Cain and Abel Argue About Justice in the Field
Before Cain raises his hand, he and Abel argue whether the world is governed justly at all. The post-flood law on murder closes the argument centuries later.
Table of Contents
The Field Where the Question Was Posed
The Torah says that Cain spoke to Abel. Then it says they went into the field. Then it says Cain rose up and killed him. What Cain said between the speaking and the killing, the Hebrew leaves completely blank.
The Targum fills the blank with an argument.
Cain speaks first. He has been thinking about what happened at the altar. His grain offering was rejected; Abel's firstling was accepted. The injustice of it has been turning in him, and now he names it. The world was created in goodness, he says. But it is not governed according to the fruit of good works. There is no real connection between what a man does and what he receives. There is favoritism in judgment. That, Cain insists, is the explanation for what happened: his offering was passed over not because of anything he did wrong but because the One who accepts offerings plays favorites.
Abel answers point for point. The world was created in goodness, he agrees. It is also governed according to the fruit of good works. There is no favoritism in judgment. The reason Abel's offering was preferred, Abel says, is simple: the fruits of Abel's works were better than the fruits of Cain's. The acceptance was earned. The rejection was deserved. The world is just.
Two Positions in a Closed Field
They have now stated their positions fully, and neither has moved the other. Cain believes the world is beautiful in origin and corrupt in governance. Abel believes the world is beautiful in origin and just in governance. These are not merely theological positions. They are each man's account of his own situation. Cain's account requires that the God who rejected his offering was wrong. Abel's account requires that Cain examine his own works.
The argument is unresolvable between the two of them. There is no third party in the field, no judge, no evidence that can be introduced. The dispute was never going to end in agreement. It ended the way it ended because Cain could not bear the alternative: that Abel's position was correct, and that what happened at the altar was fair.
The Targum does not moralize about this. It supplies the argument and then gives the Hebrew its plain conclusion. Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and killed him. The conversation that took place in the field before that sentence has now been heard. It changes nothing about the act. But it makes the act legible in a way the bare text cannot.
The Law That Answers from the Other Side of the Flood
Several chapters later, in a verse after the flood has reshaped the world, the same Targum addresses murder again. The verse is Genesis 9:6, and the Targum expands it into a two-part ruling that operates at different levels of jurisdiction.
Whoever sheds the blood of a man, the targumist writes, the judges by witnesses shall condemn him unto death. That is the first clause. Human court. Testimony. Due process. The murderer is brought before judges, witnesses speak, and if the case is proven, the penalty is death. This is ordinary criminal procedure.
But there is a second clause. He who sheds blood without witnesses: the Lord of the world will bring punishment on him in the day of the great judgment. The human court requires witnesses. The divine court requires nothing except the act itself, which has already been seen. A man who kills where no one can testify has not escaped. He has only escaped one jurisdiction. The other is still waiting.
The Question Cain Asked, Finally Answered
Cain killed Abel in a field. There were no witnesses. By the terms of the post-flood ruling, no human court could have convicted him. And in the time before that law existed, no human court was even constituted to try him. The only accountability available was the one God imposed directly: the curse, the mark, the exile.
Cain had argued in the field that there was no justice. The verse from Genesis 9 is the Targum's delayed rebuttal. Even without witnesses, the day of the great judgment is still coming. The argument Cain made in the field, that the world is ungoverned and the righteous are not rewarded, is answered not in the field where he made it but in the law that comes down from the mountain of the world's reconstruction.
← All myths