We have seen under Cain the cradle of public civilized life, the first building of a city; his son named with an expression of initiation or culture, earthly as it was; and the city named in the pride of life after the name of his son: a little beginning of that vast system to rise up ere long in opposition to God, where the knowledge of the Father and of His love never penetrates, where Christ and they that are His cannot escape hatred. It was the resource of man under curse in the land of his exile, who went forth from His presence Who convicted him of sin against man, his brother, no less than against God. Faith alone purifies” the heart; but faith was as far from him as love, the fruit of that divine love which unbelief never sees or feels. And as there was no dependence on God, so a bad conscience engendered dread of man: “whosoever findeth me shall slay me,” his own words. Within that wretched breast grew up the notion of a city; as his son's name furnished the idea of perpetuating a family boast on earth. Jehovah's name was nothing to his soul, save one of horror, because of his own conscious guilt. He must die like his parents, but his city, like his family, shall continue forever, his dwellings from generation to generation, and then at least the name should not die. Expulsion from paradise, going out from Jehovah's presence, only gave the occasion to prove how a brave and determined man can rise above the dreariest lot and turn a land of wandering into a settled habitation and secured from marauders and other foes.
“And to Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael; and Mehujael begot Methushael; and Methushael begot Lemech. And Lemech took to him two wives; the name of the one [was] Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. And Adah bare Jabal: he was father of such as dwell in tents and [have] cattle. And his brother's name [was] Jubal: he was father of all such as handle harp and pipe. And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-Cain, forger of every tool of copper and iron; and Tubal-Cain's sister [was] Naamah” (vers. 18-22).
In this first genealogical draft, what is said of Lemech arrests us. He is marked as violating first the divine order of marriage. It was “not good that the man should be alone.” But His provision was not two or more, but one woman, “a helpmate,” his counterpart. Self-will, ever growing, did not not longer hesitate to traverse God's mind, evidenced sufficiently for those who fear God in His act: and “Lemech took to him two wives.” From the beginning it was not so. Our Lord treats the account, not as poetic, or mythical, but as authentic and divinely authoritative fact. He also, we may notice, binds together chaps. i. and ii. as parts of one inspired narrative, whatever the difficulties or dreams of soi-disant higher criticism, not only erring but in its overweening vanity ignorant of the scriptures, and of the power of God, which faith alone in the nature of things can apprehend and enjoy. Polygamy is a direct transgression of that unity which is of its original institution according to God's will. The law no doubt permitted a measure of license in view of the hard-heartedness of Israel (i.e. of man in the flesh); but the law made nothing perfect: Christ vindicated, as He is, the truth.
The names of Lemech's wives are given, as of our first mother, and these only, with his daughter Naamah, of the antediluvian women. As Eve was named with express significance, it may well be that Lemech's choice denotes the gratification of taste in the growing world. For Adah means “beauty “, Zillah “shadow “, and Naamah “pleasant.” God was not in the thought of their designations. They fell in with the advances of civilization, which disdains the pilgrim and stranger character, so dear to faith. Earth is its home, and every accession to present loveliness is welcomed. Why think of sin or righteousness, of death and judgment, of Christ and His coming? Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die. A “garden” of Epicurism soon opened when Paradise was closed; and votaries were not wanting long before Epicurus rose among the Greeks or Sadducees among the Jews.
Still clearer or more certain is the inference from the verses that follow. “And Adah bore Jabal: he was father of such as dwell in tents and [have] cattle. And his brother's name was Jubal: he was father of all such as handle harp and pipe. And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-Cain, forger of every tool of copper and iron; and Tubal-Cain's sister [was] Naamah.”
Agriculture was the early occupation of Cain, as Abel had been a shepherd. “Building a city” followed guilt and dread of man without the fear of God acting on a mind stimulated by energy and fertile of resource, and a heart set on earthly hopes. Thenceforward the race progressed rapidly. Some, of whom Jabal is chief, pleased themselves in the rough and adventurous life of nomad herdmen; others struck out and pursued the inventive path of art and science. For Jubal, brother of Jabal, was father of all such as handle stringed and wind instruments: inventions cherished almost alike without a city as within, as experience shows. Nor this only: Tubal-Cain follows, forger (or furbisher) of every tool for cutting instruments of copper and iron. The road to eminence lay open for man alienated from God and indifferent to it, independent of God in will, if not really, and of course wrongly. He acts of and for himself to make the land of his wandering his paradise, of which he is the more proud because these useful or pleasant inventions he can boast of as his own. But he is God's creature, and responsible to obey, and must give account. By Adam's sin he lost his true place and relationship; and instead of seeking another and a better open to faith in the Second man, he prefers his own will, his fancied independence, which is no other than Satan's service, with Satan's doom at the end.
It may not be amiss to notice how the word of God overthrows the modern speculator who assumes the three ages of stone, bronze, and iron, through which they will have early mankind to have passed in pre-historic times. Even had we no inspired record, enough has been gathered from facts of the past to dispel the illusion. Epochs in chronology they are not in any sense. There are regions even now, and not all confined to Australia, whose use of rough stone implements would thus fix them in the palmolithic age. A similar condition was attested a century ago of races in the northern and eastern districts of the Russian empire, European and Asiatic. And we have good authority (Prof. Rygh, of Christiania, before the Stockholm meeting of the International Congress of Pre-historic Archeology) that, north of Nordland in Norway, the inhabitants remained in the practice of the so-called Stone age till the beginning of last century, though for hundreds of years in communication with people who used iron. See Academy, August 29, 1874. Again, the races of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, employed weapons of obsidian and implements of bronze, when the Spaniards overran and conquered them. So it was in the early age of Greece, which used stone and bronze together, but not iron any more than did S. America. And what evidence is there of a stone age in Egypt, however early we trace the facts? No one doubts that a few traces of stone appear, and even bronze only prevailed a short while. In Babylonia both flint and bronze were used for war and peace; as were leaden pipes and jars, along with iron; as, much later, stone implements continued to be used, when ancient civilization had reached its zenith with cutting instruments of metal in familiar use (Smith's Anc. Hist. 375).
To this day the people in Northern Abyssinia use stone hatchets and flint knives, along with iron poignards. And as to cave dwellers, they are still found, not only in distant lands, but even in a land so near as Spain, where many perished quite recently through sudden floods which surprised whole families. It is a question, not of antiquity, still less of definite ages in that imagined succession, but of civilization; and scripture is express that the settled, ordered, and combined life of a city, as well as the working of metals, and the invention of musical instruments within two main divisions, began early in the life of Adam. The mythical treatment of the question is entirely due to skeptical men of science who prefer hypothesis to well ascertained fact, and seem pleased in opposing revelation.