Happy Advent, Here's Something About Lamech
Bad 'ol Lamech & Multiplication
(William Blake, 1775, “Lamech And His Two Wives”)
Welcome In The Name Of The Father, The Son, And The Holy Ghost.
The Ground Beneath Your Feet Is Holy Ground.
Therefore, Let Us Worship Him Through His Words.
Genesis 4:17-26 NASB
17 Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city Enoch, after the name of his son. 18 Now to Enoch was born Irad, and Irad became the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael became the father of Methushael, and Methushael became the father of Lamech. 19 Lamech took to himself two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other, Zillah. 20 Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. 21 His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. 22 As for Zillah, she also gave birth to Tubal-cain, the forger of all implements of bronze and iron; and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. 23 Lamech said to his wives,
“Adah and Zillah,
Listen to my voice,
You wives of Lamech,
Give heed to my speech,
For I have killed a man for wounding me;
And a boy for striking me;
24
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
Then Lamech seventy‑sevenfold.”
25 Adam had relations with his wife again; and she gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, for, she said, “God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel, for Cain killed him.” 26 To Seth, to him also a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord.
I’ve long had a special place in my heart for this passage because in college I had to give a report on Genesis 4:17-26 for Mr. Fleming’s Genesis class. Mr. Fleming’s brother, Peter, had been martyred in 1956. Despite the griefs he had mourned, Mr. Fleming put up with the lot of us with extraordinary grace. He’d eat breakfast with anybody who’d get up early enough to sit at his table. In Mr. Fleming we found joy and enthusiasm for the Lord.
Mr. Fleming’s class on Isaiah required us to memorize Isaiah 52-53, so it was that we all ran around that semester with Isaiah 52-53 carefully folded up in our otherwise empty wallets. He filled our hearts and wallets with eternal, everlasting wealth. Legacy is the goodness we hand down to those coming up behind us.
This passage on Cain, and Lamech and the whole sad family legacy reminds me of something Mr. Rogers once said,
“Love is at the root of everything. All learning, all parenting, all relationships.
Love, or the lack of it.”
Love. Or The lack thereof explains just about everything.
(Mr. Rogers)
For Cain, he lacked love for God, or perhaps, loved God in a sick fashion that was evidenced by a possessive jealously of God. A smothering religion that by necessity could not be held with an open hand to his fellow man. He did not wish for God to love Abel, as if God would not also have enough love for Cain. As if the love of God wasn’t abundant enough to go around.
Lamech’s Multiplication
If Cain was stingy with the love of God, Lamech wanted to multiply love of the darkness.
St. Paul once wrote that bad men will go from bad to worse.
2nd Timothy 3:12-17 NASB
12 Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. 13 But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, 15 and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
Paul’s words to young Timothy remind me of what God tells Cain in fatherly love. →
Genesis 4:6-7 NASB
6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
And so Paul tells Timothy, you have been given all the right stuff.
Heed not the bitter darkness!
Serve Jesus!
You were raised saturated in Bible!
There’s life in those words, son.
What is the difference between the wicked and the righteous? The wicked see sin crouching at the door and think they’ll take sin for a spin → but evil drives evil and you will go from bad to worse, guaranteed.
The righteous take the Father’s advice. You must master sin or it will master you.
Ever has it been.
Sin is a generational downward spiral and slippery is the slope, until someone, by the grace of God, steps off the broad path leading to destruction and chooses the narrow path leading to life (Matthew 7:13-14).
Slippery.
Adam and Eve eat.
(Benjamin West, 1791, “The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise”)
Cain murders his brother in a fit of rage. Or perhaps it was a premeditated, planned rage. He rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him. But what had Cain been rising up in his heart all those years? Maybe we all lay the foundations for all the tragedies we tell ourselves just happened. Until the only one who tells us objective truth is the blood crying from the ground.
Isn’t it fascinating that in Genesis 4:8 the NASB says, “Cain told Abel his brother”. Told him what exactly?
That God had told him he must choose the good: but guess what? Let’s boldly go where no man has done before → Let’s try this new thing called death out, here, you go first, Abel.
But now Lamech comes along down the downward lineage, and Lamech multiplies all the bad examples his forefather Cain has modeled for him. Lamech is the first to practice polygamy. Double the wives v.19! Lamech perverts the lovely design God has for marriage by adding another person to it, and by adding threats. This model of marriage: one too many people, and threats, has haunted humanity ever since.
Yes, Lamech wants you to know he will kill you for the smallest thing, man or boy, he doesn’t much care, his rage is not proportional to the offense taken. It is multiplied v.23-24.
An eye for an eye, much maligned as brutal is actually about proportional justice mete out for the crime committed. (Exodus 21:24)
But why does Lamech boast of these violent exploits to his two wives?
He wants them to fear him. Intimidation within the marital covenant is introduced here in Genesis 4, and two chapters later God will flood the world because it is filled with violence (Genesis 6:11). Everything is about love, or the lack of it.
Lamech also multiplies Cain’s avenging from 7x to 77x v.24, and that without God’s promise. Lamech is saying he is more sinful than Cain, and shall never pay for his sins. Cain laments the curse, Lamech boasts in his sin.
In all the darkness swirling here in the lineage of the first family, hope is born. Lest we forget Adam and Eve. Remember their one son murdered the other and, “Went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in Nod, East of Eden.” (Genesis 4:16). Leaving Adam and Eve bereft of children.
Here in Genesis 4 we have the two options mankind has always had, to either go out from the presence of the Lord (v. 16) or to call upon the name of the Lord (v.26).
And here in all the darkness and shame, a new hope. A baby is born to the woman. It is the prequel to all things Advent. Echoing, and prefiguring another birth, the birth of Christ, Seth’s own descendant, on down the long line about as for as you can go: the seed of the woman shall crush the head of Satan.
And like Seth, and Seth’s boy Enosh, and Cain and Lamech and Eve and Adah, and Zillah too, we all have a choice to make:
Will you call upon the name of the Lord?
The Liturgy for December 7th 2025
The Congregation Singing
The Call to Worship
Lighting the Advent Candle: Isaiah 11:1-10
The Call & Response Blue Hymnal #513
The Baptist Catechism
The Apostle’s Creed
The Lord’s Prayer
The Offertory
The Congregation Singing
The Proclamation
Genesis 4:17-26
“Bad ‘Ol Lamech and Multiplication”
The Supplication
The Communion
Matthew 3:1-12
The Benediction
The Doxology
The Baptist Catechism #44
Q. 44. What shall be done to the wicked at the day of judgement?
A. At the day of judgement, the bodies of the wicked, being raised out of their graves, shall be sentenced, together with their souls, to unspeakable torments with the devil and his angels forever. (Dan. 12:2; John 5:28,29; 2 Thess. 1:9; Matt. 25:41)Rhyme It.
What will happen to unbelievers on Judgement Day?
Wicked men on judgement day,
Will be raised and cast away,
Into the fiery torment,
Body and soul they’ll be sent.
The Benediction
May you learn what they learned back in the days of Seth.
Call upon the name of the Lord. Even if it’s the first time it’s a start.
Call upon the name of the Lord. It’s all His anyways.
Let His saving name be near and dear to your lips. Now and forever, always. Amen.
The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith 2.1
The Lord our God is but one only living and true God;1 whose subsistence is in and of Himself,2 infinite in being and perfection; whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but Himself;3 a most pure spirit,4 invisible, without body, parts, or passions, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto;5 who is immutable,6 immense,7 eternal,8incomprehensible, almighty,9 every way infinite, most holy,10 most wise, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will,11 for His own glory;12 most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him,13 and withal most just and terrible in His judgments,14 hating all sin,15and who will by no means clear the guilty.16
1 1 Cor. 8:4,6; Deut. 6:4
2 Jer. 10:10; Isa. 48:12
3 Exod. 3:14
4 John 4:24
5 1 Tim. 1:17; Deut. 4:15–16
6 Mal. 3:6
7 1 Kings 8:27; Jer. 23:23
8 Ps. 90:2
9 Gen. 17:1
10 Isa. 6:3
11 Ps. 115:3; Isa. 46:10
12 Prov. 16:4; Rom. 11:36
13 Exod. 34:6–7; Heb. 11:6
14 Neh. 9:32–33
15 Ps. 5:5–6
16 Exod. 34:7; Nahum 1:2–3
