When God judged between Cain and Abel,
Abel gave of the first fruits of his flocks. meaning Abel gave to God the first born creature out of the children of that species' flocks.
Consider that in
terms of Aquaponics or wild-life preservation...
If I simply don't house the creatures
which survive and help them to reproduce, then what am I doing?
By taking them out of the hunter's way for a season and releasing them back into the wild, I am just tampering with their life , prolonging their life by a season. I am fearful of my own ability to care for them, and would let them face all the dangers away from me, just so that i am not held responsible if they do die in my care.
But if I house the baby fish in the kits, and I let them reproduce, and next year I take of the increase and put those back into the river, then that helps the creatures survive.
So that is long-term action plans. long-term thinking - to help the next generations - not simply one year or one season.
it is not short-term thinking and fear with pleases God, compared to the long-term prosperity and enjoyment of proliferating life.
Imagine if you will what Cain did... for a comparison's sake. Adam and Eve were given fruits to eat, so that as Lord Jesus taught, the wise man could sow seeds on good ground. The seeds housed inside any fruit would be sown wisely by a human, if the human so wished. But for the sacrifice there would be fire, which means wood would be burnt, and perhaps a tree was cut down.
In Genesis 1, the brown parts of the trees keep growing in volume, for thousands of years if left alone. And the green parts of the tree are what the animals are given to eat in Genesis 1.
So that's one obvious problem.
Perhaps one would throw the entire tree onto the fire, or perhaps just the leaves, leaving the tree bare without leaves for photosynthesis.
Even if Cain were to have collected many fruits and piled them in a heap, without any fire, the fruit's seeds would all germinate in the same spot, which would not be as wise as nicely spacing them out in anticipation of the expansive tree that would grow from those fruit seeds.
Perhaps Cain even considered that he was like the first born animal which Abel slew, and thus Cain juxtaposed himself into that situation and was threatened if not offended. It was in this way that the snake considered that he could tell Eve what to do.
Consider Abel's practice in sacrificing the first fruits of the flocks. Abel didn't sacrifice the entire generation of a flock, as though that was worthy of sacrifice. Abel wanted those creatures to multiply and proliferate upon the Earth.
He judged between individual creatures of a generation, but not in a way like Adam judged Eve, that is to rule over her, but Abel judged the first born, that is a temporal measurement, which is the same meaning as to "have dominion over" (from Genesis 1:28) where to have dominion over, is to be aware of that thing, in both space, and as we can see from the example of Abel's sacrifice, in time too.
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