Seth and his Descendants - The Race of Cain

(GENESIS 4)

THE place of Abel could not remain unfilled, if God's purpose of mercy were to be carried out. Accordingly

He gave to Adam and Eve another son, whom his mother significantly called "Seth," that is, "appointed," or

rather "compensation;" "for God," said she, "hath appointed me ('compensated me with') another seed

instead of Abel, whom Cain slew." Before, however, detailing the history of Seth and his descendants,

Scripture traces that of Cain to the fifth and sixth generations. Cain, as we know, had gone into the land of

"Nod" - "wandering," "flight," "unrest," - and there built a city, which has been aptly described as the

laying of the first foundations of that kingdom in which "the spirit of the beast" prevails. 6

We must remember that probably centuries had elapsed since the creation, and that men had already

multiplied on the earth. Beyond this settlement of Cain, nothing seems to have occurred which Scripture has

deemed necessary to record, except that the names of the "Cainites" are still singularly like those of the

"Sethites." Thus we follow the line of Cain's descendants to Lamech, the fifth from Cain, when all at once

the character and tendencies of that whole race appear fully developed. It comes upon us, almost by

surprise, that within so few generations, and in the lifetime of the first man, almost every commandment and

institution of God should already be openly set aside, and violence, lust, and ungodliness prevail upon the

earth. The first direct breach of God's arrangement of which we here read, is the introduction of polygamy.

"Lamech took unto him two wives." Assuredly, "from the beginning it was not so." But this is not all.

Scripture preserves to us in the address of Lamech to his two wives the earliest piece of poetry. It has been

designated "Lamech's Sword -song," and breathes a spirit of boastful defiance, of trust in his own strength,

of violence, and of murder. 7

Of God there is no further acknowledgment than in a reference to the avenging of Cain, from which Lamech

augurs his own safety. Nor is it without special purpose that the names of Lamech's wives and of his

daughter are mentioned in Scripture. For their names point to "the lust of the eye, and the lust of the flesh,"

just as the occupations of Lamech's sons point to "the pride of life." The names of his wives were "Adah,"

that is, "beauty," or "adornment;" and "Zillah," that is, "the shaded," perhaps from her tresses, or else

"sounding," perhaps from her song; while "Naamah," as Lamech's daughter was called, means "pleasant,

graceful, lovely." And here we come upon another and most important feature in the history of the

"Cainites." The pursuits and inventions of the sons of Lamech point to the culture of the arts, and to a

settled and permanent state of society. His eldest son by Adah, "Jabal, was the father of such as dwell in

tents, and of such as have cattle," that is, he made even the pastoral life a regular business. His second son,

"Jubal, was the father of all such as handle the harp (or cithern), and the flute (or sackbut)," in other words,

the inventor alike of stringed and of wind instruments; while Tubal-Cain,8 Lamech's son by Zillah, was "an

instructor of every artificer in brass and iron."

Taken in connection with Lamech's sword -song, which immediately follows the scriptural account of his

sons' pursuits, we are warranted in des ignating the culture and civilization introduced by the family of

Lamech as essentially godless. And that, not only because it was that of ungodly men, but because it was

pursued independent of God, and in opposition to the great purposes which He had with man. Moreover, it

is very remarkable that we perceive in the Cainite race those very things which afterwards formed the

characteristics of heathenism, as we find it among the most advanced nations of antiquity, such as Greece

and Rome. Over their family -life might be written, as it were, the names Adah, Zillah, Naamah; over their civil

life the "sword -song of Lamech," which indeed strikes the key-note of ancient heathen society; and over

their culture and pursuits, the abstract of the biographies which Scripture furnishes us of the descendants

of Cain. And as their lives have been buried in the flood, so has a great flood also swept away heathenism -

its life, culture, and civilization from the earth, and only left on the mountaintop that ark into which God had