NOTES for Gen 4:16-26
The fact that an entire civilization is built on the line of Cain tells us that the human race was poisoned from the beginning. The sacred author shows how the terrible machine of evil gathers momentum. This is precisely what the words “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold” mean. And Lamech’s words “I have killed a man for wounding me” mean that he killed in revenge for some evil done to him, to Lamech. But is this not exactly what we see throughout the whole history of humanity? As soon as a person acquires a new technical achievement, the powers of evil soon take possession of it. The phrase that best reflects this process became, in the terrible twentieth century, “the arms race.” Such an arms race has continued throughout human history. But Seth was given in place of Abel. For wicked Cain there are vengeance, evil, and new deaths; for good Abel there are a new birth and a new person. This answers every superficial view that calls the Old Testament a book that permits or even glorifies vengeance. If that were so, vengeance for Abel would have been glorified. But it was not. For Abel, the birth of Seth was glorified.