God Questions His Creation: Genesis 4:19-24 (c)

See:  God Questions His Creation:  Genesis 4:19-24 (b)

4:19 And Lamech took two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. 20 Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have cattle. 21 His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. 22 Zillah bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-cain was Na’amah.

23 Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, hearken to what I say: I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. 24 If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”

The use of the scriptural texts in Orthodox hymnography often “spiritualizes” the text so that the lesson can be applied personally to our lives.   This method does not deny the literal reading of the text, but moves the scripture reader to apply the text to his or her own life.   “Lamech cried, ‘I have killed a man for wounding me, and a young man for hurting me!’  …  How well have I imitated those first murderers, Cain and Lamech!  Through the desires of the flesh, I have killed my soul as did Lamech a man, and my mind as once he did a young man.  I have also murdered my body as Cain murdered his brother.”  (Thursday Canon of St. Andrew of Crete)

The genealogy of Cain will not be followed in the next chapters of Genesis.  It certainly represents a “dead end” especially with the cataclysmic flood of Genesis 6-9.   It is  noteworthy that the ages of Cain’s descendents are not mentioned – but age is a pronounced feature in the Adam genealogy that is traced through Seth.  The Wisdom of Solomon in the Septuagint offers this observation:  “But the prolific brood of the ungodly will be of no use, and none of their illegitimate seedlings will strike a deep root or take a firm hold. For even if they put forth boughs for a while, standing insecurely they will be shaken by the wind, and by the violence of the winds they will be uprooted. The branches will be broken off before they come to maturity, and their fruit will be useless, not ripe enough to eat, and good for nothing” (Wisdom 4:3-5).

As God looks upon the world, it must be agonizing for Him.  First there are genealogical lines, such as Cain’s, which are cut off from God, and whose descendants pursue an ungodly life.  But then in the family trees which actually produce the righteous ones, God sees people whose hearts are continually on imagining and doing evil from their youth.   The Lord in choosing humans to be His favored creatures has not given Himself much to work with for accomplishing His will in the cosmos.  When God shaped the soil into the first human in Genesis 2, did He imagine that working with and shaping inert dust was going to be easier than working with or shaping supposedly “intelligent” humans?   The entire universe does the will of God, except for humans who are the only ones who posses God’s image and supposedly are rational beings (Is that not the gist of the Vesperal Psalm 104 hymn of creation?  – all created things do the very things they are appointed by God to do; only humans created in God’s image and favored by God resist doing the will of God).    Human synergy with God is sorely lacking, and the history of salvation is reliant on the grace of God.  This is why the Virgin Mary is such a unique person in history and so honored by the Orthodox Church.   Though she is upheld as the fulfillment of humanity’s synergy with God, she also goes against the common grain of human intention – the continual wickedness in the human heart.  She truly is full of grace (Luke 1:28).  Indeed she is more honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim.  The Cherubim and Seraphim have positions close to God – they are constantly in God’s presence – but they do not come from a race of beings whose hearts are constantly bent on evil.  Mary on the other hand precisely has the same heart as any of us, and yet her heart is not continually conceiving evil, and in fact she is able to conceive God in the flesh.  The fact that a woman was capable of being the Theotokos by her willful acceptance of God’s way and despite her being of the lineage of Adam and Eve is truly one of the greatest miracles recorded in the Bible.   It explains the great reverence for Mary as Theotokos in Orthodoxy.  And it tells us that we each do have the capacity to resist evil and to love both God and our neighbor.

Next:  God Questions His Creation:  Genesis 4:25-26 (a)

Great Lent: Self Denial Replaces Self Love with Christ-like Love

  “Again and again in the New Testament it is clear that the Christian community is called upon to model new patterns of human relating, new standards for how to treat one another.    The key word is ‘love,’… But I want to draw attention to something else… that we should be positively kind to one another. ‘Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.  Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us’ (Ephesians 4:32-5:2).  The quest for justice all too easily degenerates into the demand for my rights or our rights.  The command of kindness asks that we spend our time looking not at ourselves and our needs, our rights, our wrongs-that-need-righting, but at every else and their needs, pressures, pains, and joys.  Kindness is a primary way of growing up as a human being, of establishing and maintaining the richest and deepest relationships.”   (NT Wright, SIMPLY CHRISTIAN, pp 228-229)   

 Lent is not the time to become more self focused, but rather by denying oneself to have more time and energy to look to the good and edification (the building up) of others.

God Questions His Creation: Genesis 4:19-24 (b)

See:  God Questions His Creation: Genesis 4:19-24 (a)

4:19 And Lamech took two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. 20 Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have cattle. 21 His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. 22 Zillah bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-cain was Na’amah.

23 Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, hearken to what I say: I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. 24 If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”

Oddly, Chrysostom sees Lamech’s “confession” as a positive sign that Lamech is choosing not to repeat the sins and denials of his father and grandfather and so he confesses his sin without even being asked.  Chrysostom uses the passage to encourage Christians to likewise openly confess their sins.

“I have slain a man…”  This is the second death of a human mentioned in Genesis and once again it is not a natural death but is done at the hands of a human.   The first two human fatalities were both murders.  We know nothing of the man Lamech murdered, but the existence of other people again suggests there were other human lines not recorded in Genesis.  Genesis is not actually reporting on all human history and experience but focuses on what will become known as “the people of God.”    In this sense Genesis is not pure history as we understand it.  Rather Genesis is an archetypical story of what it means to be human.  It is in fact “our own” story even more than a history.   In Genesis we learn about ourselves and what it means to be human.  We learn about our relationship to God and to creation.  We learn about why we don’t live in a perfect world, why there is death and why there is sin in God’s creation.   We learn from the story of Cain and Lamech that by God making mortality – death – to be the consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin, He allowed death to become part of human experience.  And we see in these stories how humans take death, that consequence of human sin, and turn it into a weapon for further sin – murder!   In fact humans now knowing that they are mortal will use that knowledge to violently kill others.   Death which is the enemy of humanity becomes in the distorted human heart a tool for accomplishing human sinful will.    We often think that sin leads to death, but humans are so wicked that they use death to do more sin!

The Ten Commandments are given long after the events described in Genesis 1-11.  The commandment not to kill is thus a response to human behavior rather than a pre-determinant of human behavior.   God does not prohibit humans from killing and then impose mortality on humans.  Rather he forbids humans to sinfully misuse the punishment – death –  He had imposed on them for their sin.

Law of vengeance.  “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” In the text it appears that the law of vengeance and revenge is being extended greatly, not only allowing for but legitimizing even more violence in a tremendous spiral.  Lamech claims the right to have killed someone who merely injured him.  Lamech is praising violence and boasting about how vile he can be.  Lamech is justifying terrible vengeance on any who oppose him.  He is suggesting he will kill 77 people for every one he loses.  This is just advocating mass murder.    Some scholars feel that the Torah’s later “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” (Leviticus 24:20) was actually a move toward mercy and severely restricting both vengeance and violence, limiting punishment to nothing more than whatever damage had been done.  Lamech’s vengeance amounts to a constant scorch the earth policy – there would never be any peace as each act of violence would bring about a 77 fold increase in violence by the opponent.  His policy would engulf every town, village and tribe in total warfare for every little offense between two people.  And nowhere does he suggest the injury he received was intentional – simply for being injured he killed the person who injured him. This was not justice but brute force.  Lamech will not allow someone to apologize or repent.    Christ himself countermands the law of vengeance entirely, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also…”  (Matthew 5:38-39).   Jesus then turns around Lamech’s vengeance, in answering a question about forgiveness.  “Then Peter came up and said to him, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’  Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy seven times’” (Matthew 18:21-22).  Jesus uses the exact same number as Lamech, except where Lamech sees this as how many times he will avenge himself, Jesus says this is how many times we must forgive the brother who sins against us.  As Christ undoes all of the effects of the fall, he casts out vengeance in favor of forgiveness.

Next:  God Questions His Creation: Genesis 4:19-24 (c)