События в третьем столетии первого тысячелетия

Abel was a shepherd of flocks that grazed for milk and wool, and Cain was a farmer. Both of them sacrificed to God from their labors, thereby honoring their Creator, as they were taught (according to the testimony of Saint Athanasius) by their father Adam. And from here it is clear that Adam was the first to begin to honor God with sacrifices, who then taught his children to do this, and the children did the same thing that they saw their father doing. But righteous Abel more diligently served God with sacrifices than Cain, for he brought from the fruits of the earth not the firstborn, but the last and worst, keeping the best for himself. And the Lord looked upon Abel and his gifts, but did not heed Cain and his sacrifice. And Cain became very angry, seeing that the smoke from Abel’s sacrifices was rising straight up, and the smoke from his victims was spreading along the ground. The holy fathers also say that fire came down from heaven on Abel’s sacrifices and consumed them, but did not touch Cain’s sacrifices, with which Saint Chrysostom agrees. Envy gripped Cain, and he began to quarrel with Abel. Out of great envy and enmity, he changed his face, as Scripture says: “And his face fell” (Gen. 4:5). “Through envy the devil brought death into the world” (Wisdom 2:24), says Scripture. To envy is not a human property, but a devilish one, for envy comes from the devil. It is human nature to sin out of weakness, but the devil’s is to be malicious out of envy. Envy is the daughter of the devil, and if it unites with someone, it cannot give birth to anything other than anger, and anger gives birth to death. I think that Cain first united not carnally with Adam’s daughter, with his sister Kalmana, but spiritually with the daughter of the devil, with his own destroyer, envy. For he first began to give birth not to children according to the flesh, but to malice from envy; anger, having matured, brought double death: temporary for Abel and eternal for Cain. Envy is a double-edged sword; she causes mortal harm to both the other and herself, but to herself before the other. For first of all she pierces her heart and is seriously ill, and her countenance changes, and she sighs. The strong one reprimands the envious Saint Basil, saying: “O envious one! What are you sighing about? Is it about your own misfortune, or about someone else’s good?” Truly, it is not so much the envious person who is tormented by his own misfortune as by the good of others; Seeing his neighbor better than himself, in prosperity and honor, he is tormented in his heart. And for Cain, God’s rejection of his victims was not so painful as God’s good acceptance of his brother’s sacrifices; he did not grieve over his rejection, but grieved, looking at his brother’s goodwill, and did not correct himself by the example of his brother’s virtue, but became even more evil. And as much as he succeeded before God for the best, so much did this one succeed for evil, and while he ascended to the heights of God’s mercy, this one was brought down into the abyss of destruction. Oh, how great the evil is envy! Let's listen to what the holy fathers say about her. Saint Gregory of Nyssa says: “Envy is the beginning of malice, the mother of death, the first door of sin, the root of all evil.” Basil the Great exhorts: “Brotherhood! Let us avoid the intolerable evil of envy, for it is the serpent’s commandment, the devil’s invention, the seed of the enemy, a pledge of punishment, an obstacle to pleasing God, the path to Gehenna, deprivation of the Kingdom of Heaven.” And Saint Chrysostom (in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 3, conversation 7, moral teaching 5) says that if someone was very virtuous and a miracle worker, but was then overcome by envy, then there is no benefit to him from good deeds, and he is rather imputed with great sinners. This is what this teacher says: “If someone performs a miracle, if he observes virginity, if he demonstrates fasting and the rejection of everything earthly, and even through virtue approaches the angels, then he will still be the most vile of all, having this sin (that is, envy), and a greater criminal than the adulterer, the fornicator, the robber and the thief who digs up graves for the purpose of stealing.” And Cain said to his brother Abel: “Let us go to the field” (Gen. 4:8). And when they were both in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. So Abel became the first dead man in heaven. Adam and Eve saw in their son what they themselves expected: they expected death, but did not know the type of death. They both heard from the mouth of God that they must die, but they did not know what death was, but then they knew when they saw their beloved son without breath, without feeling, without moving his body, inactive, dead; and they realized that they too were destined to be just as dead. And they cried for a long time both about the visible death of their sons and about their expected one; and along with them, his sister Delvora, born with Abel, cried inconsolably. When, after several days, the corpse of the dead naturally began to decay, Adam remembered the spoken words of the Lord: “Thou art earth, and thou shalt go back to earth again” (Gen. 3:19), and with weeping and sobbing he betrayed his son’s body to the earth. From that time on, the field on which Abel was killed was nicknamed Damascus, that is, bloody, for “Damascus” in Hebrew means "bloody". Abel, innocently killed by his brother out of envy, was a prototype of the suffering of Christ our Lord, who was to be innocently killed by the Jews out of their envy. And Abel became the first martyr and the firstfruits of the righteous, since he showed himself to be the first righteous, which is attested to God both in deed and in word. God testified by deed when he looked upon the sacrifice he made, which the Apostle, remembering, says: “The existence of a righteous man is testified to him who testifies of his gifts to God” (Heb. 11:4). His righteousness is also attested in words when Christ the Lord, reproaching the Jews for their wickedness, said: “All righteous blood will come upon you, ... from the blood of righteous Abel even to the blood of Zechariah” (Matthew 23:35). Such testimonies of God revealed that the righteous man was Abel and the founder of all other righteous people, who founded the first Church of the righteous on his blood, for from his suffering death the Old Testament Church began to be built with the martyr’s blood of the beaten innocent righteous people and holy prophets of God. The Holy Fathers also testify that the righteous Abel died in immaculate virginity, before knowing marriage (Basily the Great, Ambrose and Jerome). Augustine says the following about him: “After Adam’s crime, the first bearer of the image of our Savior was Abel; he is a virgin and a priest and a martyr: a virgin, for he died before marriage; priest, for he offered sacrifices acceptable to God; a martyr, for he was killed for true worship of God.” When Cain's evil plans were realized on the gentle Abel, the Lord God menacingly said to Cain: “Where is Abel, your brother?” (Gen. 4:9). He asked not as an ignorant person, for He is the All-Seer, but wanting to guide the murderer on the path of repentance, so that he would confess his sin before Him, humble himself and regret the sin he had committed. The bitter sinner not only did not confess his evil deed, but, wanting to hide it before the all-seeing God, proudly answered: “We don’t know it, am I the guardian of my brother?” (Gen. 4:9). The accursed murderer lies, is exposed by his very lie and is condemned by it, for when he says, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, he reveals that there is no brotherly love in him, for the sake of which he should take care and protect his younger brother, so that no evil happens to him, and “If you do not love your brother, you are a murderer” (1 John 3:15). The Lord brings before his eyes the sin he has committed, saying: “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the earth” (Gen. 4:10). If you are hiding, then your very deed speaks against you; even if your brother is silent, his blood cries out to Me; even if the blood becomes silent, then the earth, which has drunk his blood and received his corpse into itself, will not remain silent, but will cry out even more at the time when it returns him alive to the general resurrection. Cursed are you on the earth, which opened its mouth to receive the blood of your brother, shed by your hand; and when you till the ground, you will not receive abundant fruit from it. But this punishment is not enough for your great sin: in addition, you will be an exile and a wanderer (“groaning and shaking” (Gen. 4:12)) on earth all your life, until the eternal horror in hell accepts you, unwilling to repent. Cain, being convicted by the Lord, was horrified, groaned and shook; and from that very hour he began to shake all his life. Desperate for God’s mercy, he said: “My greatest guilt is that it should not be left to me” (Gen. 4:13); my sin is so great that there is no way to forgive it. “I will go forth from here, driven out, and hide from Your face, and I will groan and tremble on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me” (Gen. 4:14). God put a sign on Cain so that no one, meeting him, would kill him even until he was old. And Cain departed from the presence of God with a hardened heart. Fearing to appear in front of his parents Adam and Eve, he secretly took his sister Kalmana, who was born with him, and retired to a distant country, settled in the land of Nod and there began to live and bear children. Cain's grievous sin became even more grievous when he assumed that his crime exceeded any measure of God's mercy, and he fell into despair, and this despair is the ultimate destruction for the sinner. And Judas then fell not into a lesser, but into a greater sin, although he did not kill Christ with his own hands, but handed him over to be killed, for, acting through others, he does this himself. If he had not fallen into despair and had sought God’s mercy with repentance, he would have received forgiveness, just as Peter, who rejected Christ and wept bitterly, received it; for there is no such sin that would overcome God’s mercy, and it is not impossible for God to save every repentant sinner, as He Himself says in Isaiah’s prophecy: “Is my hand not able to deliver, or am I not able to save?” (Isa. 50:2). If only the sinner wants to truly repent and correct himself, and the hope of forgiveness is known to him from the words of the Lord, who says in Ezekiel’s prophecy: “If the wicked turns from all his iniquities, ... all his sins will not be remembered” (Ezek. 18:21-22). There is no doubt that Cain would have received mercy from the Lord if he had sought forgiveness. Cain also added to his despair his flight from God. He who despairs of His mercy moves away from Him: “I will hide,” he says, “from Your face.” But where can you hide from the all-seeing eye and from the omnipresent hand of God, O sinner! Cain, confused in his mind, says: “Whoever finds me will kill me.” And this is Cain’s madness: he wants to hide from the face of God, and does not deny that he can be killed at the hands of men. Are the hands of men more merciful than the hands of God? David later said better: “Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for His compassions are many, but let me not fall into the hands of men” (2 Sam. 24:14). There is no mercy in the hands of men, but the Lord’s are the hands of a father: they beat with love and punish with mercy. This saying of Cain is also amazing: “Whoever finds me will kill me.” The human race has not yet multiplied, there is still no one except his parents and himself, and he thinks that there are already many who are ready to lay their hands on him and are looking to kill him. Such an evil conscience is suspicious and fearful! And she expects nothing other than her own destruction! There are those who, reasoning about these Cain words: “Whoever finds me will kill me,” say that after the birth of Cain and Abel, Adam allegedly had other sons and daughters before the birth of Seth, and they are not all remembered by name for the sake of their multiplicity; only those are mentioned who, due to their memorable deeds, became famous and famous for subsequent generations; as for those children who were born to Adam before Seth, they also had sons and daughters; and already at that time there were supposedly many people on earth when Cain killed Abel; That’s why Cain says: “Whoever finds me will kill me.” However, other writers disagree with this opinion. It is also told about Cain that he was often in great horror and, as it were, in a frenzy of mind, seeing terrible ghosts. Sometimes it seemed to him that he heard the voice of brother Abel, chasing him, wanting to kill him and crying out to him: “Why did you kill me?” Sometimes, when he turned his gaze upward, he saw the heavenly armies rushing at him with fiery swords and threatening him with death, and he was also afraid of the frequent lightning and great thunder that thundered above him. Sometimes, when he looked along the ground, snakes, reptiles and terrible beasts seemed to him, ready to rush at him. In such fear and trembling, he ran back and forth and could not hide anywhere, since the wrath of God overtook him everywhere. The Jewish rabbis also say that the earth, when Cain walked on it, moved under his feet, as if wanting to open up under him and swallow him alive. What sign did God put on Cain so that no one would kill him (until a certain time)? The Jewish rabbis say that the dog walked ahead of him and was his guide everywhere. Some say that a certain written sign was depicted on Cain’s forehead, while others claim that Cain’s face became ugly, like some kind of terrible monster. But most interpreters think that there was no other sign on him than the shaking of the head and the right fratricidal hand; Thanks to this shaking of his right hand, Cain could neither bring it to his mouth with food nor do anything at all. The merciful Lord, wanting to console Adam and Eve, who were inconsolably crying about the death of Abel, gave them childbearing again, and when they conceived, they gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, saying: “God raise up for us another seed, instead of Abel, whom Cain killed" (Gen. 4:25). From this Seth began the race of Christ according to the flesh, as is clearly seen in the gospel of St. Luke ( Luke 3:23–38). In what year from the beginning of the world Seth was born, look about this in the chronology, where it is also written about all the former forefathers of Seth, in which year each of them was born. Together with Seth, his sister Asvama was also born (as with Cain of Kalman, and with Abel of Delvor). For this is how human nature was designed from the beginning by the Creator, to give birth to twins, male and female, so that the human race would multiply on earth. And then the brother and his sister, who were born together, were united until people multiplied. When the human race multiplied, then this natural law and human reason, not without God’s command, of course, stopped, eliminating close, joint marriage. And it was established that brother and sister, being only uterine, should not mate in carnal relations. After the birth of Seth, Adam and Eve had other sons and many daughters, and the human race began to multiply from year to year when children began to be born from these children. When Seth was forty years old, he was caught up by an angel on high and taught the knowledge of many of the mysteries of God (Kedrin). He learned of the impending corruption and wickedness of the subsequent generation that was to come from his tribe; I learned that God wants to execute lawless sinners with water and fire, and also that the Messiah will come to deliver the human race. During this admiration of the angel, Seth saw the disposition of the heavenly creatures, the beauty of the heavens and their movement, the course of the sun and moon and stars, the arrangement of the heavenly signs called planets, and understood their actions; He then saw many invisible things and understood the unknown, being instructed by an angel for forty days. And his face was enlightened from the vision of the heavenly creature and from the conversation with the angel, just as the face of Moses was subsequently enlightened. After forty days, he again found himself on earth and delighted his parents, who were very worried about him, not knowing where he had gone; and he told them everything that he himself had learned, taught by the angel. Seth’s face shone with beauty and glory, like the face of an angel, and he had this glory of his face all the days of his life. You might be interested in: