The earth Cain tilled did not love him. It was not a mother but a tyrant, demanding ever more sweat, more pain, more strength poured out. Cain hated it, but he could not leave it. It had become his fate, grown in under his fingernails.
Abel did not struggle. The sheep were not his property but a circle of trust. He knew their ways, healed them, led them to water. Their death was part of a covenant — sorrowful, but full of meaning. The smoke of his sacrifice was thick, rich, fragrant. It rose in a steady column, as though the air itself thirsted to receive it.
Cain’s smoke, smelling of dust and decay, crept along the ground like liquid sulphur, and it was like his own breathing after a whole day’s struggle with the clay. That smoke, carrying the smell of his sweat and his fury, did not rise to the heavens.
He felt the rejection on his skin, as one feels the coming of a storm. The void into which his smoke went was louder than any cry.
Cain stood looking at his altar, at the smoldering heap of sheaves. And then his gaze, slowly, as though against his will, turned to his brother’s column of clean, steady smoke. In that smoke was everything he lacked: lightness, acceptance, the right to exist without struggle.
First came the icy understanding: his heavy and tormented labor was rejected, while Abel’s simple and happy labor was received. Abel was living testimony of an error in the fabric of the world.
And then came the anger.
Cain called his brother out to the field. Words were superfluous. They walked over the earth soft from rain, and Cain felt the fury crystallizing within him, becoming something hard, sharp, inescapable.
The chapter goes on in the book.