. And perhaps Esau failed because he desired food boiled in water, which Jacob gave to him, weak as he was, as something unsuited to himself.

An offering and a prayer should not be confused but distinguished by a fitting division. For in every confusion distinction is better, much more in prayer and offering, which become more obscure unless they have definite divisions. And so the law often commands that the limbs of the victim be divided and burnt offerings be offered, so that the sacrifice may be without admixture and covering, and bare; because our faith should burn bare and stripped of all wrappings, not clothed with wandering and deceitful opinions, but showing a pure and sincere simplicity of mind. Then let it be divided into fitting parts. For virtue is a genus which is divided into very many species; but the principal ones are four: prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice. Let your prayer, then, breathe of prudence toward the knowledge of God and the truth of the faith; let it breathe of temperance, which the Apostle thought should be required even of spouses, saying: "Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer." And the law commands that those who have been purified the day before and the day before that should approach the sacrifice. Let prayer hold fortitude, so that it may be interrupted by no fear and fail through no weariness; for then the effort to pray should be stronger, when we are pressed by adversities. Let prayer keep justice; had Judas held it, his prayer would not have become sin. For when should we abstain more from unjust works and pursuits than when we pray for God's justice? And so the Lord, so that justice might be dear to our hearts, said: "Blessed are those who suffer persecution for justice's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." This was lacking to Judas; for if it had been present, he would not have betrayed the Lord, nor given up his master. It was lacking also to the sacrifice of this Cain, who, had he held to justice, ought to have brought the Lord the first gifts, not the later ones. So division was lacking to him, and so the answer says: "If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, you have sinned; be still." You see how great a fault it is: where division is lacking, the whole sacrifice is rejected.

It remains for us to speak of continual and constant prayer, that we ought to persist and be free for prayer. The Lord spent nights in prayer, not to benefit himself, but to teach us. For frequent prayer produces a certain discipline of praying, since use itself makes men teachable by God, and negligence unteachable. Exercise, then, is good. Indeed the strength of the body is increased by frequent exercise, but without exercise it decreases and slips away; for very many have dissolved even their natural strength by disuse of exercise. Likewise the fortitude of the soul is made solid by assiduous exercise, so that the very labour of discipline becomes not a burden but a habit. Let us bring our mind this food, which, ground by much meditation and polished, may strengthen the heart of man like that heavenly manna. Not idly have we received that it was ground and polished, because we ought to grind and polish the words of the heavenly Scriptures for a long time, turning them over with all our soul and heart, so that the sap of that spiritual food may spread into all the veins of the soul. So if faith grows as if coming to maturity, banishing the failing of an ageing devotion, and is fervent in spirit, and the measure of lawful division is kept with fitting distinction, and assiduity commends its grace, then that fat and, as it were, rich kind of prayer comes about, of which the prophet says: "You have anointed my head with oil." For as lambs grow fat with much milk, and as well-pastured sheep shine with fat, so the prayer of the faithful, fed with apostolic sap, grows fat.

If any of these things we have spoken of is lacking, the sacrifice is not approved. And so it was said to Cain: "If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly." For the world itself is read to have been made in distinct order, when before, part of it was unformed, since "the earth was invisible and unformed". Indeed light was made first, "and God called the light, and God separated between the light and the darkness, and the darkness was called night". And we read that each thing was made in order: heaven, earth, fruit-bearing trees, various animals. The lighter things, such as air and fire, were assigned to the higher places, and the heavier, that is, water and earth, to the lower. God certainly could have commanded all things to be made at once, but he preferred to keep a distinction, which we should imitate in all our affairs, and especially in the exchanges of thanks. In these it is not enough to give back what you received, but you must commend what you give back. For if someone pays a debt and in repaying does wrong to the creditor, it is surely more intolerable than not to have repaid what he owed. So it is not the amount of the payment that is considered, but the spirit, the quality and the disposition of the one who repays. Rightly, then, did he offer, since an offering is a mark of devotion and a sign of thanks; but he did not divide rightly, because before all he ought to have brought God the first fruits, so as to begin from the grace of the author. For this is the order of division: that first things go before second, not second before first, and heavenly things are preferred to earthly, not earthly to heavenly.

But because Cain confused this order, it is said to him: "You have sinned; be still." God teaches all things: first, that you should not sin, as he warned in Adam; second, if you have sinned, that you should be still, as you are taught in Cain. For we ought to blush and condemn sin, not defend it, since guilt is lessened by shame and heaped up by defence, and by silence we are corrected, by contention we slip further. Let there at least be shame where there is no acquittal. Hence that saying: "The righteous man is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech." And again we read elsewhere, said by the Lord himself: "Tell your iniquities, that you may be justified." How great is the grace of shame, that modesty may keep the righteousness that the guilt of the fault has taken away! He says "be still" because you have nothing to excuse. The turning of the fault itself is toward you. For his brother is not handed over to him, but the error is ascribed to him, of which he is himself the author. "The crime," he says, "returns on you, which began from you." You have nothing for which you can blame necessity rather than your own mind.

"Your wickedness is turned back on you; you are its ruler." Well does he say, "You are its ruler." For impiety is a kind of mother of offences, and one who has committed graver sins easily slips into the rest. For how can one keep from wronging men who has violated divine things, and be good to men who has injured God? So the other vices follow the more savage guilt of crimes, since where the shameful things lean, there the rest incline. You, then, are the ruler of your work, you the leader of the crime. Error did not draw you unwilling or unaware; but guilty by your own will and by judgment, not by a slip, you committed the fraud by which you yourself convict yourself of guilt toward God.

Warned, then, to be still, he increases his insolence and sharpens his crime. What, then, does he mean by saying, "Let us go into the field", except that a place bare of growing things is chosen for the murder of a brother? For where should a brother be killed except where fruit was lacking? As if foreseeing so great a crime, nature had denied shoots to the place, because it was not fitting that the same ground should both receive, against nature, the contagion of a brother's blood and produce fruits according to nature. Rightly he himself says, "Let us go into the field"; he does not say, "Let us go into paradise", where fruits blossom, nor into any cultivated and fruitful place. The murderers themselves show that they cannot have the fruit of their crime, and that fruit does not remain with those who have lent their service to so great an impiety. For they flee the very kindness of the elements, like this Cain, who seems to have feared that a more generous yield of good soil might hinder his grim deed, and that by the habit of its generous fertility, by which it makes various offspring and fruits sprout, it might, even in the preparation of this crime, call back his brotherly affection by its silent appearance. The robber flees the day as a witness of his crime; the adulterer flees the light, blushing as at an accomplice; the murderer of his brother flees the fruitfulness of the earth. For how could he look on the companionship of common births who was slaughtering the companion of his own blood? Joseph is thrown into a dry pit; Amnon is killed inside a house. So nature imparted a just judgment by depriving of the endowment of her gift those places in which a brother's murder was to be, so as to show, by a kind of condemnation of innocent soil, how great would be the punishments of the guilty. Because of the crime of men, then, even the elements are condemned. Indeed David wished on the mountains on which Jonathan was slain with his father the penalty of perpetual barrenness, saying: "Mountains of Gilboa, let neither dew nor rain fall on you, mountains of death!"

Now let us consider why God asked Cain where his brother was, as if he did not know he had been killed. As regards God's knowledge, he convicts the one who denies and answers the denier as one who knows: "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me." As regards the deeper reason, he admonishes sinners to repentance; for confession is a shortening of punishment. Hence in worldly courts those who deny are put on the rack and tortured, while some pity for the one who confesses touches the judge. There is a certain shame in sins, and it is a portion of repentance to confess the crime and not shift the blame but acknowledge it. The shame of the accused softens the judge, while the stubbornness of those who deny rouses him. God wants to call you to seek pardon; he wants indulgence to be hoped for from him; he wants it shown by your confession that he is not the author of wickedness. For those who refer their sin to some necessity of God's decree or work, as the pagans assert, seem to accuse the divine, as though his force were the cause of sin; for one who has killed compelled by some necessity kills, as it were, unwillingly. Things that are from us have no excuse, while things outside us are excusable. But how much graver than the sin itself is it to refer to God what you have done, and to shift the odium of your guilt onto the author not of the crime but of innocence!

But weigh the murderer's answer: "I do not know," he says; "am I my brother's keeper?" Although this speech shows defiance, yet it implies that, if he had considered his good brother, he should have been the keeper of family love. For whom should he have kept more than his brother? But how would he keep the duty of brotherhood who had not acknowledged the affection of kinship? Or how could it be that he would pay obedience to nature who showed no reverence to God? First he denies, as before one who does not know; he refuses the task of keeping his brother, as one without a share in nature; he avoids the judge, as one with free choice. Why do you wonder if he did not acknowledge family love who did not acknowledge the creator? And so you are taught by this course of the Scriptures that faith is the root of all virtues. Hence the Apostle too says that our foundation is Christ, and whatever you build on this foundation, this alone profits for the reward of your work and virtue.

Fittingly, then, the Lord answered him who denied so foolishly: "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me"; that is: why do you not know where your brother is? You were alone with your two parents; among so few, your brother could not have escaped you. Or is it because your parents cannot be accusers? For I do not wish that the kinship which is the author of safety should become the author of danger, as though in you alone nature had lost its laws. Do you think, then, that the crime lies hidden because parents ought not to accuse? But your condemnation is all the greater. For if the dear names of kinship ought not to accuse, much more ought they not to kill. But if you refuse me as witness and flee me as judge, the voice of your brother's blood is a witness, which cries to me. It convicts you with greater authority than if your brother were alive. You were alone: who else could have killed him? If you accuse your parents, you prove yourself a kin-murderer. He could kill his brother who does not spare his parents; he could be a kin-murderer who wishes to prove himself born of kin-murderers. And well does it say: "The voice of the blood cries", not "your brother cries"; that is, even in death he keeps innocence and the grace of brotherhood. The brother does not accuse, lest he seem a kin-murderer himself; his voice does not accuse, nor his soul; but the voice of the blood accuses, which you yourself shed. So your own deed, not your brother, accuses you. At the same time the guilty man is deprived of complaint: one who confesses the crime by his own deed cannot complain of another's testimony. Speech is less than the deed. Yet the earth too, which received the blood, is a witness.

And well does it say: "The voice of your brother's blood cries from the earth"; it did not say, "cries from your brother's body", but "cries from the earth". Even if your brother spares you, the earth does not spare; if your brother is silent, the earth condemns. It is both witness and judge against you: a keener witness, since it is still wet with the blood of your murder; a harsher judge, since it was defiled by so great a crime, so that it opened its mouth and received your brother's blood from your hand. And indeed it opened its mouth as if to receive words of family love from the brothers, fearing nothing when it saw brothers, since it knew that the right of brotherhood is a spur to love, not hatred. For how could it suspect a brother's murder, when it had not yet seen a homicide? But you shed the blood, and, grieving at its contagion, "it will not increase," he says, "to give you its strength". How innocent a vengeance, that, though so gravely violated, it is content not to benefit you; let it not seek to harm!

It is no small doctrine that he says, "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me", because God hears his righteous even when dead, since they live to God. And rightly they are held as living, because, even if they have tasted the death of the body, they enjoy an incorporeal life and are illumined by the splendour of their merits; they enjoy also eternal light. So he hears even the blood of the righteous, but turns away from the prayers of the ungodly, since, even if they seem to live, they are more wretched than all the dead, carrying the flesh around like a tomb in which they have buried their unhappy soul. For what else is buried than the soul which rolls about in the ground and is shut in by the desires of earthly avarice and the other vices, so that it cannot breathe the air of heavenly grace? A sinner of this kind is cursed by the earth, which is the lowest and last part of the world. Above, surely, are heaven and what is in heaven: sun, moon and stars, thrones, dominions, principalities and powers, Cherubim and Seraphim. There is no doubt, then, that the higher things also have condemned the one whom the lower have condemned. For how is he acquitted by the pure and heavenly sentence there whom even the earth could not acquit? And so he is commanded to be "groaning and trembling upon the earth".

The reason is plain and general: for every wicked man, evils are both present and to come. Those present produce sadness, those to come fear; but present things trouble the wicked man more than future ones. Hence Cain said to the Lord: "My case is too great. If you abandon me today, I shall hide myself from your face." For nothing is graver than for one who wanders to be abandoned by God, so that he cannot call himself back. The death of a sinner brings an end to sinning, but a life left without divine guidance rushes headlong and slips into worse things. As when a shepherd leaves his flock the beasts attack, so when God abandons a man, the devil falls upon him. It is especially grave for the foolish to have no ruler. Wickedness creeps on, the wound grows, where medicine is lacking. He hides himself who wants to veil his fault and cover his sin. For one who does evil hates the light and seeks darkness as a hiding place for his offences; but the righteous man is accustomed not to hide himself from the Lord his God but rather to offer himself, saying:

"Here I am", the man who does not have a criminal conscience that fears to be caught. Rightly, then, the one with a guilty conscience hides himself and says: "Everyone who finds me will kill me." A man of narrow mind fears present death, neglects the everlasting, and does not dread the divine judgment; he begs only to escape the destruction of the body. But by whom did he fear to be killed, who had only his parents on earth? He could indeed fear the attacks of beasts, he who had violated the rights of the divine law, and he could not be sure of the other animals subject to man, he who had taught that a man could be killed; he could also fear his parents as kin-murderers, he who had taught that kin-murder could be committed; for parents too could learn from a son what descendants learned from a parent.

Now let us consider why God said, "Whoever kills Cain will pay sevenfold vengeance", and why a sign is put on him so that the murderer of his brother might not be killed, when no provision was made that the innocent should not be killed. Man is eighth: he has the rational part, by which he surpasses the rest; he has also the five senses of the body; he has the voice too; and he has the gift of begetting. These seven, unless they are ruled by that rational part, are subject to death. And so the fool has all his danger in these. One who has lost that rational part, then, will flatter himself in vain on the use of these seven fleshly gifts. All these are dissolved unless they are bound by certain reins of reason. So the death of reason produces the death of the irrational passions. But this is better: that the number seven is the number of rest and remission. So one who has not spared another sinner and has begrudged him the gift of the forgiveness of sins will snatch from himself the hope of forgiveness, and there will be vengeance on him in equal measure to the grace.

And that he put a sign on Cain, so that no one might kill him, he wished to turn the wanderer back and by his kindness to invite him to correction; for we usually entrust ourselves more easily to those whose favour we have. Yet he does not grant great things, but in that very act he punishes the imprudence of the foolish man, who, though liable to everlasting punishments, did not ask that his penalty be remitted but thought he should beg for the life of this body, in which there is more hardship than pleasure. For death is one, in the separation of soul and body and at the end of this life, and as soon as it comes it usually takes away all the pains of the body, not increases them. But the fears that often fall on the living in this life, the sorrows, pains, groans and various torments, the wounds of grievous illnesses and sicknesses, bring very many deaths on the human race, so that this death seems a remedy, not a punishment; for it is not destructive, since through it life is not taken away but transferred to better things. For if the guilty die, who would not call back their step from sins, even against their will they reach the end not of nature but of guilt, so that they may not sin more, for whom life is the interest that grows on offences.

But if they possess good hope, they must be believed to depart rather than to fail. Here the doctrine of the incorruption of the soul is inserted: that the soul itself is the true and blessed life, which each one with a good conscience lives much more purely and blessedly when our soul has laid aside the covering of this flesh and has been released from this bodily prison, flying back to that higher place from which, poured into our inner parts, it groaned in compassion with this body until it fulfilled the task of the helm entrusted to it, to rule and restrain the irrational motions of this flesh with rational guidance. That is why later the prophets went into captivity with the people of the Jews, so that the rest of the people of the saints, deprived of protection and bereft of counsel, might not undergo a heavier hardship, but rather, admonished by the frequent oracles of the prophets, might return with pious affection to the Lord their God, and not, worn down by the adversities of captivity, rush into the sin of faithlessness and despair of the remedy of everlasting salvation.

So in this place those are refuted who think that this life in this world is the only one, in which all things are full of falls, full of grief; and they are refuted by the simple course of events. For see: the righteous, innocent, pious man, incurring his brother's hatred for the grace of his devotion, was taken away by kin-murder while still unripe in age; and the unjust, criminal, ungodly man, polluted even by his brother's slaughter, led a long life, took a wife, left descendants, founded cities, and obtained this by divine permission. Does not the voice of God cry out plainly in these things? You err, you who think that all the grace of living is here. Do you not understand, do you not notice, that this old age is a veteran of miseries, and the advance of age is the pay of hardships, and that, as with Scylla, we are surrounded with the roar of daily shipwrecks, beaten by waves, living in rocky dwellings, and delighting in these, like that creature which is not so much eternal as an immortal evil? So for this Cain too the long life granted was a punishment, because he lived in fear and ran a long course with much fruitless labour; and no punishment is graver than that one should himself be the cause of greater punishments for himself. See, then, how perpetual is the life of the righteous and how the life of the wicked is nothing. The blood of the righteous cries even when he is dead, but the life of the sinner is hidden.

The third point is that, when the murder of a brother had been committed, that is, the chief of crimes, as soon as sin crept in, the law of divine gentleness also had to be put forward, lest, if vengeance had been taken on the guilty man at once, men too should keep no patience and moderation in judging, but at once hand the guilty over to punishment. The providence of the divine sentence is of this kind: to teach judges magnanimity and patience, so that no one may be hurried away too hastily by eagerness for vengeance and, by the very prematurity of deliberation, punish the innocent or make harsher the penalty of the ungrateful; and yet not to allow full indulgence in the case of one who had put on no repentance for his crime. For he drove him from his face and, disowned by his parents, banished him to a kind of exile of separate dwelling, because he had passed from human gentleness to the savagery of beasts. Yet he did not wish the homicide to be avenged by homicide, he who prefers the correction of the sinner to his death. Hence in Lamech vengeance is taken seventy times seven, because graver is the fault of one who did not correct himself even after another's condemnation. Cain had sinned earlier by a kind of unforeseeing impulse; Lamech certainly ought to have avoided what he had seen condemned in another. The sentence was due to its judge, lest anyone should think that the guilty might be struck down anywhere. And to come to the mystery: he ought not to kill one who had, up to the natural end of his death, a space for doing penance. He could have excused himself on the ground that he had redeemed himself even by a late act of repentance, had a premature penalty not snatched him away.