Those of my readers familiar with my areas of interest know how much I enjoy the book of Genesis. I can study it forever and exhaust neither myself nor the depths of its teachings.

Recently, something stirred my curiosity considering Abel. I cannot recall where or I’d cite the source, but I came across a comment regarding Abel’s choice of profession.

When Moses introduces Cain and Abel, he mentions that they chose to be a farmer (a “cultivator of the ground”) and a shepherd, respectively.¹ Precedent exists for Cain’s profession only a paragraph prior, when God sent mankind² out of the garden to “cultivate the ground”.³ It makes sense for Adam’s family, vegetarians without access to the Garden, to cultivate crops for food. They have to eat something, after all.

So why would Abel choose to not become a farmer? What is he to survive on? Sheep’s milk and goat cheese? He’d certainly lack nutritional variety. And if not a farmer, why tend flocks?

As I see it there are four basic possibilities.

• Abel raised flocks for dairy;
• Abel raised flocks for hair and wool;
• Abel raised flocks because sheep needed him; and/or
• Abel raised flocks for sacrifice.

Of these four, only the latter two have precedent in the text.

God provided clothing for Adam and Eve in chapter three, but He used animal skins, not hair (likely modeling later propitiatory/expiatory sacrifices). Perhaps Abel thought of a less violent way to provide clothing, but we cannot say certainly.

Sheep are helpless. They’re stupid and get stuck easily. God directed mankind to “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth”.⁴ Doubtless they noted the weakness of the sheep while observing the animals. Perhaps Abel chose, out of kindness and goodness, to selflessly care for the innocent and helpless. He did not need them, but surely they needed him. If so, we see something of his character already.

The last possibility as I see it is that Abel intended all along to offer these sheep up to God. Cain’s work directly fed him, but perhaps Abel saw an opportunity to dedicate his life’s work to God.

Certainly certain we cannot be, yet I find it meaningful to ask questions concerning even the smallest of matters in Scripture.

Whatever you may conclude, what did Abel eat? How did he subsist, and what must have been his plan for such in choosing his profession—and what does that tell us about how we should choose our own?

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1. Gen 4:2. ↩︎
2. Heb. אָדָם (adam) means “man” or “mankind,” and is used as the name of the first man—”Adam”. ↩︎
3. Gen 3:23 ↩︎
4. Gen 1:26 ↩︎