Commentary on Genesis Part 13

B. The Glory of the Cainites.

12. Also the Cainites had their glory. Among them were men most eminent in the liberal arts, and the most consummate hypocrites, who gave the true Church a world of trouble, and hara.s.sed the holy patriarchs in every possible way. We may justly call all those who were thus oppressed by them most holy martyrs and confessors. The Cainites, as Moses before intimated, very soon surpa.s.sed the other descendants of Adam in numbers and activity. Although they were compelled to revere their father Adam, yet they adopted all possible means of oppressing the Church of the G.o.dly, and especially so after the death of the first patriarch, Adam. By such wickedness, these Cainites helped to bring on the flood as retribution.

13. This power and malice of the Cainites caused the holy patriarchs to teach and instruct their Church with increased zeal and industry.

What numerous and powerful sermons may we suppose were preached by them in the course of these most eventful years! There is no doubt that both Adam and Eve testified of their original state of innocence, described the glory of paradise and warned their posterity to beware of the serpent, who, by tempting them to sin, had caused all these great evils. How constant may we suppose them to have been in explaining the promise of the blessed seed! How earnestly must they have exhorted the hearts of their followers to be moved neither by the splendor of the Cainites nor by their own afflictions.

14. All these particulars Moses omits to record, both because they could not be described on account of their infinite variety of detail and because the revelation of them is reserved for that great day of deliverance and glory!

15. Likewise the flood, in spite of its horror, is described with the greatest brevity because he wished to leave such things to the meditation of men.

16. For the same reasons Moses has purposely given us, in these first five chapters, as briefly as possible, a picture of the original and primeval world. It was an admirable condition of life, and yet that primeval age contained a mult.i.tude of the worst of men, in consequence not more than "eight souls" were saved from the destroying flood! What then, may we conclude, will be the state of things before the last day shall come, seeing that even now, under the revealed light of the Gospel, there is found so great a host of despisers of it that there is cause to fear that they will fill the world ere long with errors and prevail to the extinction of the Word altogether.

17. Awful is the voice of Christ when it utters the words, "Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" Lk 18, 8. And in Matthew 24, 37-38, our Lord compares the last days with the days of Noah. These utterances of our Lord are indeed most awful. But the world, in its security and ingrat.i.tude, is a despiser of all the threats as well as all the promises of G.o.d. It abounds in iniquities of every kind and becomes daily more corrupt.

From the time that the popes ceased to rule among us, who had ruled the whole world by means of the mere dread of their vengeance, sound doctrine has been despised, and men have degenerated into all but brutes and beasts. The number of holy and G.o.dly preachers of the Word is becoming less and all men are indulging their desires. The last day, however, shall a.s.suredly come upon the world as a thief, and will overtake these men in all their security, and in the indulgence of their ambition, tyranny, l.u.s.t, avarice, and vices of every kind.

18. And let it be remembered that it is Christ himself who has foretold these things, and we can not possibly imagine that he would lie. If the primitive world, which contained so mighty a mult.i.tude of the greatest patriarchs, was so wholly corrupted, what may we not have cause to dread in the weakness of our nature? May the Lord our G.o.d grant that we may be gathered, as soon as possible, in the faith and confession of his Son Jesus Christ, unto these our fathers; yea, if it please him, that we may die within the next twenty years, and not live to see the miseries and calamities, both temporal and spiritual, of the last time! Amen!

II. ADAM AND HIS SON SETH.

1. The name Adam, and why given to the first man 19.

2. The Jews' fables of Adam's cohabitation with Eve 20.

* Purity of doctrine cannot be expected from the Jews 20.

3. Why Moses so carefully describes the times of Adam 21.

4. Why it is said of Adam that he was created in the likeness of G.o.d 21-23.

* The likeness of G.o.d.

a. The difference between "Zelem" and "Demuth" 22-23.

b. How the likeness of G.o.d was lost and how it is restored 24.

c. Whether it can be fully restored in this life 25.

5. The prating of the rabbins about the name Adam 26.

* Why Moses here mentions the blessing 27.

* Why he did not refer to the blessing in the descriptions of Cain and Abel 28.

6. How long it was before Adam begat Seth 29.

* Abel's age when murdered 29.

7. How and why Adam mourned so long for his son Abel, and therefore refrained from bearing children 29-30.

8. The Jews' fable of Adam's vow of chast.i.ty refuted 30.

9. How we are to understand that Adam begat a son in his own likeness 31.

10. Whether Adam's son Seth had G.o.d's likeness 31.

11. How Adam acquired again the lost image 32.

12. How Seth secured the likeness of G.o.d 32.

13. Why Adam gave his son the name Seth; its meaning 33.

* The long lives of the first men.

a. Longevity a part of the happy state of the first world 34.

b. The causes of such long lives 34-35.

* Men's bodies were much stronger and healthier than ours 35.

c. Whether the climate, food and holy living contributed to this end 36-37.

* The creatures given to man for food after the flood were inferior to those before, and they injured the body more than nourished it 37.

d. Luther's thoughts on this theme 38.

14. Which is the first or chief branch born from Adam and Eve 39.

15. How long Adam lived after Seth's birth 39.

* The glory of the first world 40.

* The histories of the first world were most excellent, but they were destroyed in the flood 41.

* Eve's age and experiences 42.

* The age of the first world is called the golden age 43.

II. ADAM AND HIS SON SETH.

V. 1a. _This is the book of the generations of Adam._

19. "Adam," as will be stated further on, is the common name of the whole human race, but it is applied to the first man more expressly as an appellation of dignity, because he was the source, as it were, of the whole human family. The Hebrew word _sepher_, "a book," is derived from _saphar_, which signifies "to narrate" or "to enumerate."

Wherefore this narration or enumeration of the posterity of Adam is called "the book of the generations of Adam."

V. 1b. _In the day that G.o.d created man, in the likeness of G.o.d made he him._

20. This clause of the sacred text has induced the blind Jews to fable that Adam slept with Eve as his wife in paradise on the same day in which he was created, and that she conceived in that same day. Fables of this kind are numerous among them, nor may anything sound or pure in the matter of scriptural interpretation be expected of them.