“And Abel became a shepherd of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground” (Gen. 4:2). Why is it that while he showed us Cain as older than Abel, he has now changed the order and mentions the younger first, when he comes to speak of their choice of occupations? For the probability was that the elder proceeded to his husbandry first, and the younger at a later time to his charge of the flock. But Moses sets no value on probabilities and plausibilities, but follows after truth in its purity. And when he comes alone to God apart from all, he frankly says that he has no gift of speech (by which he means that he has no desire for eloquence or persuasiveness), and this he says has been his condition from a few days ago when God first began to talk with him as His servant (Exod. 4:10). Those who have fallen into the surge and stormy sea of life must needs float on, not holding firmly to any strong support which knowledge gives, but trailed along by the flotsam of the probable and the plausible. But for the servant of God it is meet to hold fast to truth and spurn the fabulous inventions of eloquence, which are but baseless guesswork. What then is the special truth which here he brings before us? Surely that in point of time vice is senior to virtue, but that in point of value and honour the reverse is the case. And therefore when the birth of each is brought before us, Cain may have the precedence. When we make a comparison of the occupations of the two, Abel should take the lead. For when the life of man begins, from the very cradle till the time when the age of maturity brings the great change and quenches the fiery furnace of the passions, folly, incontinence, injustice, fear, cowardice, and all the kindred maladies of soul are his inseparable companions, and each of them is fostered and increased by nurses and tutors and by the fact that the rules and customs which impress and exercise their authority upon him expel piety and set up in its stead that superstition which is the sister of impiety. But when the prime is past, and the throbbing fever of the passions is abated, as though the storm winds had dropped, there begins in the man a late and hard-won calm. Virtue has lulled to rest the worst enemy of the soul, that commotion whose waves of passion follow each other in swift succession, and in that firm support of virtue he stands secure. Thus vice will carry off the honour of precedence in time, virtue the precedence in repute and honour and good name. And to this truth we have a faithful witness in the legislator himself. For he shows us Esau, who is named after his folly, as elder in point of age, but it is to the younger brother named from his discipline and practice of things excellent, even Jacob, that he awards the prize of precedence. Yet Jacob will not judge himself worthy to accept this prize until, as in some contest of the arena, his adversary has surrendered in exhaustion and yielded up the victor’s crown to him who has waged war without parley or quarter against the passions. For Esau ‘sold,’ we read, the ‘birthright to Jacob’ (Gen. 25:33), in full admission that as the flute and lyre and the other instruments of music belong only to the musician, so all that is supreme in value, and all to which virtue gives its place of honour, belong not to any of the wicked, but to the lover of wisdom only.
On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 4
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