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Genesis 4:23-25
New Catholic Bible
Genesis 4:23-25
New Catholic Bible
23 Lamech said to his wives,
“Adah and Zillah, listen to my voice;
wives of Lamech, lend an ear to what I say.
I have killed a man for wounding me
and a boy, for bruising me.
24 If Cain received a vengeance of sevenfold,
Lamech will receive one of seventy-sevenfold.”
25 First Stages of the History of Salvation.[a] Adam was once again intimate with his wife, and she bore a son who was named Seth.[b] She said, “God has granted me another child to take the place of Abel whom Cain killed.”
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Genesis 4:25 God responds to human sin by seeing to it that life prevails over death. The section contains two parallel passages. The first, and shorter (4:25-26), concludes the Yahwist story of the origins. The void left by Abel is filled by Seth, the new founder of the people of God. Enosh, son of Seth, is the first to know the Lord under the ineffable name of Yahweh, which will later be revealed to the Israelites (Ex 3:14-15). The other passage (Gen 5:1-32), from the Priestly tradition, links up with chapter 1. The image of God, which was imprinted in the first human beings, has not been completely destroyed by sin but passes on in some manner to their descendants (see Gen 9:6). The extraordinary ages reached by these individuals have a symbolic value, but the meaning is obscure to us; the ancient lists of Sumerian-Babylonian kings likewise assign them very great lengths of life.
One of the patriarchs, Enoch, seems privileged: he is placed seventh in the list and has a much shorter life than the others, but the number of his years is a perfect number, that of the days in a solar year. The writer emphasizes his holiness and describes his end in a mysterious fashion, not saying that he died. All this suggests that the righteous are ripe for a higher destiny. - Genesis 4:25 Who was named Seth: Hebrew, Shet, is explained by its assonance with the Hebrew verb, shat, which means “[God] has placed” (i.e., “has granted”).
