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.
Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah. The passage which follows is poetical, as is evident from the use of certain forms of expression in the original, as well as from the parallelistic strophes, which are a characteristic of Hebrew poetry. The insertion of such a rhapsody, which apparently contains neither doctrine nor fact worthy of historical preservation, has greatly puzzled commentators. But as it is the most ancient piece of poetical composition in the world, perhaps this primitive inartificial chant was intended to prove that Lamech was the father of poetry, as his sons were the founders or inventors of other arts. Whether it comprised the whole effusion, or is merely the fragment of a longer poem, it is impossible to ascertain, but its transmission to the times of Moses may be accounted for, if we accept the tradition that Naamah, the daughter of Lamech, became the wife of Ham, through whom, or his son Canaan, the respective ancestors of the Egyptians and Canaanites, it was preserved, until it was afterward embodied in the popular minstrelsy of both countries. The precise import of it has been a subject of various conjectures. Some consider the language of Lamech to have originated in a fear of punishment for his polygamy, and to have been the substance of a reply to his wives, who had been expressing their apprehensions lest he should be involved in trouble or danger by his daring innovation on the established usage of society. 'Have I slain a man to my wounding, or a young man to my hurt? (My offence is trivial compared to the crime of murder.) If, then, God would avenge Cain sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.' But the connection of this poem with the preceding narrative suggests a different meaning; and as the historian had already mentioned the polygamy of Lamech, he proceeds to develop another feature of this man's character as a self-confident, violent, and lawless chief:
`Ye wives of Lamech, hear my voice And give attention to my word; A man I slew, because he wounded me; A young man, because he assaulted me; If, indeed, Cain be avenged seven times,
Then Lamech seventy times seven.'
Since a difference of opinion exists among interpreters whether the verb in the third line is to be taken as a preterite, killed, or a future, I will slay, it cannot be determined whether the speaker was commemorating an actual occurrence, or merely stating what he would do in a possible contingency. Our translators agree with the Septuagint, the Syriac, and the Vulgate versions in considering that Lamech had already avenged himself on a young Cainite who had wounded him, and that this speech was an apology, because the homicidal act, which he explained was perfectly justifiable, having been committed in self-defense. Considering the parallelism, which repeats the same idea in two consecutive lines, there is only one murder spoken of, and not two, as some have erroneously supposed. But most of the old commentators, such as Calvin, LeClerc, etc., as well as all the more recent ones, Kiel, Delitzsch, Ewald, regard the speech of Lamech as an outburst of proud and presumptuous self-confidence-the boast of a bold, bad man, elated with the possession of arms, and believing that with such formidable weapons as his son had invented, he could defy all the world to oppose him in whatever courses he chose to follow-a vaunting menace that he could inflict that summary vengeance which God did not deem it expedient in Cain's case to permit, and that if any should assail him, or do him the slightest injury, the offender would expiate his temerity by an instant and inevitable death.
Short or fragmentary as it is, it affords unmistakable evidence of the wild ferocity of the speaker, and may receive interesting illustration from the pictures which the classic fabulists have drawn of the lawless schemes, the atheistic defiance, and the Titanic audacity of the antediluvian chiefs. Schlegel ('Philosophy of History') takes a peculiar view of this enigmatical fragment of antediluvian poetry. He considers it as referring to an actual occurrence-the effusion of the blood of a youth, not, however, done by Lamech in self-defense, but as a sacrifice, 'indicating that human sacrifices, especially the immolation of youths, which became so frequent and striking a custom of antiquity, had their origin among the race of Cain, deeply imbued even at that early period with appalling errors; and that unhappy delusion originating in a faint tradition of the guilt of their ancestor, a confused anticipation of a real necessity, and of a future reality, contributed to the institution of these sacrifices.
Thus, Lamech, to whom the introduction of polygamy is generally ascribed, was, probably, also the introducer of human sacrifices.' Thus ends the account of the Cainites, whose genealogical roll is brought down only to the seventh generation; and the reason why it stops here is, that in consequence of the intermarriages which now began to take place, they ceased to be a distinct family long before the flood.