CRITICAL NOTES.—
Genesis 4:23. Adah and Zillah.] Probably the oldest fragment of poetry extant. With a slight freedom of translation, we may perhaps thus approach the metrical cast of the original:—
“Adah and Zillah! hear ye my voice,
Ye wives of Lamech! give ear to my tale:
A MAN have I slain in dealing my wounds,
Yea, a YOUTH in striking my blows:
Since SEVENFOLD is to be the avenging of Cain,
Then, OF LAMECH, seventy and seven!”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Genesis 4:19-26
LAMECH
Genesis 4:23-24. “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; if Cain shall be avenged seven-fold, truly Lamech seventy and seven-fold.” The longevity of the antediluvian patriarchs serves to keep pure tradition, the only way in which religious truth was then transmitted. It also caused character to be very fully developed—the righteous and the wicked—this instance.
I. The case of Lamech shews the effect of an abandonment of the Church’s fellowship. 1st. The end and use of ordinances. 2nd. These are enjoyed only in the Church. 3rd. Cain and his posterity forsook the fellowship of the Church, and lost its privileges. 4th. Mark the effect of this in Lamech.
1. In his government of himself, unrestrained by Divine precepts, a polygamist.
2. In household government, a tyrant.
3. In his character as a member of society, a murderer. One sin leads to another.
II. The case of Lamech shews that outward prosperity is no sure mark of God’s favour. 1st. We have seen Lamech’s character. 2nd. He was remarkable for family prosperity (Genesis 4:20-22). 3rd. God’s dealings with His people have all a reference to their spiritual and eternal good. 4th. Hence they have not uninterrupted prosperity. 5th. To the ungodly, temporal good is cursed, and becomes a curse—increased responsibility, increased guilt. 6th. Splendid masked misery—embroidered shroud—sculptured tomb. 7th. The graces of poetry given here—speech of Lamech.
III. The case of Lamech shews that the dealings of God are misunderstood and misinterpreted by the ungodly. 1st. God protected Cain by a special Providence, that his sentence might take effect. 2nd. Lamech argues from this, that he is under a similar special Providence. 3rd. Common—they who despise Divine things still know as much of them as is convenient for their reasonings. Doctrines—depravity, election, justification by faith Incidents—Noah, David; Peter, malefactor on the cross—“All things work” &c. “Because sentence against,” &c. Ecclesiastes 8:11. 4th. Satan thus uses something like the sword of the Spirit—infuses poison into the Word of Life. 5th. The Scriptures are thus by men made to injure them fatally. They wrest them to their own destruction—food in a weak stomach—a weed in a rich soil.
(1.) See the effects of a departure from God.
(2.) Avoid the first step.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Genesis 4:19-22. Wives and offspring may be given to the most wicked in great number.
All arts and endowments, liberal and mechanical, may be vouchsafed to ungodly men.
Wicked men may be renowned for external inventions.
All such endowments leave men without grace and without God.
God’s curse works through such providential privileges to the wicked.
In the sixth generation from Cain, his descendants are noticed as introducing great improvements and refinements into the system of society. Not only farming and manufactures, but music and poetry flourished among them. In farming, Jabal gave a new form to the occupations of the shepherd and the herdsman; “he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle” (Genesis 4:20). In manufactures, Tubal Cain promoted the use of scientific tools, being the “instructor of every artificer in brass and iron” (Genesis 4:22). Jubal, again, excelled in the science of melody, standing at the head of the profession of “all such as handle the harp and organ” (Genesis 4:21). And Lamech himself, in his address to his two wives, gives the first specimen on record of primæval poetry, or the art of versification in measured couplets, or parallel lines redoubling and repeating the sense (Genesis 4:23-24).
“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.
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Truly Lamech, seventy-and-sevenfold.”
[Dr. Candelish.]
Thus in the apostate race, driven to the use of their utmost natural ingenuity, and full of secular ambition, the pomp of cities, and the manifold inventions of a flourishing community, arose and prospered. They increased in power, in wealth, and in luxury. In almost all earthly advantages, they attained to a superiority over the more simple and rural family of Seth. And they afford an instance of the high cultivation which a people may often possess who are altogether irreligious and ungodly, as well as of the progress which they may make in the arts and embellishments of life [Dr. Candelish].
Genesis 4:23-24. Polygamy from the first has brought intestine vexations into families.
A lustful spirit will be tyrannical also.
God’s forbearance of some wicked ones makes others impudent to sin.
Lust will make men pervert the righteous word of God to their destruction.
Genesis 4:25-26. The character of the ungodly family of Cainites was now fully developed in Lamech and his children. The history, therefore, turns from them to indicate the progress of the godly race. After Abel’s death a third son was born to Adam, to whom his mother gave the name of Seth, the appointed one, the compensation.
We have here an account of the commencement of that worship of God which consists in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, or in the acknowledgment and celebration of the mercy and help of Jehovah. While the family of Cainites, by the erection of a city, and the invention and development of worldly arts and business, were laying the foundation for the kingdom of this world; the family of the Sethites began, by united invocation of the name of the God of grace, to found and to erect the Kingdom of God [Keil and Delitzsch].
There is a time to break off sad lament for departed saints.
Men’s names are sometimes as prophecies and doctrines to God’s church.
God has set His church to grow and none can hinder it.
God has stated times of renewing His worship where it has declined.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Difficulty! Genesis 4:1. This was an hour of great difficulty—of intense anxiety—of appalling perplexity to Adam. Was he to be left alone—burdened with a weight of woe—abandoned to his own blind guidance—allowed to wander anywhere amid the Dædalian mazes of ignorance and folly? No; God would help him, if he would but take hold of His Divine Hand. “Papa! It is dark! Take my hand!” I reached out my hand, and took her tiny one in my own, clasping it firmly. A sigh of relief came up from her little heart. All her loneliness and fear were gone, and in a few moments she was sound sleep again. It was the voice of my little daughter sleeping in the crib beside my bed—at the very moment that I was awake amid the darkness of Providence. I lay awake thinking, until my brain grew wild with uncertainty. Again and again I took up and considered the difficulties of my situation—looking to the right and the left for ways of extrication; but all was dark. Presently my little girl’s timid voice broke faintly on my ears; and I, too—in an almost wild outburst of feeling—cried: “Father in Heaven, it is dark; take, oh! take my hand.” Then a great peace fell on me. The terror of darkness was gone. So with Adam; perplexed at first, he learned to take the proffered hand of God:—
“Child! take MY hand,
Cling close to Me: I’ll lead thee through the land;
Trust My all-seeing care; so shalt thou stand
’Midst glory bright above.”
Employment! Genesis 4:2. Lord Tenterden was proud to point out to his son the shop in which his father had shaved persons for a penny. But men, as Beecher comments, seem ashamed of labour. They aim to lead a life of emasculated idleness and laziness. Like the polyps that float useless and nasty upon the sea—all jelly and flabby, no muscle or bone; it opens and shuts—shuts and opens—sucks in and squirts out—such are these poor fools. Their parents toiled and grew strong—built up their forms of iron and bone; but they themselves are boneless, without sinew of mind or muscle of heart.
“Better to sink beneath the shock,
Than moulder piecemeal on the rock.”—Byron.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Types! Genesis 4:3. Reflected light has the marvellous power of painting the object from which it is thrown; hence our photographic likenesses. Thus the light of the Lord Jesus, radiating on our souls from the mirror of the Word, fixes His image there. The photographic discovery is a modern one, but God the Spirit has been painting the likeness of Christ upon souls from the beginning. They are one
“With Him, and in their souls His image bear,
Rejoicing in the likeness.”—Upham.
Fire! Genesis 4:4. Fire was a symbol of the Divine Presence; and in the literature and customs of the East the same thing is asserted. In the ancient writings, where the marriages of the gods and demi-gods are described, it is always said the ceremony was performed in the presence of the God of Fire. In respectable marriages in India, fire is an important element in their celebration. It is made, says Roberts, of the wood of the mango-tree; and is kindled in the centre of the room, while round it walk the bride and bridegroom amid the Brahmin incantations. Is this a perversion of the primæval truth that God’s appearance by fire was His witness to the mystical union between Abel’s soul and His Son Jesus Christ?
“The smoke of sacrifice arose, and God
Smell’d a sweet savour of obedient faith.”
Atonement! Genesis 4:4. The startling word “blood” would be the last a man would select for a symbol of peace and purity. While blood would render whatever it touches impure, it is the only thing that takes away the stain of sin. Nearly every heathen nation has had this “moral intuition” of the necessity of atoning blood. It remained for Christianity to have an excrescence such as that of the Unitarians, who declaim against “a religion of blood, and atonement of blood.” And yet is not the blood of atonement the leading idea in the Bible? It is like the scarlet thread which runs through all the naval cloth—cut it where you please, that vein of crimson is visible. The word “atonement” is constantly used to signify the reconciliation to God by bloody sacrifices. The priest made atonement by sacrifice—first for his own sins, and then for the sins of all the people.
“With blood—but not his own—the awful sign
At once of sin’s desert and guilt’s remission,
The Jew besought the clemency divine,
The hope of mercy blending with contrition.—Conder.
Disappointment! Genesis 4:5. The offering of Cain was like a beautiful present, but there was no sorrow for sin in it—no asking for pardon—and so God would not receive it. “Mother won’t take my book,” once sobbed out a little boy—holding in his hand a very beautiful little volume prettily bound, with gilt edges to the leaves. It was a pretty present, purchased with the pocket-money which he had been for weeks saving for his mother’s birthday; and now she would not have it. But she did take the needle-book and purse which her little daughter presented to her. Why did she refuse the beautiful gift of her boy? He had been naughty—selfish, passionate, false—and had not at all repented; and so when he brought his offering, she put it gently on one side, saying, “No, Charlie.” He turned away sullenly, muttering that he did not care, and beginning to cherish feelings of a bad kind towards his sister. But after a while he came to himself—stole into the room, flung himself on her shoulder, confessed his fault with tears, and found favour with his mother. By-and-by, she tenderly whispered, “You may bring your present.” So God acted with Cain, but he would persist in obduracy of heart, of which one might say:—
“You may as well do anything most hard,
As seek to soften that (than which what’s harder?)”—Shakespeare.
Blood! Genesis 4:7. In nearly every country, men have felt that bloodshedding was an essential element of religious belief. A Thug at Meerut, who had been guilty of many murders, was arrested and placed in prison. Whilst there, a missionary visited him—brought him to embrace the Gospel, and to consent to confess his crimes. On his trial, he accordingly avowed the sins of his dreadful life—and after recounting murder after murder, he declared that he had committed them in the full belief that, by the shedding of the blood of each victim, he would not only please the dreadful goddess Kali, but also procure her favour for the life to come. He then took out a Bible from his linen vest, and said: “Had I but received this book sooner, I should not have done it, for I find that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.”
“Lord, I believe Thy precious blood,
Which at the mercy-seat of God
Forever doth for sinners plead,
For me—e’en for my soul—was shed.”—Wesley.
Murder! Genesis 4:7. “Blood will out” is the blunt phrase of an old proverb or saw. Did Cain hide the body? Yet no matter, whether the lifeless corpse lay with its face open to the noonday sun, or buried in the leafy recesses of some thickset grove, or shrouded in the gloomy damps of some subterranean cavern: God could see it. He could hear the call of Justice. How strangely deeds of blood are disclosed! Two French merchants, relates Clarke, were travelling to a fair, and, while passing through a wood, one of them murdered the other, and robbed him of his money. After burying him to prevent discovery, he proceeded on his journey; but the murdered man’s dog remained behind. His howling attracted passers-by, who were led to search the spot. The fair being ended, they watched the return of the merchants; and the murderer no sooner made his appearance than the dog sprung furiously upon him. “Be sure your sin will find you out.” How terribly was this exemplified in the case of Eugene Aram, whose very conscience at last unfolded the tale:—
“He told how murderers walk the earth
Beneath the curse of Cain,
With crimson clouds before their eyes,
And flames about their brain.”—Hood.
Conscience! Genesis 4:8. Away in the wilds of New Zealand, a noble champion of the Cross, once overheard a native voice from amid a tangled maze of brushwood praying that God would make sin as sensitive to his soul as a speck of dust is to the apple of the eye. Keep your conscience tender, tender as the eye that closes its lids against an atom of dust; or as that sensitive plant which shrinks when its leaves are touched, ay, even when the breath of the mouth falls on it. Had Cain but heeded this! Had he only taken notice of the first speck of dust that fell, of the first prick of the pin that reached, of the first breath of sin that rested on his conscience, all might have been well. There is a species of poplar, whose leaves are rustled by a breeze too faint to stir the foilage of other trees; and such should have been the conscience of Cain, easily moved by the “little sins” of envy and dislike. There would then have been no cry of brother’s blood, no need for him to wander forth—
“Like a deer in the fright of the chase,
With a fire in his heart, and a brand on his face.”
Retribution! Genesis 4:8. The deed is done, and blood stains the hand of Cain, a brother’s blood. The ocean, with all its fierce and furious waves, cannot wash out the scarlet dye. Agonies of remorse cannot recall it. And yet these probably were not slight. Some have supposed that he showed no compunction for the cruel crime, and that his heart was ice. But if it was ice, it was that of the Arctic, beneath whose thick crust throb the waves, and move the reptiles of the deep. Far down within his breast, the waters of remorse were surging and muddy; and—
“From that day forth no place to him could be
So lonely, but that thence might come a pang
Brought from without to inward misery.”—Wordsworth.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Conviction! Genesis 4:9. When Richard the Lion was on his return from the Holy Land, he was taken captive by his enemy the Archduke of Austria, and thrown into an unknown dungeon. His favorite minstrel went in search of him, having only the clue that his master was imprisoned in a castle in some mountain-forest. At last his music found out the prison, for one day when Blondel was playing his favorite air beneath the castle wall, Richard recognized the music and voice. When Adam was captive in Satan’s dungeon, God’s Divine voice called him forth to penitence in vain. Now the same voice of Divine music seeks to awaken echoes in the heart of Cain, to arouse him to contrition by the consciousness of conviction. But all in vain! No; the hardened heart breaks not. The sullen lips pour forth no cry for pardon. No contrition asks for mercy. Rather does his answer imply reproach, as when Adam said: The woman whom THOU gavest me—
“The unclean spirit
That from my childhood up, hath tortured me,
Hath been too cunning and too strong for me.
Am I to blame for this?”
Remorse! Genesis 4:9. Tiberius felt the remorse of conscience so violent, that he protested to the senate that he suffered death daily; and Trapp tells us of Richard III that, after the murder of his two innocent nephews, he had fearful dreams and visions, would leap out of his bed, and, catching his sword, would go distractedly about the chamber, everywhere seeking to find out the cause of his own-occasioned disquiet. If, therefore, men more or less familiarized with crime and deeds of blood, had the fangs of the serpent ever probing their breasts, is it unreasonable to conclude that Cain knew seasons of sad regrets? If he had not, God’s enquiry soon stirred up the pangs! The cruel Montassar, having assassinated his father, was one day admiring a beautiful painting of a man on horseback, with a diadem encircling his head, and a Persian inscription. Enquiring the significance of the words, he was told that they were: “I am Shiunjeh, the son of Kosru, who murdered my father, and possessed the crown only six months.” Montassar turned pale, horrors of remorse at once seized on him, frightful dreams interrupted his slumbers until he died. And no sooner did God address the first fratricide, than conscience roused herself to inflict poignant pains:—
“O the wrath of the Lord is a terrible thing!
Like the tempest that withers the blossoms of spring,
Like the thunder that bursts on the summer’s domain,
It fell on the head of the homicide Cain.”
Guilt! (Genesis 4:12.) Pilkington very excellently likens the pangs of conscious guilt to the groundswell after a storm, which mariners tell us appears long after the storm has ceased, and far off from its locality. They come up in awful vividness; as when a flash of lightning reveals but for a moment the dangers of a shipwrecked crew. They have long been covered up, but only covered like the carvings of some old minster, or like that invisible ink which needs but the fire to bring out legibly the handwriting on the wall of conscience. For a moment are the stings of some; but not so Cain’s—there they remained, acute and anguished; and of him we may say figuratively:—
“As he plodded on, with sullen clang
A sound of chains aloud the desert rang.”
Martyrs! (Genesis 4:12.) “How early,” says Bishop Hall, “did martyrdom come into the world!” The first man that died—died for religion; and the greatest lesson, as Green remarks in this chapter, is that the first man saved went to heaven just as all of us must do—if we are to be saved at all. It must have been a strange, yet happy day for the angels of God when His spirit came among them from this far-off world. He had sinned—they had never fallen. He had laboured and sorrowed—they had never shed a tear for themselves. He had died—they knew not what death was. But now his soul is among them—singing, not their song, but a new one—one all his own. As he sings, how every seraphic harp is silent, and every seraphic heart is still to hear
“The song that ne’er was sung before
A sinner reached the heavenly shore;
And now does sound for evermore.”
Disclosure! (Genesis 4:9.) How long it was before God met him, we are not told—some suppose that it was on his way back from the deed of blood. Others think that probably days and weeks elapsed—that the parents, like Jacob, had come to believe Abel dead at the hands of the wild beasts, and that possibly Cain was all the more fondly cherished. If so, was Cain’s conscience at ease? Or, did he have his hours of moodiness, when his wondering parents heard him start and mutter:—
“Too late! Too late! I shall not see him more
Among the living! That sweet, patient face
Will never more rebuke me?”
Very recently, a murderer buried his victim in the warehouse attached to his business premises. For months, the disconsolate parents sought their daughter far and near—besought her paramour to disclose the secret of her absence; but in vain. For twelve long weary months no trace of the missing one could be discovered; and then a trivial act of carelessness revealed the mystery of death. Yet, he had been heard to wish at times that he had never been born, or was dead:—
“It were a mercy
That I were dead, or never had been born.”—Longfellow.
Condemnation! Genesis 4:13. Very little idea can be formed of the sufferings of Cain, when we read that God visited him with life-long remorse. John Randolph, in his last illness, said to his doctor: “Remorse! Remorse! Remorse! Let me see the word! show it to me in a dictionary.” There being none at hand, he asked the surgeon to write it out for him, then having looked at it carefully, he exclaimed: “Remorse! you do not know what it means.” Happy are those who never know. It gives, as Thomas says, a terrible form and a horrible voice to everything beautiful and musical without. It is recorded of Bessus—a native of Polonia in Greece—that the notes of birds were so insufferable to him, as they never ceased chirping the murder of his father—that he would tear down their nests and destroy both young and old. The music of the sweet songsters of the grove were as the shrieks of hell to a guilty conscience. And how terribly would the familiar things of life become to Cain a source of agony!
“The kiss of his children shall scorch him like flame,
When he thinks of the curse that hangs over his name,
And the wife of his bosom—the faithful and fair,
Can mix no sweet drop in his cup of despair:
For her tender caress, and her innocent breath,
But still in his soul the hot embers of death”—Knox.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Godless Prosperity! (Genesis 4:20.) How pitifully foolish, exclaims Law, are the votaries of the world! They may have gifts, which glitter splendidly; but it is only for a speck of time. Their brightest sun soon sets in darkest night. Their joys are no true joys, while they remain; but their continuance is a fleeting dream. Their flowers have many a thorn, and in the plucking fade. Their fruitless blossoms soon decay. Their eyes stand out with fatness, they have often more than heart could wish; and yet all this has its end—like the pampered sacrificial victim described in Prescot’s History of Mexico. For twelve months, the intended sacrifice was allowed to revel in every luxury—to indulge in every pleasure; only to be laid on the altar and have his palpitating heart torn from his breast. “What shall I come to, father,” exclaimed a young man, “if I go on prospering in this way?”—to which enquiry the parent tersely and tritely responded: “The grave.” The tinsel glare, says Secker, is too apt to offend the weak eyes of a saint. Alas! why should we envy him a little light, who is to be shrouded in everlasting darkness? For
“When Fortune, thus has tossed her child in air,
Snatched from the covert of an humble state,
How often have I seen him dropped at once!
Our morning’s envy! and our evening’s sigh!”—Young.
First Step! Evil once introduced spreads as a flame amongst dry stubble. The weed—once rooted—can hardly be eradicated; and, like that great aquatic plant introduced from America, will spread on all sides. Mortify the first sin; for by yielding to it you may found a pyramid of misery. One fault indulged in soon swells into a deepening torrent, and widens into a boundless sea. One little leak may sink the boldest ship. It is said of Tiberius that, whilst Augustus ruled, he was no way tainted in his reputation; but that, when once he gave way to sin, there was no crime to which he was not accessory. When Lamech was yet a youth, he probably displayed no disposition to great crimes; but no sooner had he married two wives in violation of the Divine command than he gradually loosened all moral restrictions, and gave full vent to his passions—culminating in homicide. Avoid the first step!
“One mischief entered brings another in;
The second pulls a third—the third draws more,
And they for all the rest, set ope the door.”—Smith.
Church! (Genesis 4:26.) The little seed which prophecy planted in Eden grows age by age more vast than that tree which the prophet beheld in vision, whose height reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth. “There are lofty heights in nature,” says Bate, which catch the morning sun before it has risen in the valleys, and which stand up glowing in the golden light when the shades of evening have wrapped these in deepening dusk. And so there are countries in which the Church has shed her light far and wide, while others remain in gloom of heathen ignorance. But as the sun before it has completed its circuit lights up every vale and hill, so the Church shall grow to her full dimensions in spite of all hindrances. It has entwined its roots through all the shadowy institutions of the elder dispensation, and standing tall and erect in the midst of the new, it defies—to use the sentiment of Wiseman—the whirlwind and the lightning, the draught and scorching sun. Like the prophet’s vine—it will spread its branches to the uttermost parts of the earth, to feed them with the sweetest fruits of holiness.
“Long as the world itself shall last,
The sacred Banyan still shall spread,
From clime to clime—from age to age,
Its sheltering shadow shall be shed.”