4:2 - Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil.
[ T - OL ]
The report that "later she gave birth to his brother Abel" is posted without remark—there is neither an echo of joy or faith nor the hint of why she named him Abel. We would have expected the sentence to read "later she gave birth to another son Abel." Instead Abel is rather "his [i.e., Cain's] brother." Eve is thus shielded emotionally from her second son. He was simply Hebel in Hebrew, just a "breath," a wisp of "vapour" (the word translated famously in Eccl 1:2 as "vanity of vanities," hebel habalim). Then with just the mere pause of a simple conjunction "and" (but obscured in the NIV by the split into a separate paragraph of the text here) his early life is quickly passed over to his career as a "keeper of flocks," and the story line returns to Cain. As stories go, the sentence does not forebode well for Abel; he is just a breath in the sentence as well.
Husbandry (the keeping of animals) and agriculture (the growing of crops) have been the oldest human human occupations after foraging (hunting-gathering). They involved different skills and concerns, and when supplus was available, different markets. So stories of conflict between herders and farmers have always been part and parcel of folklores in every human cultures. There is, however, no indication here that the following story is meant to be understood within the context of such a conflict. The remark about their different career choice seems tangential, serving only to provide a context for understanding what happens next.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2018