Commentary on Genesis John Calvin
JOHN CALVIN
me escape with impunity.'252 This example shows that men ever glide from bad to worse. The wickedness of Cain was indeed awful; but the cruelty of Lamech advanced so far that he was unsparing of human blood. Besides, when he saw his wives struck with terror, instead of becoming mild, he only sharpened and confirmed himself the more in cruelty. Thus the brutality of cruel men increases in proportion as they find themselves hated; so that instead of being, touched with penitence, they are ready to bury one murder under ten others. Whence it follows that they having once become imbued with blood, shed it, and drink its without restraint.
24. Cain shall be avenged sevenfold. It is not my intention to relate the ravings or the dreams of every writer, nor would I have the reader to expect this from me; here and there I allude to them, though sparingly, especially if there be any color of deception; that readers, being often admonished, may learn to take heed unto themselves. Therefore, with respect to this passages which has been variously tortured, I will not record what one or another may have delivered, but will content myself with a true exposition of it. God had intended that Cain should be a horrible example to warn others against the commission of murder; and for this end had marked him with
252It is clear that Calvin had no perception of the poetical character of this speech, or he would more correctly have interpreted its meaning. There is, however, and will be, much difference of opinion respecting the real nature of the act spoken of in this obscure poem. Some have thought Lamech guilty of savage cruelty in murdering an innocent person; others have deemed the act to be one of justifiable homicide, done in self-defense. Others, again, have supposed the expression of Lamech to be a mere question, which admitted only of a negative answer, 'Have I slain a man for my wound?' And, lastly, there are those who, with Calvin, take it as the language of bravado, 'I would slay a man for wounding me, if he should attempt to do it.' In Bishop Lowth's fourth Prelection the whole is given in three distiches of Hebrew poetry, of which the following is a translation: — "Ada and Zillah, hear my voice:
Ye wives of Lamech, hearken to my speech; Because I have slain a man for my wound, And a boy for my bruise: If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, Lamech even seventy times seven." De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum. See also Dr. A. Clarke's Commentary in loco. The following translation from Herder is also worthy of notice: — "Ye wives of Lamech, hear my voice,
And hearken to my speech; I slew a man who wounded me, A youth who smote me with a blow, If Cain shall be seven times avenged, Then Lamech seventy times seven." Caunter's Poetry of the Pentateuch, vol. 1, p. 81. Caunter commends the translation of Bishop Lowth for having got rid of the copulative conjunction in the fourth line. This, however, is a mistake into which he has been led by reading Lowth not in the original, but in Dr. Gregory's translation. A remark of Michaelis appears worthy of attention. Speaking of Lamech and his wives, he says, 'It is not to be supposed that he addressed them in verse; the substance of what he said has been reduced to numbers, for the sake of preserving it easily in the memory.' — Ed.