Genesis 4:25 to Genesis 5:1 a The Birth of Seth
This section may have been written (from source material) specifically to connect the Cainite records with the following record of Seth's genealogy, and also to interconnect the Cainite records with Genesis 2 and Genesis 3. This probably occurred at the stage when all these records were incorporated on a tablet as ‘the book of the histories of Adam'.
‘And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said “God (Elohim) has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” '
This is the first use of the name Adam without the definite article. Up to and including Genesis 4:1 it always has the definite article. (This suggestion assumes an acceptance, probably valid, that earlier prepositions were wrongly pointed by the Massoretes). This would confirm that the section is a connecting link, with usage different from the previous records, a usage introduced by the writer of the ‘the book of the histories of Adam' (Genesis 5:1) to whom Adam is now a proper name.
Adam appears as a name in tablets from Ebla in the third millennium BC and also in early second millennium Amorite sources, but not later (although these do not refer to the Biblical Adam).
The play on words between Seth and sath (appointed) parallels that with Cain. Possibly Seth is seen as especially important because he replaces the first man described as dying. He is the evidence that life will replace death. It may be this grave realisation that results in what happens next.
Note that Eve uses the name Elohim. In Genesis 4:1 she used Yahweh. This suggests that Eve has in mind here Elohim as Creator, producing life out of death, rather than Yahweh as the Covenant God (in the case of Cain she used Yahweh for she rejoiced that the covenant held).