Last Sunday, we attended the trial and sentencing hearing of Cain, who was convicted and punished for having murdered his own little brother Abel out of envy and anger (Genesis 4:8). Despite claiming to know nothing of Abel's whereabouts (Genesis 4:9), the victim's blood and the soil testified to God what had happened (Genesis 4:10). Therefore, the LORD pronounced a curse of separation divorcing Cain from the ground which he'd loved and relied on as a farmer (Genesis 4:11). It would no longer cooperate with his works, meaning that he would never find a stable place to call his own (Genesis 4:12). In a way, Cain was being sentenced to live out the life of Abel as he saw it. To Cain's protest that this was excessive punishment (Genesis 4:13-14), the LORD showed mercy, ensuring that Cain remained within a world of law and order, establishing Cain as still a legal person whose life would be vindicated from violence by God (Genesis 4:15). No one would hurt Cain with impunity, for God had claimed him.
And so, as we read, Cain went away from the LORD's face, he wandered off, and the fugitive traveled to a new land, an unfamiliar territory further east than the region of Eden where the garden was, further than where Adam and Eve had made their home (Genesis 4:16). If Genesis had cut away from Cain at this moment, letting him drop off the page and out of its world, we'd understand. Instead, though, we follow Cain eastward to this Land of Nod, this Land of Wandering. And we've got questions. What is Cain going to do? How is Cain going to live? How does an ex-farmer, the divorced husband of scornful soil, get by in the Land of Wandering?
He starts a family, for one. “Cain knew his wife” (Genesis 4:17). That's raised a lot of questions over the years – this is the first time we've heard Cain was married. Was she a sister, a niece? Was she someone or something else? Are there people lurking at the edges, under the surfaces, and between the gaps of the text? Genesis won't satisfy our curiosities, but as a sign of God's continued mercy, Cain isn't prevented from having a family. He's a husband, and now he's going to be a father. And as he becomes a father, he seems to make a decision. Already we heard that Cain “settled in the land of Nod” (Genesis 4:16). That verb, 'settled,' sounds like a odd way to refer to the unstable life of a wanderer. How do you settle down in the Land of Unsettling? What sense does it make, Cain? Cain's answer, it seems, is to begin building a city. For you and all of whom, Cain? A whole city?
It's a strange twist, this settling, this building. It doesn't match well with Cain's sentence. It feels a bit more like a jailbreak, as though “Cain refuses to accept God's verdict on his life.”1 A Jewish author of the first century pictured Cain's life this way: “His punishment... only served to increase his vice. He indulged in every bodily pleasure..., he increased his substance with rapine and violence, he incited to luxury and pillage all whom he met, and became an instructor in wicked practices. … He was the first to fix boundaries of land and to build a city, fortifying it with walls and constraining his clan to congregate in one place.”2
Cain, devising borders and claiming territory, at some point in his life begins to build a settlement. At best, it could've been “not much more than a primitive compound at first.”3 But so far as the Bible is concerned, this is the first city. We'll revisit it again in a few weeks when we comb through this passage again, but when the Bible gives you something for the first time, pay attention. What are cities, what are settlements, all about? Ask Cain, and he'll tell you. Cain settles down, in part, because even a sign couldn't make him trust God's promises. He's a man who's burned the capacity for faith out of his heart.4 Though a marked man, Cain was still dogged by fear and insecurity in the world, as well as a thirst for a legacy and a determination to escape the life to which he had been consigned by God's sentence. As one medieval commentator put it, “since Cain killed his brother and thus became a hated wanderer and fugitive upon the earth, he built a city in which he could be protected.”5 Not content to live exposed, he wanted to put up walls of defense, walls to keep danger away from him and his stuff.
The earliest known Stone Age enclosures are thought by archaeologists to have been mainly for community and ceremony, but they were also clearly fortified for defense when the circumstances called for it.6 Once true cities begin to surface in the archaeological record, we see things like stone walls, ditches, and watchtowers.7 And to the Hebrew mind, that was a defining trait of a city, a place where things were watched and walled in. Cain's aim is “an attempt to provide security for himself,”8 because Cain felt he could trust nothing but his own “human attempt to ensure security... independently of God's provision.”9 The idea of the city, then, is “founded on the fear of death.”10 That's what motivates Cain, at least in part, and it's a lot of what keeps people together. But it's also Cain's effort to establish something that can last, something to stand the test of time, some way to make his mark on the world, to prove to himself that he's still better than Abel who just floats on through.11
Is he, though? Does he though? The Hebrew probably doesn't actually say that Cain 'built' a city, but that he 'began to build a city,' or that he 'was building a city' – an ongoing project, and one that, as a wanderer, he may never have managed to finish.12 Don't think of it as a finished city, an accomplishment; think of it as his life's work which may not quite work out, his grand quest that meets with setback after setback, the stone of Sisyphus that keeps rolling back down that hill. Cain's project is perpetual, because Cain's project isn't fully possible.
And that's because Cain isn't just trying to build a landmark. He's creating a new social and political order, the City of Man. This idea resonated strongly with early Christians living in the Roman Empire, because Romans believed that, in the days when Uzziah was king in Judah, Rome was first founded by a man named Romulus – but only after Romulus had murdered his brother Remus.13 So when Christians read about Cain killing Abel and then starting to build a city, they saw Rome as an echo built on the foundations which Cain had first laid.14 And how many kingdoms since have been founded on war against those who should've been accounted brothers?15
One Jewish political scientist, reading Genesis, observed that “Cain was attempting to build an ordered society based on man's self-proclaimed law, without reference to the moral order emanating from the supreme authority of the Creator.”16 An early Christian bishop agreed that Cain's city represents “the earthly city which is not on pilgrimage in this world but rather rests content with its temporal peace and temporal happiness.”17 One scholar says Cain aimed to make “a place where people could live without God and disconnect from his creation.”18 The political scientist added that Cain's city “was, by definition and design, a godless society..., a humanistic civilization... without reference to the divine.”19 And another commentator glosses it simply as “godless human culture.”20 It's a secular state. A society founded on nothing transcendent must be founded instead on some earthly ideal, which ultimately reduces to some degree of creation's self-love.21
Cain names this project, this city, after his son Enoch, whose name in Hebrew means to introduce, to initiate, to dedicate; it comes from the same root where we get the holiday Hanukkah.22 Maybe he was born as Cain laid the foundation stone for his city.23 As a city-name, it also sounds suspiciously like the Sumerian pronunciation of a famous Sumerian city called Unug, several of whose kings were quite famous.
“To Enoch was born Irad,” whose name sounds like another old Sumerian city, Eridu, and plays on the Hebrew word for 'city,' 'ir.24 “And Irad fathered Mehujael.” Now that's interesting, because 'Mehujael' seems to mean something like 'given life by God' – maybe Mr. and Mrs. Irad gave thanks to God for their baby boy's survival.25 See, it's not that the earthly city can't contain an acknowledgment of God, can't accommodate some religiosity; but the city of Cain is designed so that it's kept to private worship and public lip-service, not a foundation. And there's where the problem comes in, because when people – individually or as a society – prize the world more than higher goods, “then misery will necessarily follow.”26
And, sure enough, if Mehujael's name gave us a brief reason to hope, what comes next is grounds almost for despair. “Mehujael fathered Methushael,” and our best analysis of Methushael's name seems to be 'man of Sheol' – that is, a servant of the underworld, a devotee of the grave, a hero of hell!27 We're beginning to see that Cain's descendants took after him in a “downward spiral.”28 An old Jewish writer described how “the descendants of Cain went to depths of depravity; and, inheriting and imitating one another's vices, each ended worse than the last.”29 And so at last we hear that “Methushael fathered Lamech” (Genesis 4:18).
A medieval theologian pointed out that Lamech was “the seventh and worst descendant of Adam.”30 That is, this man Lamech is listed as the seventh generation from Adam along the line of Cain, so he represents the complete flowering of Cain's approach to being human. So what does that look like? Right off the bat, nothing too good: “Lamech took to himself two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah” (Genesis 4:19). Here is the first time in scripture somebody marries more than one person at once; here we meet the first man to change the marriage model of the garden, “a dismal departure from the divine norm.”31 So one early Christian pointed out that “plurality of marriage began with a man accursed,” for “Lamech was the first who, in espousing two women, made three in one flesh.”32
The phrase for Lamech taking 'to himself' wives is different from the usual Hebrew way a man 'takes' a wife.33 It suggests that, to Lamech, wives are collector's items – emphasis on 'item,' on 'object.'34 Adah's name seems to mean 'ornament' or 'adornment,' suggesting she exists for decoration; Zillah's name means either 'shade' or 'cymbal': where Adah looked good, Zillah sounded good and was refreshing.35 Like so many kings in ancient times who kept large harems, Lamech is all about status and pleasure.36 But in viewing women that way, he can't treat either Adah or Zillah as his equal; he takes initiate to degrade them and exalt himself as their master.37
St. Augustine pointed out that in the earthly city, those who think they're masters will inevitably be mastered by “the lust for domination.”38 But “since [the earthly city's] good is not the sort of good that brings no anxieties to those who love it, the earthly city is often divided against itself by lawsuits, wars, and conflicts, and by seeking victories that either bring death or are themselves doomed to be short-lived.”39 And that's what Lamech tells us: that he's a violent man, engaged in war and conflict, always seeking and gaining a victory. Because the biblical picture of Lamech is basically what made for a pagan hero. Some of the world's oldest stories are epics about the Sumerian kings of Unug, people like Enmerkar, Lugalbanda, and Gilgamesh. The eventual Babylonian epic of “Gilgamesh the great, magnificent and terrible,” sees him begin his story as a very overbearing and prideful king who gave his city no rest, who took the women he pleased, who fought any man who stood in his way.40
And that's who Lamech is: he's a Gilgamesh type, he's a hero in his own eyes. In pagan literature, a hero often was a strong man obsessed with his honor, his integrity, his clan, and his goals, and who was willing to kill for the sake of any or all of them without a second thought.41 In Lamech, we see “the flowering of the heroic ideal” as it existed in ancient paganism and, to an extent, a lot of modern action movies.42 And it's not pretty.
Whereas God's Law restrained justice to no more than matching harm – “wound for wound, bruise for bruise” (Exodus 21:25) – pagan laws often made the parties' social status a factor in deciding how severe a punishment for an injury should be.43 Lamech refuses to limit his revenge to 'wound for wound, bruise for bruise': he boasts that “I have killed a man for wounding me, and a young man for bruising me” (Genesis 4:23).44 When a man dared to strike him and draw blood, Lamech didn't merely return the favor, he returned death for a wound. Not only that, but when a youngster so much as even left a mark on him, Lamech didn't bat an eye before putting the pipsqueak in a premature grave.45 Lamech lives by violence without qualm, refusing to hold back. “He cared,” it's been said, “only to assuage his wounded sense of 'honor' by inflicting measureless shame and pain on any opponent, for wrongs real or imagined.”46 In the end, his only principle is his pride.47
As if it weren't enough that Lamech kills without remorse, he not only “did not grieve over the murder he had committed, but even gloried in it as a righteous cause.”48 We know about Lamech's life of violence, not because he's caught sheepishly in the act, but because he brags about it! How's that whole 'knowledge of good and evil' thing working out for us? Cain killed without remorse but also without open pride: he tried to keep what he did quiet; but Lamech kills without fear or remorse or shame, because he's openly proud of what he does.49 Lamech outright says that his evil, his violence, is good and heroic and worth celebrating.
To that end, he couches his brutal violence in the form of exquisitely refined poetry. His song is a masterpiece, one of the most carefully crafted poems in the Bible, with rhyme, balance, attention to meter.50 Lamech is the seventh generation from Adam, and he sings his exploits in exactly twenty-one Hebrew words, which is three times seven, perfect from multiple angles.51 And so he concludes with sevens: “If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:24)! A perfect song about perfect retribution.
Lamech heartily endorses Cain's life and dirty deeds, only he thinks Cain didn't go far enough. Rather than sing of great deeds of ages past, Lamech – how typically progressive of him – will be the bard of himself, singing of his own accomplishments in the modern world.52 Lamech distorts God's mercy to Cain into a badge of honor, and he thus abuses the word of God to craft and compound this dark threat.53 Lamech claims to be so strong, so tough, that he's untouchable.54 No one can ever bring him to justice, no one can ever hold him to account – that's what Lamech is singing.55 His whole life is “the threat of murder upon murder.”56 He wants the world to know that men who challenge him will die and women who appeal to him will be taken.57
But he doesn't sing it simply to the world. He sings it to his wives, making Adah and Zillah the audience of his violent words. The first poem in the Bible was Adam's words when he laid eyes on Eve, marveling at her deep connectedness to him as his equal (Genesis 2:23). Lamech reverses Adam's gift of poetry to awe and overwhelm his wives with his unmatched power, either to impress him with how macho he is or to intimidate them into submission with thinly-veiled threats of how easily he could abuse them.58 I'd guess Lamech means to do a bit of both here.
In the end, his threats of massive retaliation, his insistence on defending his honor with overkill, his implicit demand for those around him to know their place – what do they add up to, if not that Lamech practically thinks of himself as a lord above the law, as a superman beyond good and evil, as basically a god on earth?59 For, on Lamech's account, he is “greater even than God in vengeance.”60 Here is where pagan heroism is revealed; here is where the secular society ends up; here is where the earthly city earns its condemnation. Or it should. But as Lamech shouts out this horrible song, heavenly in form and hellish in content, for the first time in Scripture we hear no voice to answer back the truth, we witness no judgment to set right this wrong end – not yet.61
Untold ages pass, and a man named Peter approaches his teacher. “How often,” Peter asks, “will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” (Matthew 18:21). Surely, he's thinking, he's being generous, as generous as God was to Cain: if Cain is avenged sevenfold, then for Peter to forgive sevenfold is a great triumph, a way to be the anti-Cain and so to live in God's favor. But his teacher is “the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” Peter well knows (Matthew 16:16). And this Messiah tells Peter it isn't enough to be the anti-Cain. “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times!” (Matthew 18:22). In these words, Jesus gives at last the final divine answer to Lamech, turning that horrid song upside-down and inside-out.62 It isn't enough to be the anti-Cain, when it comes to forgiveness; you must be the anti-Lamech. In place of Lamech's “perfect bloodthirsty vengeance,” Christ asks us to answer it with “the perfect grace of forgiveness,” just as he does.63 For forgiveness is the manlier fight, the greater conquest, the truer victory than all Lamech has ever understood.
Peter learned from his Teacher. In his Teacher's death of love, Peter understood the proverb that Lamech never could, that “bruises that wound scour away evil, as stripes make clean the innermost parts” (Proverbs 20:30). “For this is a gracious thing,” Peter preached, “when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly” (1 Peter 2:19). Lamech would never do that; it's why he never became clean within. But “to this you have been called,” Peter says, “because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth; when he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to the One who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:21-24). Peter at last understands the prophet, who foresaw what was to happen through Christ: “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5), “so that even the cruel Lamechs of this world have the possibility of repentance and forgiveness.”64
Lamech refused to hear, calling back to him from the distant future, the words of Paul for husbands to “love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the Church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27). Lamech, a brutal and braggadocious bigamist who understood nothing of one love, is answered by the Christ who poured his whole self out to make his One Bride holy, better adorned than Adah, more enchanting than Zillah.
Lamech came from a line of names – the hero of hell spawned by one given life by God, the strong city born out of human dedication – but Christ offers them all to “be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give” (Isaiah 62:2), saying that to anyone who perseveres in loyalty and trust to him when staring down the Lamechs in our land, “I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God..., and I will write on him the name of my God... and my own new name” (Revelation 3:12), a “new name... that no one knows except the one who receives it” (Revelation 2:17). No more need Methushael serve the underworld, no more need Irad live and die by the strength of his city walls, no more need Enoch be dedicated to worldly things. We can all trade the names of the shames of the past and projects left undone for a new name, a new place, to stand tall in the Father's house.
For the earthly city, insofar as it loves temporary things, can never succeed. “Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). We're taught that “the city of the saints is on high, even though it brings forth citizens here below, in whom it is on pilgrimage until the time of its kingdom arrives.”65 It's “the city of my God... which comes down from my God out of heaven” (Revelation 3:12). It stands as an eternal answer to the fearful sheltering of Cain and the wars of Lamech, because “by its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there” (Revelation 21:24-25). From these cities of Cain where we wander and settle, we may enter the unclosing gates of splendor, and find there what Cain's godlessness could never imitate. But “nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable and false” (Revelation 21:27). “Outside are... murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood,” those who cling to the heroism of Lamech (Revelation 22:15). To set foot in the heavenly city, we must learn to be anti-Lamechs in the world, children of Christ and his One Bride, showing the love and justice and mercy Lamech knew nothing of, and being followers of the Lamb whose wounds heal us day by day. In this, and this alone, is salvation and song and endless praise. Let us be dedicated to the Lamb! Let us, in heart and in life, follow the Christ! Amen.
