Articles
The Blood that Speaks
Reading: Genesis 4
Despite Adam and Eve’s failure, God continued to guide and help these first humans after they left the garden. Eve credited the Lord for His help in bringing life into the world (v. 1), and God gave Cain warning and counsel when he became upset that the Lord accepted his brother Abel’s offering while rejecting his (vv. 6-7). They were suffering, but they were not abandoned.
Yet each soul has his or her own choices to make, and the second generation of mankind also succumbed to sin as Cain murdered his brother Abel (v. 8). In accosting Cain for his sin, God says that “the voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (v. 10). Where Cain lied about Abel’s whereabouts by feigning ignorance (v. 9), God made it clear that He knew of Abel’s blood and how it was shed—nothing can be hidden from God. As the Lord described it, Abel’s blood had a voice that condemned his brother.
The New Testament also mentions blood that speaks: but where Abel’s blood condemned sin, the blood of Christ forgives it. Hebrews 12:24 calls Jesus “the mediator of a new covenant,” whose blood “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” Despite the first death giving voice to humanity’s tragic and wicked condition in sin, the death of Jesus speaks life and forgiveness to all who call on the name of the Lord today (v. 26; see Acts 22:16).
