By their faith “men of old times had witness borne to them” that they had pleased Jehovah.​—Heb. 11:1, 2.

Abel, the second son of the first human pair, Adam and Eve, displayed faith. Abel realized that what God had said about death’s resulting from the disobedient eating of fruit from the “tree of the knowledge of good and bad” was proving true. (Gen. 2:16, 17) He could discern the inherited death-dealing effects of sin in himself. (Rom. 5:12) He also observed the fulfillment of God’s decree that brought laborious toil to his disobedient father, Adam. Then, too, in keeping with Jehovah’s sentence upon Eve, she was experiencing increased pain during pregnancy. (Gen. 3:16-19) These facts proved God’s truthfulness and gave Abel conviction, the “assured expectation,” that other things God had said would come true, such as the prophetic words that Jehovah directed to the Devil, when God was speaking to the serpent used by that wicked one to bring about human sin: “I shall put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He will bruise you in the head and you will bruise him in the heel.”​—Gen. 3:15.

5. (a) How did Abel display his faith in the coming of the Seed of God’s “woman”? (b) In what way did God bear witness respecting Abel’s gifts?

⁵ Abel displayed his faith in the coming of that Seed of God’s “woman” by offering to Jehovah an animal sacrifice that could substitute pictorially for his own life. His elder brother, faithless Cain, offered only bloodless vegetables. Cain thereafter spilled his brother’s blood as a murderer, but Abel died knowing he had pleased Jehovah, “God bearing witness respecting his gifts” by accepting the sacrifice Abel had offered in faith. (Heb. 11:4; Gen. 4:1-8)