A Cry for Relief

We left off last week with the stunning destiny of Enoch, who so walked with God that, rather than have him die like the rest, God simply took him where death couldn't reach him (Genesis 5:21-24). But Enoch left behind him a family, including his son and heir Methuselah. Though some ancient Jews thought Methuselah's name meant something cool like “death is being dismissed,”¹ these days it looks more likely that it means something closer to “man of the spear,” as though he were a great war hero.² Why he'd be named such a thing, if so, is hardly clear, but the thing we all know about Methuselah is that, whether it's literal or figurative, he's got the biggest number listed for his years. He falls short of that fabled benchmark of a thousand by just thirty-one.³

Our focus, though, is the next step of the genealogy, Methuselah's son Lamech. If we're keeping up in our close reading of this chapter beside the one before it, we'll remember that name. Cain also had a descendant named Lamech. That these two chapters give us two men named Lamech – a name carried by nobody in the Bible or in the outside world other than these two guys – is hardly a coincidence; it means something. Scripture's asking us to have them stand next to each other, to look at them together.

In Cain's family, Lamech was the seventh from Adam; but in Seth's family, Lamech is the seventh from Enosh, the guy whose name means the same as Adam's. The first Lamech shows us the blossoming of Adam's Genesis 3 humanity; the other Lamech is the full flower of Enosh's kind of humanity, born to call on the name of the LORD (Genesis 4:26). In either genealogy, the Lamechs are the only two who've anything to say.⁴ Cain's Lamech utters a structurally majestic seven-plus-seven-word poem focused centrally on his own name and actions: it's all about the Lamech show (Genesis 4:23-24). This other Lamech utters a shorter ten-word line empty of every name but one: the name of the LORD (Genesis 5:29).⁵ Those words show Cain's Lamech being totally absorbed in power, boasting, and revenge, while Seth's Lamech is all about prayer, humility, and rescue.⁶ The old Lamech was a perfect life-taker; but this new Lamech will raise a total life-saver.⁷

The Lamech in Cain's family is obsessed with elevating God's defense of Cain into a pretext for insane overkill: he's so much better at vice than Cain, he'll avenge harm done to himself not just sevenfold but seventy-sevenfold (Genesis 4:24). Lamech advances 7 to 77. But this new Lamech – did you catch how long he lives? “All the days of Lamech were 777 years” (Genesis 5:31), the next step in the progression.⁸ Even though this Lamech has the fewest years of anybody in his line (besides Enoch),⁹ his living thus achieves a whole order of perfection beyond even Cain's Lamech's killing! Cain's line stops dead with an eighth generation from Adam, Lamech's children who excel in culture. But this new Lamech is a ninth generation from Adam, living on past everything named in Cain's legacy. And the reason is so this Lamech's son can be the tenth generation in the list.¹⁰ An old Jewish writer linked them allegorically to Israel's Day of Atonement, which began on the evening of the ninth day of the month and sternly freed Israel from work to fast and pray (Leviticus 23:27-32).¹¹

The point of the Day of Atonement, between the scapegoat and the sacrifice, was to relieve Israel of the buildup of sins, which ritually had been caught in the tabernacle like a filter that needed changed (Leviticus 16:16-19). The high priest would lay the heavy burden of Israel's many sins onto the scapegoat, which carried them off into the desert as though returning the burdens to their source (Leviticus 16:20-22). But Lamech didn't know about any of that yet. He lived and died too soon. Yet Lamech certainly knew something about heavy burdens.

Lamech confesses that the world he knows isn't the world he wants. (Is the world you know the world you wish it were?) Unlike the first Lamech, this one doesn't propose to conquer the world with his violent hands. Instead, this one confesses his hands can't fix the world. It all goes back two chapters to the judgment of his ancestor (Genesis 3:17-19).¹² There, the LORD says to Adam: “Cursed is the ground because of you!” (Genesis 3:17). That is, for Adam and his wrong, the ground – the 'adamah, in Hebrew – will bear the brunt. The source of Adam's very existence is under divine threat; it's “subjected to futility,” it's stunted and out of shape (Romans 8:20). Now, even after Adam is at last dead and gone, Lamech admits he's an heir to that same “ground that the LORD has cursed” (Genesis 5:29).

That curse turns simple work into sweaty, exhausting labor, that “by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Genesis 3:19). Rather than things coming easy, rather than things being joyful, Lamech's got no whistle while he works, no more than Adam did. Work is hard. Work is rough. Work is taxing. Work wears him out, does a number on his mind and body. Work makes him stiff. It takes everything he's got. But he's got no other choice if he wants to eat. The desperate need of his belly and the bellies of those depending on him force him on, force him to be a slave of dirt, so that his blood, sweat, and tears are the price by which he ransoms life day by day.

And for what? Part of that curse meant that the ground's productivity wouldn't be what Adam had expected, and won't be what Lamech expects. Sometimes, rather than exactly what he meant to grow, rather than everything he poured his sweat into producing, “thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you” (Genesis 3:18). Thistles are one thing – weeds in the field, taking up resources and using them for something humanly useless, hardly helpful when we're counting on something nourishing but instead are consigned to “eat the herb of the field” (Genesis 3:18). Thorns are worse still – they prick, they hurt, they make us bleed as we scratch the dirt. They resist our dominion over creation, they're rebels, signs of the earth's anger with us. Lamech has felt them with his own hands. No wonder “in hardship you shall eat of it” (Genesis 3:17). And Lamech echoes that in his complaint about “our work and the hardship of our hands” (Genesis 5:29). There we have the third and last time that word for 'pain,' 'toil,' 'hardship,' shows up in the whole Old Testament; both the others were spoken to Adam and to Eve (Genesis 3:16-17).¹³ And this hardship, God says, is given to Adam “all the days of your life” (Genesis 3:17), after which “you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). That's the culmination of the curse: after all, we are the ground, we're the dirt we till, we're the same base stuff skewed out of sorts, this matter out of sync with its Master and Maker.¹⁴

So that's what Lamech is concerned about: “our work and the painful toil of our hands because of the ground which the LORD has cursed” (Genesis 5:29). He lives amidst the burden of “hard labor and pain from which there seems to be no relief.”¹⁵ In this hard-scrabble life desperate for subsistence out of an uncooperative earth, Lamech is caught in a world that puts every pressure on him to be all work and no play, to see nothing of life beyond digging and planting, laboring and toiling for an uncertain harvest that too often disappoints, barely able to summon the strength to pursue anything human, anything beyond what the day's drudgery entails. One later Jewish paraphrase of Lamech's complaint puts it as “our work which does not succeed and the toil of our hands.”¹⁶ Lamech looks at his works, the things he's sought to accomplish, and he sees a litany of failures; his days are littered with crushed dreams and aborted attempts, with disappointing turns and roads regretfully not taken, with investments that never paid off, and with endeavors that backfired and did nothing but get him dirty.

That sentiment isn't just for poor farmers; it's for all of us, isn't it? Where one early Christian reader lamented here “the condition of distress and difficulty affecting the earth,”¹⁷ a commentary in our days just glosses it as “the hard and painful work of living.”¹⁸ Doesn't that sum it up? Oh, we talk about the way we've got to tough it out, etc., etc., but that doesn't change the reality. Living is harder than it was meant to be at first. Living is complicated and stressful and uncertain. It takes a lot out of us just to get through some days. It disappoints us with thistles. It pricks us with thorns. It dangles what we desire out of reach, and demands our sweaty efforts to get by. It bores us and saps our savor. Things we try don't always work out; sometimes they just make things worse. No wonder an earlier Jewish book paraphrases the subject of Lamech's complaint as “my grief and all of my labor and the land which the LORD has cursed.”¹⁹ That's a new word here: 'grief.' Life isn't just hand-scratching, it's heart-burdening and heart-breaking. Because we live in a world cursed on our account, a world of infected blessings, we're exposed to trial and tribulation, to anxiety and fear, to shame and sorrow, to difficulties and distresses, to pains and perils, to the vicious cycle of laboriousness and laziness and listlessness.

Lamech, for one, finds it hard to cope with the hard work of living. But rather than imitate his namesake in fool's game of mastering life by his fist, he lifts his dirty, thorn-pricked hands to heaven. He cries out for relief, not for himself alone but for the entire human race. He looks, he says, for “relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Genesis 5:29). 'Relief,' 'comfort,' 'consolation' – throughout the Bible, it often refers to verbal comfort in the face of anxiety or grief. When Joseph's brothers were scared by the loss of their late father's protection, Joseph “comforted them and spoke kindly to them,” reassuring them that they were safe with him (Genesis 50:21). When the Ammonite king's father died, “David sent by his servants to console him concerning his father,” heralding sympathetic solidarity in his grief (2 Samuel 10:2). Maybe Lamech's asking God for a word to help him feel safe, to lift his fallen spirits.

That would be good; that might be necessary. But it's often not enough (Isaiah 22:4). So relief can also be practical, some action taken to ameliorate or soothe a hurt. Job declares, “My bed will comfort me” (Job 7:13) – not by talking, but by being soft and inviting and giving him sleep, a refuge from his many woes. God describes a wounded child as “one whom his mother comforts,” not just by shushing him and telling him he's okay, but by holding him, kissing his boo-boo, bandaging his wound (Isaiah 66:13). In this way, Lamech cries out for a little “easing of the onerous, irksome, anxiety-producing, agonizing labor” by which he bought his days of life,²⁰ a taste of “immediate consolation” in the midst of his daily grind.²¹

But better still, relief can also mean something that doesn't just lighten the load but takes away the burden. The prophets celebrated in advance that “the LORD has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem” (Isaiah 52:9), “he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden” (Isaiah 51:3). When exiles come home again, God calls that “comforting them and giving them gladness for sorrow” (Jeremiah 31:13). Lamech seems to want more than just a lighter load on the cursed earth; he wants the curse lifted away, relieved by being removed altogether.²² Lamech is looking in hope for someone to come “reset the proper order of the world which was lost” in the days of his ancestor Adam.²³ Lamech is crying out for relief from the curse itself.

And for whatever reason, he takes that hope and he invests it in his newborn son, expecting him to redeem what Lamech's hands have suffered and done: “This one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands from the ground which the LORD has cursed” (Genesis 5:29). One Jewish reader glossed Lamech's hope as saying that this son was born “to bring joy to the earth from all its destruction.”²⁴ Why all these hopes pinned on this little boy? Some have wondered if this boy was the first born after the death of Adam, meaning maybe Lamech hoped that, with the original sinner now reunited with the dust, this boy might inherit an earth beyond Adam's curse.²⁵ Others guessed that, in light of Enoch being taken by God somewhere beyond the reach of death, Lamech could easily make “a pious mistake” in supposing that “that happy day of fulfillment of the promise was near at hand” and that this child was the redeemer.²⁶ Some Jewish traditions imagined that Lamech's son was so unusual at birth – “whiter than snow and redder than a rose..., and when he opened his eyes, his house shone like the sun..., and he opened his mouth and praised the Lord of Eternity” – that Lamech panicked and ran to Methuselah to seek Enoch's reassurances that the boy was truly his son and was just destined for something very special.²⁷ But the early Christians found Lamech to be “a prophet” of “this radiant and most wonderful hope,”²⁸ attesting to “the good God's unspeakable love.”²⁹

And so, as a prophetic prayer, Lamech raises his son with “the hopes of humanity resting on his shoulders.”³⁰ He names that son 'Noah,' a name that comes, not from the Hebrew word for 'relief' that Lamech used already, but from a different but similar-sounding root meaning 'rest,'³¹ a curious fact long recognized.³² So far in Genesis, we've seen this verb just once, when God took Adam and 'rested' him, settled him, in the garden (Genesis 2:15). Later, Moses promises Israel that when they enter their garden of the promised land, “the LORD your God will give you rest from your enemies all around, so that you live in safety” (Deuteronomy 12:10; cf. Joshua 21:44). Some have thought Lamech was looking for deliverance from the evil society around him.³³

But Moses also reminds Israel that the Ten Commandments already commanded that every seventh day, on the sabbath, “your servant may rest as well as you” (Deuteronomy 5:14) – so Lamech, seventh from Enosh, hopes his son Noah, tenth from Adam, will be a sign of that commanded sabbath rest from our labors, the regular rhythm of relief Lamech doesn't yet see or enjoy.³⁴ The other way the Old Testament talks about rest is in escaping out of an oppressive situation. In the “affliction and hard servitude” of the exile, Judah “finds no resting place” (Lamentations 1:3), but the prophet promises a future day when “the LORD has given you rest from your agony and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve” (Isaiah 14:3). Lamech is “seeking rest from the hardship of mankind,” yearning to be set free from the pains that eat away his days and nights – a rest that will ultimately mean being free from his 'affliction and hard servitude' under the curse.³⁵

His cry is our cry! We want to live in peace and safety, we want to take a break from our labors, we want to be set free from slavery! Isn't that what everyone should want? Isn't it disturbing how wrapped up we as a culture are in our work, that it's infected our souls so much that it's where we seek our identity, where we take our name and our purpose, where we invest our sweat and tears? Isn't it sad how we treat ourselves and others like machines to produce and consume, produce and consume, all while worrying about the dangers of life and trying in vain to insulate ourselves from the inevitable? Don't we want rest, not from work as such but from agony and turmoil and hard service? I know I do. But everywhere in the Bible, rest isn't just from this or from that; it's always “rest for worship and obedience.”³⁶ No wonder God describes his temple as his “resting place” (Psalm 132:14) and says it can only be built by “a man of rest” (1 Chronicles 22:9).

In giving voice to his and our heart-cry for relief and rest that will free him to worship, and in openly naming before the LORD his expectation that God hasn't meant the curse to be forever, Lamech becomes “a man of hope and anticipation for a better future.”³⁷ And he invests those hopes in Noah.

How could Noah bring Lamech's better future to the world? Some later Jewish rabbis gave the guess that Noah invented a plough, which could harness animal strength to alleviate the burdens of farming by hand.³⁸ Some suggested Noah brought rest in the sense that all human works stopped during the flood,³⁹ or that death in the flood was a kind of rest for the people of his generation,⁴⁰ or that Noah gained 'rest' in being preserved from moral corruption.⁴¹ Others looked after the flood, at him bringing relief through the offering he made with its soothing aroma (Genesis 8:21),⁴² or at his invention of a relaxing glass of wine to enjoy after the day's work (Genesis 9:20),⁴³ or simply at the fact that in Noah a new and better humanity could inherit God's blessing.⁴⁴

But early Christians observed that “what Lamech his father says is not appropriate to the ancient Noah.”⁴⁵ After all, even if Noah did every one of those things, we're still toiling and sweating and dying among the thistles and the thorns. In fact, a different form of the same verb Lamech uses for 'relief' will show up ironically nine verses later to talk about God's regret in having made us at all (Genesis 6:6), turning Lamech's hopes on their head.⁴⁶ Noah brings, at best, “a temporary restoration of rest from the curse,” not its lasting solution.⁴⁷ One Jewish tradition observed that Lamech was really asking for someone to “console us from our evil deeds and from the robbery of our hands.”⁴⁸ Early Christians agreed: Lamech was seeing a son “to rid us from evil,” from all the troubles multiplied in the world by our own hands' “efforts and evil behavior.”⁴⁹ Noah can't do that. He can point you down, but not carry you down, the ancient path to “find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16).

The hope Lamech invested in his son Noah has to be handed down, generation by generation, until it comes to someone who can carry what Noah can't.⁵⁰ That calls for an ultimate Son of Noah – greater than Shem, Ham, or Japheth (Genesis 5:32), greater than Lamech, greater than Noah. One commentary observes that Noah, “while not achieving his father's highest aspirations, keeps alive the hope of a final deliverer.”⁵¹ Such a hope, such a call, can only be fulfilled by “the Spiritual Noah” who was to come out of the first Noah's line, “who is Jesus Christ.”⁵² Noah was born as “a type of Christ,” a shadow of the One who'd be his substance, the real Noah.⁵³

When it comes to the burdens of sin that have lain heavy on us from before our birth, “there is no doubt that the charges brought against the transgression committed in Adam have been remitted in Christ.”⁵⁴ As one medieval monk put it, “the relief or consolation with which this True Noah – namely, the Son of God – consoles us is the remission of sins that he grants to us.”⁵⁵ Like the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement, he carries our burdens of sin and guilt and curse into the desert of death.⁵⁶ “Christ redeemed us from the curse... by becoming a curse for us... so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing... might come... through faith” (Galatians 3:13-14).

And he invites us – us, who work and work and never seem to get anywhere; us who carry heavy burdens on our backs and in our hearts; us, who sweat for the bread of this world, who gnaw at the thistles of frustration, who scratch ourselves bloody on the thistles of pain and misfortune; us, who have calloused hands and blistered souls – yes, he invites us: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He echoes the words of the wise Jewish poet: “Come to me, you who are uneducated..., put your neck under the yoke [of wisdom]... See with your eyes that I have toiled a little and have found for myself a great deal of relief.”⁵⁷ That's what Jesus wants for us! He offers to teach us this new way of living, this divine wisdom and saving truth: “Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29). He's the gentle ruler, he's the caring and compassionate teacher, he's the Savior who won't snuff out our candle that's fading to dark in its weakness (Matthew 12:20).

What happens if we humble ourselves at this Master's feet? What happens if we turn to work in his field, pulling his light and uncomplicated yoke of mercy? What if we trade our heart-breaking burdens, our burnout burdens, for his buoyant burden of heart-bursting joy (Matthew 11:30)? What if we trade our toils in the cursed earth for the cross that lifts us up from earth on itself? What if our thorns become the sufferings that sanctify and glorify? Then “you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29) – which not Noah but Christ can give.⁵⁸ In simple trust and obedience, Christ summons us from our sorrows and worries, our fears and frustrations, and makes us “rest from the works of iniquity.”⁵⁹ “Christ, then, has become our righteousness and rest.”⁶⁰

Not only does this Savior give us personal forgiveness, not only does he secure humanity's forgiveness, but he came to “bring about the restoration of the world,” for which “the curse must be removed.”⁶¹ And in offering up his life for his creation, Christ already has begun “delivering the earth from the ancient curse,” such that early Christians marveled that “through him God the Father restores all things to their pristine state.”⁶² Where those in hell “have no rest, day or night,” the “call for the endurance of the saints” is that those in heaven “rest from their labors, for their deeds” – the deeds of hands redeemed – “follow them” (Revelation 14:11-13). And when “the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven” to make all things new, it will mean “relief to you who are afflicted” (2 Thessalonians 1:7). Therefore, as one early Christian teacher said, when you read this passage, look to Jesus Christ, and “you will find him to be the One who has truly given rest to men and has freed the earth from the curse with which the Lord God cursed it..., this Spiritual Noah who has given rest to men and has taken away the sin of the world.”⁶³ Thanks be to God for this hope of rest, “the comfort of the saints!”⁶⁴ Amen.

1  Philo of Alexandria, On the Posterity of Cain 13 §44, in Loeb Classical Library 227:353.

2  Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1990), 258; but cf. Richard S. Hess, Studies in the Personal Names of Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 70, who mentions this option but slightly prefers one with Methuselah perhaps meaning 'man of the god Shelach.'

3  Tremper Longman III, Genesis, Story of God Bible Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 100; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 70.

4  Daniel D. Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17-22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 106.

5  Geula Twersky, “Lamech's Song and the Cain Genealogy: An Examination of Genesis 4:23-24 within its Narrative Context,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament: An International Journal of Nordic Theology 31/2 (2017): 289.

6  Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 115.

7  David Fohrman, The Beast That Crouches at the Door: Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, and Beyond (Maggid, 2021), 187.

8  Geula Twersy, “Lamech's Song and the Cain Genealogy: An Examination of Genesis 4:23-24 within its Narrative Context,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament: An International Journal of Nordic Theology 31/2 (2017): 288; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 70; Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 276.

9  Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 189.

10  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 254-255; Carol M. Kaminski, Was Noah Good? Finding Favour in the Flood Narrative (T&T Clark, 2014), 6.

11  Philo of Alexandria, On the Posterity of Cain 13 §48, in Loeb Classical Library 227:355.

12  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 244.

13  James McKeown, Genesis, Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 2008), 47.

14  James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis (Canon Press, 2001), 45.

15  James McKeown, Genesis, Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 2008), 47.

16  Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis 5:29, in Aramaic Bible 1B:37.

17  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 21.17, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:62-63.

18  Anwarul Azad and Ida Glaser, Genesis 1-11: Bud of Theology, Grandmother of the Sciences, Seedbed of the Holy Books, Windows on the Text: Bible Commentaries from Muslim Contexts (Langham Global Library, 2022), 192.

19  Jubilees 4:28, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:63.

20  Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 190.

21  Jean-Pierre Sonnet, “Between Poetic Justice and Poetic Mercy: God in the Flood Narrative (Genesis 6-7),” Nova et Vetera 18/4 (Fall 2020): 1256.

22  Iain W. Provan, Discovering Genesis: Context, Interpretation, Reception (Eerdmans, 2016), 109-110.

23  Richard S. Hess, Studies in the Personal Names of Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 117.

24  1 Enoch 107:3, in Loren T. Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91-108, Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature (De Gruyter, 2007), 688.

25  Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 44.

26  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 5:28-29, in Luther's Works 1:352.

27  1 Enoch 106:2-4, in George W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 163; and compare to 1QapGen columns 2-5, in Daniel A. Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation (Brill, 2009), 35-42, plus discussion in Loren T. Stuckenbruck, The Myth of Rebellious Angels: Studies in Second Temple Judaism and New Testament Texts (Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 58-77.

28  Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 2.1.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:81-82.

29  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 21.15, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:61.

30  Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 75.

31  Richard S. Hess, Studies on the Personal Names of Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 28; Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 276-277.

32  Philo of Alexandria, On Abraham 5 §27, in Loeb Classical Library 289:17; Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 3.19, in Robert M. Grant, Theophilus of Antioch: Ad Autolycum, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Clarendon Press, 1970), 36.

33  Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 1.20, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:305; James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints: Studies of the Patriarchs in Genesis (Canon Press, 2001), 46.

34  Bede, On Genesis 5:29, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:167.

35  Bryan C. Hodge, Revisiting the Days of Genesis: A Study of the Use of Time in Genesis 1-11 in Light of Its Ancient Near Eastern and Literary Context (Wipf & Stock, 2011), 127.

36  Daniel E. Kim, Rest in Mesopotamian and Israelite Literature (Gorgias Press, 2019), 276.

37  Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 190.

38  Midrash Tanhuma, Bereshit 11, in Samuel A. Berman, Midrash Tanhuma-Yelammedenu: An English Translation of Genesis and Exodus from the Printed Version of Midrash Tanhuma-Yelammedenu (KTAV Publishing, 1996), 34; cf. also Natan Levy, The Dawn of Agriculture and the Earliest States in Genesis 1-11 (Routledge, 2023), 119-120, who offers a modern advancement of this rabbinic thesis.  Martin Luther, of course, thought that all who put forward this idea were “pernicious perverters of the Scriptures” – see Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 5:28-29, in Luther's Works 1:352.

39  Jerome of Stridon, Hebrew Questions on Genesis 5:29, in C.T.R. Hayward, Saint Jerome's Hebrew Questions on Genesis (Clarendon Press, 1995), 36; Bede, On Genesis 5:29, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:167.

40  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 21.17, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:62.

41  1 Enoch 106:18, in George W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 165.  Martin Sicker suggests, along a similar vein, that Noah stands here for “the potential for [humanity's] moral redemption” – see Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 74.

42  Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 5.2.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:134; Carol M. Kaminski, Was Noah Good? Finding Favour in the Flood Narrative (T&T Clark, 2014), 95.

43  Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 115; Iain W. Provan, Discovering Genesis: Context, Interpretation, Reception (Eerdmans, 2016), 110; John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 120.

44  Bede, On Genesis 5:29, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:167; Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 278.

45  Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 2.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:79.

46  John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 120; Ingrid Faro, Evil in Genesis: A Contextual Analysis of Hebrew Lexemes for Evil in the Book of Genesis (Lexham Press, 2021), 160.

47  Seth D. Postell, Adam as Israel: Genesis 1-3 as the Introduction to the Torah and Tanakh (Pickwick Publications, 2011), 115 n.147.

48  Targum Neofiti Genesis 5:29, in Aramaic Bible 1A:71.

49  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 21.17, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:62.

50  Richard S. Hess, Studies in the Personal Names of Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 118; Carol M. Kaminski, Was Noah Good? Finding Favour in the Flood Narrative (T&T Clark, 2014), 96.

51  Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 278.

52  Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 2.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:79-80.

53  Anastasius of Sinai, Hexaemeron 10.7.3, in Orientalia Christiana Analecta 278:379.

54  Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 2.1.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:90.

55  Rupert of Deutz, On the Holy Trinity and Its Works 4.17, in Joy A. Schroeder, The Book of Genesis, The Bible in Medieval Tradition (Eerdmans, 2015), 107.

56  Barnabas 7.7-10, in Loeb Classical Library 25:39.

57  Sirach 51:23-27, in Takamitsu Muraoka, Wisdom of Ben Sira (Peeters, 2023), 792-794. Sirach 51 and Matthew 11 are compared in Craig A. Evans, Matthew, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 247; Matthias Konradt, The Gospel according to Matthew: A Commentary (Baylor University Press, 2020), 183; and elsewhere.

58  Anwarul Azad and Ida Glaser, Genesis 1-11: Bud of Theology, Grandmother of the Sciences, Seedbed of the Holy Books, Windows on the Text: Bible Commentaries from Muslim Contexts (Langham Global Library, 2022), 192.

59  Ambrose of Milan, On Noah 1 §2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 140:30.

60  Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 2.1.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:90.

61  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 5:28-29, in Luther's Works 1:352; cf. Mitchell L. Chase, Short of Glory: A Biblical and Theological Exploration of the Fall (Crossway, 2023), 113.

62  Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 2.1.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:90.

63  Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 2.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:80.

64  Bede, On Genesis 5:29, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:167.