of its vendetta (7 times); but the vengeance of Lamech knows no limit (70 and 7 times).
The Song has two points of connexion with the genealogy: the
names of the two wives, and the allusion to Cain. The first would
disappear if Ho.'s division of 23a were accepted; but since the ordinary
view seems preferable, the coincidence in the names goes to show that
the song was known to the authors of the genealogy and utilised in its
construction. With regard to the second, Gu. rightly observes that
glorying over an ancestor is utterly opposed to the spirit of antiquity;
the Cain referred to must be a rival contemporary tribe, whose grim
vengeance was proverbial. The comparison, therefore, tells decidedly
against the unity of the passage, and perhaps points (as Sta. thinks)
to a connection between the song and the legendary cycle from which
the Cain story of 13ff. emanated.—The temper of the song is not the
primitive ferocity of "a savage of the stone-age dancing over the corpse
of his victim, brandishing his flint tomahawk," etc. (Lenorm.); its real
character was first divined by We., who, after pointing out the baselessness
of the notion that it has to do with the invention of weapons,
describes it as "eine gar keiner besonderen Veranlassung bedürftige
Prahlerei eines Stammes (Stammvaters) gegen den anderen. Und wie
die Araber sich besonders gern ihren Weibern gegenüber als grosse
Eisenfresser rühmen, so macht es hier auch Lamech" (Comp.2 305). On
this view the question whether it be a song of triumph or of menace does
not arise; as expressing the permanent temper and habitual practice of
a tribe, it refers alike to the past and the future. The sense of the
passage was strangely misconceived by some early Fathers (perhaps by
GV), who regarded it as an utterance of remorse for an isolated murder
committed by Lamech. The rendering of TO is based on the idea
(maintained by Kalisch) that Lamech's purpose was to represent his
homicide as justifiable and himself as guiltless: 'I have not slain a man
on whose account I bear guilt, nor wounded a youth for whose sake my
seed shall be cut off. When 7 generations were suspended for Cain,
shall there not be for Lamech his son 70 and 7?' Hence arose the
fantastic Jewish legend that the persons killed by Lamech were his
ancestor Cain and his own son Tubal-cain (Ra. al.; cf. Jer. Ep. ad Damasum, 125).[1]—The metrical structure of the poem is investigated
by Sievers in Metrische Studien, i. 404 f., and ii. 12 f., 247 f. According
to the earlier and more successful analysis, the song consists of a double
tetrameter, followed by two double trimeters. Sievers' later view is
vitiated by an attempt to fit the poem into the supposed metrical scheme
of the genealogy, and necessitates the excision of (
Hebrew characters) as a gloss.
Apart from v.23f., the most remarkable feature of the genealogy is
second part of the sentence" (BDB, s.v. 3, c): cf. Dt. 1814, Jer. 3011.—(Hebrew characters)
on acc., see G-K. § 29 g. The Niph. (Hebrew characters) would yield a better sense:
'avenges himself' (Bu. Di. Ho.).
- ↑ See, further, Lenorm. Orig. i. 186 ff.
