the thing about the story of cain and abel is that i can’t blame cain in the slightest because if nobody had died before and i was unaware there would be consequences to my actions i would’ve been smashing rocks over my brother’s head since day one. honestly the fact that either of them lasted as long as they did without clobbering the other is a miracle within itself
Cain and Abel had been doing that since childhood; their little baby hands just couldn’t wield a rock with deadly force, so all they managed to do was minor skull damage…. which healed stronger and stronger and thicker
these two boys grew up like a literal arms race… their arms gaining more and more strength from lifting rocks, while their heads gained greater toughness with each hit
The final blow, on the day that Cain had finally grown strong enough to bash that rock down hard enough to kill, and Abel’s head hadn’t quite caught up to it…. Yikes. It surprised him as much as anyone
…it has been commented that they knew about death because of animals. But then, God had made it very clear that humans were not like animals
Also, the reason for this fight was because Cain grew crops and Abel raised livestock, and they both made sacrifices of those things to God, and God liked Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s, and Cain got jealous
So… God could have avoided the whole thing by not acting like a whiny toddler at the dinner table who threw out his vegetables and demanded more meat