Genesis 9:1-3 - When did man start eating animals? (Part 3) - Was it Abel?
In Genesis 9:1-3 - When did man start eating animals? (Part 1) and Genesis 9:1-3 - When did man start eating animals? (Part 2), I make the assertion that mankind outside Adam and his descendants were eating animals long before Adam was even born. Adam however was put into a garden, and given plants to eat and animals to care for. When God cursed the ground, Adam’s descendants sinned further by eating the animals around them. So, God used Noah to save representative samples of the animals there, killed off the people and remaining animals in their land, and then made the saved animals wild again after the flood. Accepting these details as part of the narrative fits in to the events before the flood in some very surprising ways.
- When Adam left the Garden, the animals in his part of the world were, Biblically speaking, still docile creatures, available to help. For his sin, God cursed the ground, making it much harder to grow food than it otherwise would have been. However, it would seem that these tame and helpful animals (such as the oxen) would have made it easier for Adam to farm the cursed ground. In support of this see Genesis 4:12, where it would seem the ground was yielding crops for Cain.
- The cursed ground may have referred to a known state that soil takes on when it has been exhausted of all nutrients. Fires oxidize the ground, and fertilizer provides needed nutrients as well… it would seem that the same animals available to help Adam may also have been available as sources of fertilizer. However, as the population grew, it required spreading out into more of the cursed ground, where the process would need to start all over again with it.
- Cain was a tiller of the ground. He obviously knew how much work it was to grow food in this cursed ground. No wonder he was so mad when God did not find his offering acceptable.
- Abel raised sheep… the ultimate in docile creatures. Most likely, these were used for clothing, milk, and fertilizer.  Were they killed for food? Perhaps not, given how much other purpose there was in raising sheep to begin with. Biblically, it would fit in with the scriptural narrative quite nicely if the only sheep killed by Abel was the one offered to God in Genesis 4:4. On the other hand, it was the fat portions Abel offered… the most flavorful part! How would he know that if he had never eaten one? I suspect therefore that Abel was also raising sheep for food. However, I would have to ascribe selfless motives to Abel’s heart, given the acceptable nature of his offering to God, and God’s constant tendency to judge our hearts over our actions. After all, God had not officially given Abel the go ahead to the sheep, or at least it wasn’t recorded. On the other hand, we have Genesis 4:4, where Abel’s offering was accepted.
- When Cain eventually killed Abel and in Genesis 4:12, God told Cain that the ground – already cursed and in need of care to produce food — would no longer produce food for Cain. Cain would need to obtain food in other ways. He became angry, killed his brother, and set about building a city… implying a leadership role over others (Genesis 4:17).
- This murdering leader, brother of a gentle sheep farmer, might have bastardized what his brother had done as a shepherd.  Ordering people around, he might have ordered them to farm and raise meat. They would have cooked it and served it to him, while he led them for many years afterwards. It was the beginning of eating meat for pleasure over survival… this would be the point at which eating it became a sin.
- This sinful attitude toward eating defenseless and docile animals for mere pleasure of taste, and not necessity, may have been the true state of affairs when God sent The Flood.
- After The Flood, God took something that people were going to do anyway… eating meat, and gave the animals over to Noah and his descendants for eating. However, now the animals would be wild and fearful of man.
So you see, even though God did not officially give the animals to us to eat until after the flood, Abel’s life would seem proof that the mere eating of them was never a sin per se. Even if Abel was not given the animals specifically for food, his heart was such that God did not judge him for it. Cain’s heart however, and that of the people in Noah’s land, was a different matter. If it was the mere action that was wrong, then I cannot see God sanctioning it under any circumstances. However, no mere action is wrong in itself (a controversial statement to be sure!), but the heart with which the action is taken is what God will judge. When God forbids something, and you do it anyway, is your heart one of disobedience? If so, you sin. If not, you don’t. It was what Jesus taught when He talked of saving a sheep on the sabbath… does such a person not value the sabbath? No, that person values the sabbath, but that person also values life. Is life more important keeping the sabbath holy? Jesus’ point was that saving life, valuing life in your heart, actually keeps the sabbath holy! When Jesus said that if we lust without committing adultery, we still commit adultery in our heart… it is just as sinful… it points out that our heart during the adultery already puts us in a state of sin, even before we take the action. This makes the heart the determining factor, and not the action itself. Yet as people, our actions are generally all we see of each other, and this is why Jesus said we are to judge each other by our fruit. We are being reasonable when we judge by people’s actions, but God is in a position to judge us by our heart. It is why it is possible for God to forbid actions, and yet not judge us sinners when we do them, because he knows our heart. It is why God may have only given Adam permission to eat vegetation yet did not judge Abel a sinner for raising meat for food, even knowing He would not officially give us the animals for food until Genesis 9; Abel had a good heart in what he did. Cain on the other hand, did not have a good heart, even while raising the very food God gave him to raise.