20 And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle. 21 And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. 22 And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. r Rom. 4: 11, 12. ing the wicked development in Cain's | ling-the harp. Instrumental music line. Lamech was the first bigamist, attained to high perfection in Daand here was the origin of polygamy, vid's time, and was devoted to the which has been attended with so public worship of God in the sancmuch corruption and crime. "The tuary, Ps. 150. David played the Lord willed that the corruption of harp-a stringed instrument, which lawful marriage should proceed from he carried about with him at times. the house of Cain, and from the per- It was played with the fingers; son of Lamech, in order that poly- sometimes with a bow, 1 Sam. gamists might be ashamed of the ex- 16:23. The organ was afterwards a ample."-Calvin. collection of small pipes, or reeds, blown probably with the mouth. These two names are here used in the history, not so much to describe exactly the instruments as to classify all string and wind instruments under these two divisions, as having originated with Jubal. OBSERVE. In this seventh generation wickedness is developed along with art, but the piety of Enoch also along with the wickedness of Lamech. 20. Here in the eighth generation we have still further developments. "Adah" means beauty, and "Zillah" shadow. In the line of one of these wives is here traced the origin of nomadic life. Jabal. He was the father the founder, or head of such. He instituted this class of men; lit., he was (the) father of the inhabiter of a tent, and of possession, (wealth, as consisting in cattle.) Gr., cattle-feeders. According to the Heb. idiom, the instructor of a class, or the originator, founder of a body is called the father of such. The patriarchs were afterwards such dwellers in tents, having their wealth in cattle, as Job, Abraham, Isaac, etc. Thus Cain's progeny settled in an unfruitful region, and driven to their ingenuity and skill for subsistence, applied all their powers to inventions and worldly aggrandizement. 21. Jubal. From the same mother sprang the founder of instrumental music-the inventor of musical instruments, and of musical perform ances. Of all taking hold of-hand 22. Here in the other branch of Lamech's family is traced the origin of metallic arts. ¶ Tubal Cain. The name Vulcan, in mythology, has come from this. An instructor; lit., hammerer --or (father of) every forger and worker in brass and iron. It is plain that the working of metals was, so early, a branch of industry. In the building of the ark this was requisite, and so also for the common necessities of life. Tradition says that Naamah first added ornaments to heathen apparel. The name means beautiful. OBSERVE.-Here, in the family of Lamech, the first violator of the marriage law, which is at the foundation of social order, begins the first special cultivation of the arts, and the first classification and division of industrial pursuits. Mere civilization and culture can never raise men from moral and social degradation. The fine arts flourished most in the proudest age of classic culture and 23 And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. 24 If Cain shall be avenged seven-fold, truly Lamech seventy and seven-fold. B VS. 15. of mere worldly learning. This was the problem so fully worked out before the advent of Christ, that "the world, by wisdom, knew not God," (1 Cor. 1:21.) murder. For I have slain. Rather, "Though, (or if) a man I have slain (or should slay) on account of my wounding, and a young man on account of my hurt; (then) if Cain be 23. This remarkable manifesto of avenged sevenfold, and (truly) LaLamech shows the increasing law-mech seventy and seven.” This is his lessness and daring of men in the line of the first murderer. Though a barrier was set against the growing impiety by means of public worship, and a separation of the godly in the family of Seth, yet this was not sufficient to arrest the tide of reckless wickedness. Though Enoch walked with God, (ch. 5: 24,) and by faith was honored with translation, that he should not see death, and so escaped thus far the penalty denounced upon his progenitor, though Enoch was thus a witness to that primitive time, and to that wicked race of a future state, and of a distinction between the righteous and wicked-though he was himself a prince among God's people, and a pillar in the church, and a witness for God of a judgment to come upon the wicked-yet Lamech's daring here shows how the iniquity of the race was hasting to fill up its measure for the flood, Heb, 11:5; Jude, vs. 14, 15. Enoch's prophecy may include a reference to the deluge, but it points to the last judgment. Listen. This would seem to be a song of Lamech in celebration of his son's invention of the sword, and has some connexion with music of Jubal. The history of the Cainites began with a murder-deed. It ends with a murder-song. Lamech boasts to his wife of the security and power afforded him by these weapons. On these he presumes to rely for defence and impunity in outspoken, presumptuous confidence. It would seem probable that Lamech had slain one of his brethren, a Cainite, in self-defence, yet his wives feared that the vengeance denounced in case of any one slaying Cain, would overtake him. To allay these apprehensions, he urged that the homicide was justifiable, and that he would be secure even beyond Cain. This is the earliest specimen of poetry. We observe the evidence there is here of the publicity given to the Divine dealing in regard to Cain. Whether Lamech here announces to his wives that he has slain a man in self-defence or revenge, on account of some wound and hurt he had received from such, or that he means to do so, or only boasts, as some understand, that now by this new weapon he can slay a man by a wound of his, and a young man (however athletic) by a hurt (or stroke) of his, (Heb. Fam. Bib.) he boasts that he shall be secure, even beyond Cain; and if the slayer of Cain should be punished sevenfold, the slayer of Lamech should be punished seventy and sevenfold. Thus one sinner is emboldened in sin by the suspension of judgment in the case of another. Some suggest that Lamech's poetic and profane boast may have been uttered in mockery of Enoch's prophecy of the judgment. Enoch's warning may have been uttered to rebuke the ungodly arrogance of Lamech, his contempo 25¶ And Adam knew his wife again, and she bare a son, and t called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. 26 And to Seth, " to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men w to call upon the name of the LORD. t ch. 5: 3. u ch. 5: 6. w 1 Kings 18: 24; Ps. 116: 17; Joel 2: 32; Zeph. 3:9; 1 Cor. 1:2. rary, who openly assumes the character of a prophet of infidelity. Enoch bore open witness of the coming judgment. He was honored as being, in his own case of translation to glory, a most striking witness of the reality of a spirit-world, and of a future state of retribution, Heb. 11:6. But the rampant wickedness, profanity, and crime which Lamech represented and boasted soon filled the earth. Men must now take sides for God and the truth, or against all good. The church must come out from the world, and be separate. The true believer must evince his faith by his walk, and his godly walk by his faith, 2 Cor. 6: 16-18; Mal. 3: 16-18. 25. The Cainite line has been shown to be secular and earthly in its development. The climax of this development was reached in Lamech, the bigamist and murderer. The historian now passes to trace the opposite and godly line of Seth, and to show how contrary was their tendency and development. For Seth's line is in the place of Abel's. T And Adam knew his wife yet further, and she brought forth a son, and called his name Seth. This name means set-appointed, as is signified in the following explanatory clause. For God hath appointed me (Seth) another seed instead of Abel. This naming of this son is her confession of faith in God's coveenant-dealing, with an eye to the promised seed. The term "seed" here is singular, and looks to a personal" seed." The mother had found her hope sadly disappointed in the first brothers. Cain was indeed possession, but only for her woe, and that of her household. Abel was vanity, alas, only too soon passing away from her sight. And now she looks upon Seth, as divinely set, or appointed for her as Abel's substi tute. This name calls attention to the Divine ordination the same Divine purpose which declares, “I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion." See Ps. 2. Whom Cain slew. This is her touching and bitter reference to Cain's wicked murder of his good brother. And it would seem that God intimated to our first parents by a divine oracle, that Seth should be the heir of the promise. This was calculated to revive their hope, which had been crushed at the death of Abel. 26. The godly line of Seth is now traced-the opposite in tendency to that of Cain. Enos. This name sounds and looks like Enoch, but in the meaning it is quite different. It means weak man, while Enoch means begun, or dedicated. This name Enos may have reference to the sad degeneration of men at that time. Or this may have expressed the pious estimate of man by the line of Seth in opposition to the bold and daring boasts of Lamech. The Psalmist uses the term when he says, "What is weak man (Enosh) that thou art mindful of him," etc., (Ps. 8:2.) OBSERVE.-This striking and important record signalizes the third generation of men. And this, to gether with the Sethite genealogy following, gives us to see who are "the sons of God" as a class. (See ch. 6:2.) ¶Jehovah. There is good ground to suppose that though the name "Jehovah" had been first used by Eve, to designate the promised seed-the Coming One-she had not used the name as specially applicable to God, but only in its naked sense of the Coming One: yet that afterwards God was pleased to reveal the name as applicable to Himself as the Comer, and thus further unfolded the Messianic idea, viz., that the promised seed was to be God. Then we see how at this period here refer Then. This period is here marked ch. 6:2. But the phrase is used as one of special religious interest commonly for invocation and worand revival. With this family of ship. This passage connects closely Enos began the stated and solemn with ch. 6, where the distinction is public worship of Jehovah on the more plainly indicated between the part of a separated class. There had "sons of God," and "the daughbeen a church in the family of Adam, ters of men." And it is most probaand public worship had been per- ble that at this time the consecration formed at the gate of Eden before of the people of God took place, in the Shekinah. But now the family opposition to the development of of Seth began to rank distinctly as evil, and God became better known worshippers of God, and to be sep- as Jehovah. arated from the world as such. The margin reads, " Then began men to be called by the name of the Lord-to be known as a separate class of godly ones. The Heb. Fam. Bib. reads, "Then it was begun to call (idols) by the name of the Eternal." But the phrase used in the text is often elsewhere found in the first sense, Gen. 12:8; 13:4; 21:33, etc. ¶ Began. This verb means more commonly to profane. Hence many understand this passive form thus, Then there was profane invocation of the name of Jehocah. But the term also means to begin. And this seems the better sense. Lit., Then it was begun to call on the name of Jehovah. That is in the days of Enos the formal, public worship of God was begun in word and deed, in prayer and offer-red to, in the time of Enos, God was ing, by a separated class. This record marks the formal and open separation of the Sethite line from that of Cain. This began in the time of Enos, the first grandson of Adam, and in the third generation of the godly line. Moses here commends the piety of one family which worshipped God in purity and holiness, when religion among other people was polluted or extinct. After Seth begat a son like himself, and had a rightly constituted family, the face of the church began distinctly to appear, and that worship of God was set up which might continue to posterity."-Calvin. Yet so great was the deluge of impiety in the world that religion was rapidly hastening to destruction. Others read it, Then it was begun to call (God's people) by the name of Jehovah-" sons of God," VOL. I.-7. first publicly worshipped by the name of Jehovah, which was an advance upon the previous worship by the name of Elohim. Thus the truth of a Divine Redeemer became gradually more known and rejoiced in. And Moses uses the name Jehovah Elohim in the general account, ch. 2:4-25; ch. 3:1, and yet uses Elohim in the dialogue at the temptation, as the name actually in use at the time of that event. OBSERVE.-With this antediluvian theocracy there seems also to have been the distinction of clean and unclean beasts, and probably the command to be separate, and not to intermarry with the daughters of men the outside world, (ch. 6,) and thus we have here the earliest embodiment of the true "idea of the church" as afterwards in Israel, CHAPTER V. HIS is the book of the generations of Adam: In the day a 1 Chron. 1:1; Luke 3:36. b ch. 1:26; Eph. 4: 24; Col. 3: 10. and yet further in the New Jeru-ence was in something more than salem. the name. A fact is here to be noticed which is most important to the authenticity of the Mosaic history itself when viewed apart from its CHAPTER V. § 20. SETHITE LINE, TO NOAH AND inspired authority; to wit, that a HIS SONS. Ch. 5:1-32. The next three generations, the fourth, fifth and sixth, are occupied with Patriarchal names. The sacred historian having now traced the alien line of Cain to its fierce climax in Lamech, and having introduced us to the other branch of Adam's house from which a godly posterity is to descend-the birth of Enos, (which is the term for weak man,) being the period for the more public separation of the godly line in the institution of Divine worship -he now gives us in this chapter, the regular commencement of those genealogical tables which are continued through this Book in a, connected chain, here and there interrupted by the narrative. These genealogical tables are important, as by them the true lineage of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Promised Seed-is traced, as Luke gives it, in outline, up to Adam, (Luke, ch. 1.) For more than fifteen hundred years we have only this outward framework of the history, consisting chiefly of names, and thus carrying us up to the period of the Flood, with only a few fragmentary notices prior to that great event. This was the childhood of the race-and here we have given to us, not all the descendants, but only those sons through whom the pious lineage is traced. It will be observed that the names in the godly line of Seth are very similar to those in the wicked line of Cain; shewing by the way that the differ single individual, Methusaleh, was contemporary with Adam about two hundred and fifty years-with Noah about six hundred, and with Shem one hundred. It may be added that Shem lived one hundred and fifty years at the same time with Abraham, down to the middle of the nineteenth century before Christ. Thus a single living witness connects Noah and his sons with Adam-and another connects Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew nation, with this contemporary of Adam. Abraham received from the lips of Shem what he (Shem) had been learning from one, who, for more than two hundred years had conversed with the progenitor of the race. The chain of witnesses is but two. As the oldest historian of the world was a Hebrew, and prefaced his history with an account of the origin of all things, the importance of this close connexion of the progenitor of the Hebrew nation with the progenitor of the race, will be seen. Shem was, for fifty years, cotemporary with Jacob, who probably saw Jochebed, Moses' mother. Thus Moses could have obtained the history of Abraham, and even of the deluge at third hand. The average age of the antediluvian patriarchs was eight hundred and fifty years. (See Prin. Rev., 1858, p. 422. 1. This is the Book. Here begins a formal genealogical table, in the line of Seth, and attention is called to the distinction from that of Cain, by beginning formally back with |