Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Genesis · About this commentary
Lamech's song, and men begin to call on the name
Genesis 4:17-26
17 Cain knew his wife. She conceived, and gave birth to Enoch. He built a city, and named the city after the name of his son, Enoch. · WEB
Civilization advances and violence advances with it, and the chapter ends with two lines running in opposite directions.
Cain's line is given a short genealogy and the entries are achievements. A city is built. Jabal fathers those who live in tents and keep livestock; Jubal fathers all who handle the harp and pipe; Tubal Cain forges every cutting instrument of bronze and iron. Herding, music and metalwork — the whole of a culture in three verses.
The question of Cain's wife is raised by verse seventeen and answered by the book itself a page later: Adam became the father of sons and daughters Genesis 5:4 over eight centuries. The human race in this account descends from one pair, so at the start the only marriages available were among close kin, and the prohibitions on such marriages come far later in Scripture and are stated as new Leviticus 18:6. The passage assumes what it has already told the reader.
What matters more is the tone. None of these advances is criticized. Cities, music, and metal are set down as the fruit of human capacity, and the capacity is part of the image the first chapter granted. Genesis is not a book that treats civilization as sin.
But it puts the achievements next to something else. Lamech, seventh from Adam in this line, takes two wives — the first departure from the one flesh of Genesis 2:24, recorded without comment — and then composes the first poem in Scripture. It is a boast about killing.
I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for bruising me. If Cain will be avenged seven times, truly Lamech seventy-seven times. The escalation is the point of every line. A wound is repaid with a death. Cain's sevenfold protection, which God had given as a restraint on others, is claimed by Lamech as a licence for himself and multiplied eleven times over. And he sets it to music and performs it to his wives.
So the two things advance together. In seven generations the line has gone from a man who killed his brother and was afraid, to a man who kills for an injury and sings about it — and in the same seven generations it has produced cities, harps and bronze. The chapter makes no attempt to connect them causally and simply lays them side by side.
The seventy-sevenfold is answered much later, by someone doing arithmetic on this verse. Asked how often forgiveness should be extended, Jesus answers not seven times but seventy times seven Matthew 18:22 — the number of Lamech's vengeance turned into the measure of pardon.
And the chapter ends by starting again. Another son is given to Adam and Eve in place of Abel, and a son to him, and at that time men began to call on Yahweh's name. Against a genealogy of achievement and blood, four words about people beginning to pray.
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