Two men by the name of Lamech

Read Genesis 4:19-25 & 6:25-31

Genesis is filled with many genealogies which as we make our way through Genesis you will come to see serve many different purposes. Just as they can be used to trace the lineage of someone, who they were descended from. Such as Matthew 1 and Luke 3. Also, within them can be contained other truths and principles which we can draw out.

What we want to focus upon today is two men by the name of Lamech. One the descendant of Cain, the other a descendant of Seth. Throughout the Bible you will see descendants that become characterised by the strengths or weaknesses of their forefathers. Jacob and Esau become Israel and Edom, two nations who remain bitter rivals.

God promises to Cain that if anyone should harm him God will avenge him 7-fold, then 7 generations from Adam through Cain is born Lamech, a man characterised by two great sins. He is the first recorded case of polygamy in the Bible, disobeying God’s intended design of monogamy and then he boasts about killing a young man for hitting him.

He is a man driven by sexual lust as well as bloodlust. He then speaks a poem to his wives, say if Cain’s revenge is 7-fold, Lamech’s is 77-fold. Notice the continual repetition of the number 7. In the Bible 7 represents wholeness, completeness, to repeat it 3 times is to say complete to the utmost degree.

When we turn to the other Lamech, the father of Noah, we see him die at 777 years old. The lines of Cain and Seth conclude before the flood, at the epitome of sin and righteousness. Cain’s Lamech a man of unbridled lust and anger, Seth ‘s Lamech father to a man referred to as a righteous man, blameless in his generation.

Cain ‘s descendant, lovers of sin. Seth’s descendants, lovers of God. By Noah’s time, him and his family are the only God-worshippers left, behold the intoxicating, corrupting power of sin to ruin all things. Behold also God’s ability to preserve a remnant, faithful to him no matter how small. An encouragement in the blatantly sinful broken world around us.

How shall God redeem the world? Through judgement? No there is a better way. 

“²¹ Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” ²² Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

Notice the 777 repetition again. The world will not be redeemed through a flood of judgement but through a flood of God’s love displayed in forgiveness by sacrificing himself for us.