10. Dynasty of Darkness
All too often we humans are guilty of elevating ourselves and our own importance to the heights of godliness. I am guilty of it! The moment we concern ourselves with our elevation is the very moment we are cast out. This very attitude of elevation, of ego, is the attitude of the Spear, of Cain. The one who murdered the shepherd whose only concern was to listen to God. We should be like him! Like Passing Breath- like Abel! Join us today as we conclude Genesis chapter four.
Intro and outro music Copyright © Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA, used by permission. All rights reserved.
Here are our notes regarding Cain's dynasty for you to read yourself:
Cain and his wife have Enoch, which means “to dedicate” and it makes sense because Cain then builds a city and also names it Enoch, after his son. So, we can see that Cain is dedicating his actions not to God, but to his lineage and the civilization he is building in his own image. Enoch fathers Irad which comes from the word ‘arad’ which is a Canaanite city and also a verb that means ‘fugitive.’ Irad fathers Mehujael which means ‘stricken (one) of God.’ Mehujael fathers Methushael which means ‘man of God’ and the word for ‘man’ is the Hebrew ‘mat’ which often carries the connotation ‘of a few men’ so one could argue that Methushael denotes a man of God when ‘men of God’ are scarce. Building off of that idea, and what I think this text is ultimately alluding to, is that this is a man of a negative god as in ‘little g’ god, so a man of a ‘little g’ god. What is this type of man? Well… it’s a temple priest. The priest of the local deity. Now, this might sound like pure conjecture but stick with me for a minute and I think you’ll get the connection. Methushael fathers Lamech which means, get this, nothing. Lamech doesn’t mean anything… it’s a made-up word not connected to any root that we know of. Well, we can see that so far the authors have been very literal with some things, but pretty vague with other things, alluding to certain ideas without shoving them in the hearers' faces. We have also seen that the authors have used a variety of classic literary devices such as foreshadowing, poetry, rhyming schemes, clever manipulation of grammar, etc. What we have here with Lamech is an anagram! An Anagram is the rearranging of letters in a word to form a new word. Lamech is an anagram from the Hebrew word Melek, for King. This is corroborated by the fact that the vowel structure is identical from word to word. You can hear it! lEmEk and mElEk. Following this train of logic, let’s say that Lamech means king.
Cain and his wife have Enoch, which means “to dedicate” and it makes sense because Cain then builds a city and also names it Enoch, after his son. So, we can see that Cain is dedicating his actions not to God, but to his lineage and the civilization he is building in his own image. Enoch fathers Irad which comes from the word ‘arad’ which is a Canaanite city and also a verb that means ‘fugitive.’ Irad fathers Mehujael which means ‘stricken (one) of God.’ Mehujael fathers Methushael which means ‘man of God’ and the word for ‘man’ is the Hebrew ‘mat’ which often carries the connotation ‘of a few men’ so one could argue that Methushael denotes a man of God when ‘men of God’ are scarce. Building off of that idea, and what I think this text is ultimately alluding to, is that this is a man of a negative god as in ‘little g’ god, so a man of a ‘little g’ god. What is this type of man? Well… it’s a temple priest. The priest of the local deity. Now, this might sound like pure conjecture but stick with me for a minute and I think you’ll get the connection. Methushael fathers Lamech which means, get this, nothing. Lamech doesn’t mean anything… it’s a made-up word not connected to any root that we know of. Well, we can see that so far the authors have been very literal with some things, but pretty vague with other things, alluding to certain ideas without shoving them in the hearers' faces. We have also seen that the authors have used a variety of classic literary devices such as foreshadowing, poetry, rhyming schemes, clever manipulation of grammar, etc. What we have here with Lamech is an anagram! An Anagram is the rearranging of letters in a word to form a new word. Lamech is an anagram from the Hebrew word Melek, for King. This is corroborated by the fact that the vowel structure is identical from word to word. You can hear it! lEmEk and mElEk. Following this train of logic, let’s say that Lamech means king.
Okay so before we continue let’s pause and break all of this down what we have so far using the meaning of the names opposed to the names themselves: Cain fathers Dedicate, Dedicate fathers Fugitive, Fugitive fathers The Stricken One of God, The Stricken One of God fathers The man of god, The priest. The man of god, The priest, fathers the King. I understand that all of this might be hard to follow so we’ll be sure to include it all in the show notes.
So we then hear that Lamech took for himself two wives… how kingly of him, right? The first is Adah which means ‘to adorn or decorate oneself’ and the second is tselah which means ‘to shade or grow dark’ and is indeed related to the word ‘tselem’ which means a shadowy image. Obviously, these are not positive indications.
His two wives bore a total of three sons. All three of their names come from the Hebrew word “yaval” which means “to lead the way or guide” and we will see why. Each of their names is a different form of the word yaval which allows the authors to ensure each character is identifiable within the story. So Adah, or ‘the adornment’ births Javal who ‘led the way’ for those who live in tents and have livestock and she also births Juval who ‘led the way’ for the musicians and let’s say by extension, the arts, and Tselah, or ‘the growing darkness’ births Tuval-cain. Tuval-Cain is he who led the way of every craftsman of bronze and iron. In other words, he led the way in making instruments of war. What is more is that his name has something that his brothers do not and that is the addition of the name ‘Cain’ which is an obvious harkening back to their progenitor, or father, Cain. But remember: Cain isn’t just a name. As we established at the outset of this chapter, Cain means spear! So Tuval-Cain is He who led the way of the spear. He is the first war master. How much clearer can it be? Tuval-Cain: he who leads the way of the spear is the son of the king and the growing darkness. This entire genealogy is the story of the first human empire.
One last note in this genealogy is that Tselah has a daughter called Naamah which means ‘delightful or passible in beauty.’ This entire family is centered around the celebration of the human. A king to be worshipped, sons who head the various aspects of metropolitan culture such as raising cattle, music and entertainment, and war. And lastly, a princess who is made out to be an icon of physical beauty.