And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-cain. Worker in brass or iron;related to Persian, tupal, iron dross (Gesenius, Rodiger, Delitzsch). Keil and Furst think this Persian root cannot be regarded as the proper explanation of the name. Furst suggests that the tribe may have been originally named Tubal, and known as inventors of smith-work and agricultural implements, and that Cain may have been afterwards added to them to identify them as Cainites (vide 'Lex. sub hem.'). The name Tubal, like the previous names Jabal and Jubal, is connected with the root yabal, to flow, and probably was indicative of the general prosperity of the race. Their ancestor was specially distinguished as an instructor (literally, a whetter) of every artificer (instrument, LXX.,Vulgate, Kalisch) in brass (more correctly copper) and iron בַּרְזֶל, according to Gesenius a quadrilateral from the Genesis בְּרַן, to transfix, with ל appended; according to Furst out of בָּזֶל, from בָּזַל, to be hard, by resolving the dagesh into r. And the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah—the lovely. Considering. the general significance of names, we shall scarcely go astray if with Kalisch we find in the name of the sister of Tubal-cain, "the beautiful," as compared with that of Adam's wife, "the living," a growing symptom of the degeneracy of the times. Beauty, rather than helpfulness, was now become the chief attraction in woman. Men selected wives for their lovely forms and faces rather than for their loving and pious hearts. The reason for the introduction of Naamah's name into the narrative commentators generally are at a loss to discover. Ingiis with much ingenuity connects it with the tragedy which some see in the lines that follow.
And Lamech said unto his wives. The words have an archaic simplicity which bespeak a high antiquity, naturally fall into that peculiar form of parallelism which is a well-known characteristic of Hebrew poetry, and on this account, as welt as from the subject, have been aptly denominated The Song of the Sword.
Adah and gillah, Hear my voice;
Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech:
For I have slain a mum to my wounding (for my wound),
And a young man to my hurt (because of my strife).
If (for) Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Truly (and) Lamech seventy and sevenfold.
Origen wrote two whole books of his commentary on Genesis on this song, and at last pronounced it inexplicable. The chief difficulty in its exegesis concerns the sense in which the words כִּי הָרַגְתִּי are to be taken.
1. If the verb be rendered as a preterit (LXX; Vulgate, Syriac, Kalisch, Murphy, Alford, Jamieson, Luther), then Lamech is represented as informing his wives that in self-defense he has slain a young man who wounded him (not two men, as some read), but that there is no reason to apprehend danger on that account; for if God had promised to avenge Cain sevenfold, should any one kill him, he, being not a willful murderer, but at worst a culpable homicide, would be avenged seventy and sevenfold.
2. If the verb be regarded as a future (Aben Ezra, Calvin, Kiel, Speaker's. "The preterit stands for the future … (4) In protestations and assurances in which the mind of the speaker views the action as already accomplished, being as good as done"—Gesenius, 'Hebrews Gram.,'§ 126), then the father of Tubal-cain is depicted as exulting in the weapons which his son's genius had invented, and with boastful arrogance threatening death to the first man that should injure him, impiously asserting that by means of these same weapons he would exact upon his adversary a vengeance ten times greater than that which had been threatened against the murderer of Cain. Considering the character of the speaker and the spirit of the times, it is probable that this is the correct interpretation.
3. A third interpretation proposes to understand the words of Lamech hypothetically, as thus:—"If I should slay a man, then," &c. (Lunge, Bush); but this does not materially differ from the first, only putting the case conditionally, which the first asserts categorically.
4. A fourth gives to כִּי the force of a question, and imagines Lamech to be assuring his wives, who are supposed to have been apprehensive of some evil befalling their husband through the use of Tubal-cain's dangerous weapons, that there was no cause for their anxieties and alarms, as he had not slain a man, that he should be wounded, or a young man, that he should be hurt; but this interpretation, it may be fairly urged, is too strained to be even probably correct.
The narrative now reverts to the fortunes of the doubly saddened pair. And Adam knew his wife again. Having mournfully abstained for a season a thro conjugali (Calvin); not necessarily implying that Adam and Eve had not other children who had grown to man's estate prior to the death of Abel (cf. Genesis 5:4). And she bare a son, and called his name Seth. Sheth, from shith, to put or place; hence appointed, put, compensation. For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed—semen singulars (Calvin); filium, Eve having borne daughters previously (Onkelos, Jonathon, Dathe, Rosenmüller)—instead of Abel. Her other children probably had gone in the way of Cain, leaving none to carry on the holy line, till this son was born, whom in faith she expects to be another Abel in respect of piety, but, unlike him, the head of a godly family (Calvin). Whom Cain slew. Literally, for Cain killed him (Kalisch). The A. V. follows the LXX; ὁ ν ἀ πεì κτεινε καιÌ ν, and has the. Support of Gesenius, who renders כִּי= אַשֶׁר. (see 'Lax. sub nom.'); of Rosenmüller, who says, "Conjunctio enim causalis כִּי saepius pro relative pronomine usurpatur," quoting, though without much aptness, Psalms 71:15 (com. in loco); and of Sal. Glass, who supplies several so-called examples of the relative force of כִּי, every one of which is perfectly intelligible by translating the particle as quia ('Sac. Philippians, 3.2, 15.); and of Stanley Leathes ('Hebrews Gram.,' Genesis 12:16). There seems, however, no sufficient reason for departing from the ordinary casual signification of the particle. Furst does not recognize the meaning which Gesenius attaches to כִּי, And to Seth, to him also there was born a son. Thus the expectations of Eve concerning her God-given son were not disappointed, but realized in the commencement and continuance of a godly line. The pious father of this succeeding child, however, had either begun to realize the feebleness and weakness of human life, or perhaps to be conscious of the sickly and infirm state in which religion then was. And he called his (son's) name Enos. Enosh, "man" (Gesenius); "mortal, decaying man" (Furst); "man, sickly" (Murphy). Then began men. Literally, it was begun. Huchal third preterite hophal of chalal (Greek, χαλαì ω λυì ω), to open a way. Hence "the literal sense of the word is, a way was now opened up, and an access afforded, to the worship of God, in the particular manner here described" (Wordsworth). To call upon the name of the The Lord. Either
(a) Then began men profanely to call upon the name of God (Onkelos, Jonathan, Josephus), referring to the institution of idolatry.
(b) Then men became so profane as to cease to call (Chaldee Targum).
(c) Then he hoped to call upon the name of the Lord; ου}toj h!lpisen e)pikalei=sqai to_ o!noma Kuri&on tou= qeou= (LXX).
(d) Then the name Jehovah was for the first time invoked (Cajetan), which is disproved by Genesis 4:3.
HOMILETICS