Genesis 4:8 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Bible Comments

Cain talked with Abel his brother Either familiarly or friendly, as he used to do, with a view to make him secure and careless, or by way of expostulation and contention. The Chaldee paraphrast adds, that Cain, when they were in discourse, maintained there was no judgment to come, and that when Abel spoke in defence of the truth, Cain took that occasion to fall upon him. The Scripture tells us the reason wherefore he slew him, “because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous;” so that herein he showed himself to be a “child of the devil,” as being “an enemy to all righteousness.” Observe, the first that dies, is a saint; the first that went to the grave, went to heaven. God would secure to himself the first-fruits, the firstborn to the dead, that first opened the womb into another world.

Genesis 4:8

8 And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.