Introduction

From the fourth chapter of Genesis to the closing pages of the New Testament, the shed blood of Abel is treated as a witness that will not be silenced. The Scriptures return to it repeatedly — as the archetype of innocent blood, as a plea for divine justice, and finally as the standard against which the blood of Christ is measured and surpassed.

Jewish tradition, working from a striking grammatical detail in the Hebrew text, developed the account into one of the great contemplations on the sanctity of a single human life.

Genesis 4

The account itself give us the foundational language, that every later text draws upon. God's words to Cain are the origin of the whole history of Abel's speaking blood.

Genesis 4:10–11 “And the LORD said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood[s] is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.””

Two aspects of the Hebrew underwrite the later interpretation. First, the noun rendered “blood” is dəmê / dāmîm — a plural form (“bloods”), whereas the ordinary word for blood, dam, is singular. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible this plural often denotes violently shed blood carrying bloodguilt (compare Hosea 1:4; 2 Kings 9:26; and the pollution of the land in Numbers 35:33 which is caused by murder). Second, the participle ṣō‘ăqîm (“crying out”) is the verb of desperate, extreme appeal - the cry of the oppressed pleading for rescue and redress - for justice.

The context supplies the wider frame of references within the chapter:

In Genesis 4:8, the act itself is plain: “Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.” Then we have Genesis 4:9 — Cain's evasion: “Am I my brother's keeper?”, to which the crying blood is God's answer, Genesis 4:10 “the blood cries from the ground”. In turn, Genesis 4:11 the ground “opens its mouth” to receive the blood, and Cain is cursed from it. The result is Genesis 4:12 “the ground will no longer yield its strength to Cain;” and he becomes a wanderer.

The principle established by his blood is that innocent blood cries out and pollutes the land until it is answered. This has become a settled theme in Scripture.

2 Chronicles 24:20-22 “And the spirit of Elohim clothed Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest; and he stood above the people, and said unto them: This is what Elohim says: “Why do you transgress the commandments of Yahweh, that you cannot prosper? because you have forsaken the Yahweh, He has also forsaken you.’  And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king [Joash] in the court of the house of Yahweh. So, Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he said: 'Yahweh look upon it, and require the blood of it.'

Athaliah, a very wicked woman who sought to be Queen, destroyed any threat to her. Joash, the rightful king, was also in danger. Jehoiada the prophet priest protected him and proclaimed his the true king. Athaliah was slain and Joash installed. He acted for good when Jehoiada lived but on his death, Joash revealed himself as wicked and went the way of Cain, leading his people astray, to wickedness.  He forgot the good Jehoiada and when his son Zechariah prophesied disaster on Israel, Joash has him stoned to death. This is the last recorded murder in the Hebrew Scripture's order (Chronicles coming last in the Hebrew canon), and Jesus later pairs it with Abel as the first such murder.

The wider theme of crying blood

 Numbers 35:33 informs us that shed blood pollutes the land and cannot be cleansed except by the blood of the one who shed it.

Job 16:18 — “O earth, cover not my blood, and let my cry find no resting place” — a direct echo of Abel's crying blood.

Ezekiel 24:7–8 — blood left “on the bare rock”, not covered by dust, so that it cries for vengeance.

 Isaiah 26:21 — “the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no more cover its slain.”

 Psalm 9:12 — God “avenges blood” and “remembers”; he does not forget the cry of the afflicted.

 Abel in Jewish Tradition

 Working from the plural “bloods” and the powerful verb “cry,” Jewish interpreters produced a rich source of comment. The most influential features are set out below.

Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 — the value of a single life

The classic rabbinic reading is preserved in the Mishnah's charge to witnesses in capital cases. It reasons directly from the plural form:

“For so we have found with Cain, who killed his brother, as it is said: “The bloods of your brother cry out” — it does not say “the blood of your brother,” but “the bloods of your brother”: his blood and the blood of his potential descendants. … Therefore, was man created alone, to teach you that whoever destroys a single soul, Scripture accounts it as though he had destroyed an entire world; and whoever saves a single soul, as though he had saved an entire world.”

Also, the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5 takes the plural to signify not only Abel's own life-blood but “the blood of his descendants” — every generation that would have descended from him, extinguished in a single act. From this the Mishnah draws its famous principle on the infinite worth of one human being. This is exegetical inference from the plural, not a claim that God spoke these words. It is based on the context of the Scripture in this case. 

Genesis Rabbah 22:7 ..that the crying blood of Abel's unborn descendants rebukes the very act by which Cain sought a world emptied of his brother's line.

 Ibn Ezra (on Genesis 4:10) reads the plural more grammatically, as the ordinary Hebrew idiom for violently shed blood, consistent with its use across the prophets, rather than pressing the derash (interpretation) of the descendants.

Genesis Rabbah 22:7–9

 The great aggadic midrash on Genesis is the source from which the commentators draw. Among its comments on the crying blood:

The “voice” (qol) of the blood is heard by God though Cain thought the deed hidden; the ground could conceal the body but not the cry.

Abel's soul could neither ascend on high (no soul had yet ascended) nor rest in the ground (no man had yet been buried) — so, in the midrash's own image, his blood was cast upon the trees and stones. This is the origin of the “trees and stones” reading later transmitted by Rashi, and it anticipates the prophetic theme that unavenged blood will not rest (cf. Ezekiel 24:7–8).

The midrash reflects on Cain's later selfish plea (“my punishment is greater than I can bear”) and the theme of supposed repentance, contrasting his response with the crying witness of his brother's blood. Cain focusses on the punishment not admission of the sin. Avoidance, echoed the words on his father’s lips (Genesis 3:12) Cain displays here his pathetic ‘poor old me’ – it’s not fair.

Targumic tradition

Targum Onkelos (on Genesis 4:10–11) renders the verse fairly literally, and ties the crying blood to the curse of the ground now “filled” with Abel's blood. 

Targum Neofiti and the Fragment Targums (on Genesis 4:10) supply the “voice of the bloods of the multitudes of the righteous who were to arise from your brother” — the reading that makes the plural refer to Abel's unborn descendants.

The idea of things being unfair for Cain, is picked up in the Jewish Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (on Genesis 4:8), It dramatically expands the verse into a full theological dispute between Cain and Abel before the killing: Cain denies that the world is governed with justice — “there is no judgment, and no judge, and no other world, and no giving of a good reward for the righteous, and no punishment of the wicked” — and Abel affirms the opposite. At 4:10 it too reads the plural as the blood of Abel and of the righteous who would have descended from him. (This expansion is paralleled in Neofiti and the Fragment Targums.)

Second Temple and related sources

How Jews thought at the time of Jesus, when Jesus ministered, is reflected in non-Scriptural writings around that time. These background Jewish texts would have informed the hears of Jesus.

1 Enoch 22:5–7 (Jude in v14-15, quotes Enoch) — in the vision of the abodes of the dead, the spirit of Abel is heard “making suit” and accusing his seed until Cain's line is destroyed, directly developing the crying-blood motif.

Jubilees 4:1–6 — retells the murder and stresses that the earth cried out because of the blood shed upon it, and that judgment is written in heaven against all who shed blood.

Wisdom of Solomon 10:3 — alludes to Cain's fall, “the unrighteous man who withdrew from Wisdom in his anger” and perished through fratricidal wrath.

Josephus, Antiquities 1.52–59 — recounts the murder and God's condemnation, presenting Abel as righteous and Cain's descendants as founders of a violent, acquisitive civilisation.

4 Maccabees 18:11 — lists “Abel slain by Cain” in a catalogue of righteous examples, an early instance of Abel as the type of the murdered righteous one.

Abel in the New Testament

The New Testament brings together both the Genesis text and the Jewish tradition of Abel as the archetypal righteous martyr, and then makes its own decisive move: the blood of Christ answers, and surpasses, the blood of Abel. 

Abel the righteous

Hebrews 11:4 “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”

Abel is the first witness in the roll-call of faith, and “still speaks” — a direct appropriation of the crying-blood motif of Genesis 4:10.

Matthew 23:35 / Luke 11:50–51 — Jesus speaks of “all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah,” framing the whole history of martyred innocence between its first and last Scriptural instances.

1 John 3:11–12 — Cain, “who was of the evil one and murdered his brother,” is the antitype of love; Abel by implication the righteous brother whose deeds were righteous.

Jude 11 — the “way of Cain” heads the triad of apostate archetypes (Cain–Balaam–Korah), Cain standing for corrupted worship that issues in violence against the righteous.

The blood that speaks a better word

…and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than that of Abel.

— Hebrews 12:24

Here the whole tradition is brought to its climax. Abel's blood cried for justice and vengeance against the one who shed it; the sprinkled blood of Christ “speaks a better word” - crying not for the condemnation of sinners but for grace, mercy and their pardon. The same imagery of speaking blood is retained, but its message is reversed: where Abel's blood accuses, Christ's blood brings propitiation. Indeed, God’s justice and amazing grace reaches out to every man through that blood. We can choose the way of Cain to evil or Jesus the Way to righteousness.

We therefore see, that the Lord Jesus the Christ, leads us to understand that in His coming, the curse of Adam is overcome by Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. The wages of sin, is death, as Paul wrote (Romans 6:23).  The blood of Jesus, is the sufficient means to satisfy the penalty of sin against God that cries out for vengeance against the sinner. Those who come under the shelter of that blood are redeemed and will inherit the eternal life. Those who reject the shelter of that blood are doomed to simply wander through life and will have no cover to protect them from the wrath of God. Cain had a mark on him that made him stand out as the slayer of the innocent.

Those of Jesus will have a different ‘mark’:

 Revelation 3:12 “He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the sanctuary of My God, and he will never go out from it anymore. And I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name.”