Comparing Abel’s blood with Jesus’ blood

You have come to Jesus, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks of forgiveness instead of crying out for vengeance like the blood of Abel.—Hebrews 12:24 NLT.

Hebrews 12:24 presents the contrast of Jesus’ shed blood speaking “more excellently” than Abel’s. (Rotherham) Writing on this comparison in the esteemed Hermeneia Commentary, scholar Dr. Attridge confessed: “The way in which Christ’s blood is superior is unspecified.”^[1] After presenting some comments, Dr. Attridge then referred to the apocryphal 4 Maccabees 6:28; 17:21 for context of sacrificial deaths. These will be quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition below along with notes from two study Bibles:

4 Maccabees 6:28-29
28 Be merciful to your people, and let our punishment suffice for them. 29 Make my blood their purification, and take my life in exchange for theirs.”

SBL Study Bible
Eleazar’s final speech emphasizes the significance of his death for the sake of the law. The notion that the martyr’s death was a vicarious atonement is found also in 12.17; 17.10, 21-22; see the introduction.

The SBL Study Bible Introduction closed with:

A second distinctive feature is the author’s suggestion that the death of the righteous carries atoning significance. While traces of this idea can be found in 2 Maccabees (see 7.37-38;8.5), the author of 4 Maccabees gives the martyrs’ radical obedience unto death the force of a “ransom” for others (6.29; 17.21) and a sacrifice that restores God’s favor toward the disobedient nation (17.22). Their shed blood becomes a medium of purification for the disobedient nation (6.29; 17.22). The work witnesses to a development within Greek-speaking Judaism that stands parallel to early Christian interpretation of the redemptive significance of Jesus’s obedient death (see Mark 10.45; Rom 3.25; Heb 9.1-10,18).

New Oxford Annotated Bible
Eleazar prays that his faithful death is sufficient punishment for the nation’s apostasy (see 17.21-22n.).

4 Maccabees 17:21-22
21 the tyrant was punished, and the homeland purified—they having become, as it were, a ransom for the sin of our nation. 22 And through the blood of those pious ones and their death as an atoning sacrifice, divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been mistreated.

SBL Study Bible
This imagery, which draws on the ritual of the Day of Atonement in Lev 16.1-34, is the most developed imagery in 4 Maccabees of vicarious atonement (see note on 6.27-29). The same Greek term for atoning sacrifice occurs in Rom 3.25. See also Heb 9.11-15; 1 Pet 1.18-19; 1 John 1.7.

New Oxford Annotated Bible
Atoning sacrifice, the virtuous martyrdoms are taken as sufficient punishment for the nation’s apostasy, so that divine favor is restored (1.11; 6.28-29; 9.24; 12.17; 17.10; 184); c. La 16.1-34; Num 28.16-29.11; Sir 28.5; for a similar idea in early Christianity, see Rom 3.25; Heb 2.7; 1 Jn 4.10.

Then speaking of Abel, Dr. Attridge wrote:

There may be a distinction between the cry for vengeance of Abel’s blood and the redemptive effects of Christ’s bloodshed. … Our author may have understood him as the first martyr whose death, like that of other martyrs, [Footnote: “Cf. 4 Macc. 6.28; 17.21…”] had an atoning significance. If this is the point of comparison, then Christ’s blood which effects true and lasting remission of sin speaks not in a “different” but in a “superior” way.

This is also in direct contradiction of Christological Physicalism,^[2] for the martyr in 4 Maccabees 6:28-29, Eleazar, did not take back his sacrificed, atoning body. That would have violated his oath. (This is a thought experiment.) And for Abel’s blood to be “speaking” continuously, he did not get it back either. The pattern follows with Jesus, whose blood was surrendered to speak more excellently than Abel’s, and is also “speaking” continuously because he also never got it back. Doing so would invalidate the value of it “speaking” as well as contradict that it was sacrificed.

As one researcher eloquently noted:

Though shed in martyrdom, Abel’s blood did not ransom or redeem anyone, any more than did the blood of his sacrificed sheep. His blood in effect cried to God for vengeance upon assassin Cain. [Genesis 4:8-10] The blood of Jesus, here presented as validating the new covenant, speaks in a better way than Abel’s in that it calls to God for mercy upon all persons of faith like Abel, and is the means by which their ransoming is possible.^[3]

This point from Hebrews 12:24 is stressed in these notes from the following study Bibles:

NLT Study Bible
The blood of Abel cried out to God from the ground, demanding vengeance for his murder by Cain (Gen 4:10). By contrast, Jesus’ blood cries out that the price for sins has been paid for those in the new covenant (10:16-18).

NIV Study Bible fully revised edition
Abel’s blood cried out for justice and retribution (see Ge 4:10 and note), whereas the blood of Jesus shed on the cross speaks of forgiveness and reconciliation (see 9:12 and note; 10:19; Col 1:20; 1Jn 1:7).

The SBL Study Bible
The better word spoken by the blood of Jesus is a message of true and lasting remission of sin.

ESV Archaeology Study Bible
Abel’s blood cries out for God to avenge his murder. In contrast, Jesus’ blood provides atonement and forgiveness.

Hebrews 12:24 then is a brilliant exercise in stressing the meaning of the sacrifice Jesus made by contrasting it with the previous motif of Abel’s shed blood. Not only did it speak better than Abel’s blood, but it also by extension spoke better than the Maccabean martyrs’ since the atonement and forgiveness it provides was not just symbolic for a nation but was for everyone.

Footnotes:
^[1] Harold W. Attridge. The Hermeneia Commentary on The Epistle to The Hebrews, 1989, p. 377
^[2] See the Jesus’ Resurrection Index.
^[3] “Abel,” Insight on the Scriptures, 1988.