Wednesday Bible Study: The stone paths

 

Once again, the Lord has postponed where I was going in this series for what He wants me to share.  This time, He had me look at the Genealogies of Cain and Seth in Genesis and see them as stones in a pair of footpaths- one leading to a good place, one not.  And then, last night as I type, He gave me another perspective- He had me look at the fallen Pastors who once were on my Christian radio, and the reasons they are no longer there.  Without names, this is why they fell:  One by perversion; one by lacking integrity; another by pride; another by seeking ritual; and another who I believe was never a true man of faith.  Somehow, God tells me, these fit into our story.  Find out, with me, just how.

We start the paths with their beginnings.  Cain's name was basically from Eve saying, "Look, I've made a man"; Seth was a "replacement", a substitute for the murdered Abel.  Cain tried to do things his own way; Seth was a substitute of sorts for Abel, just as Jesus is a substitute for us before God's wrath.

Cain's first son is Enoch- one of 2 names that will be on both lists.  The name means, "To train up", so Enoch was taught all of his father's ways.  One of them involved his stubborn pride, for it is said Cain built a city, and named it after Enoch. (Unless mentioned, all these references will be from Genesis 4 and 5.)  Now God had something to say about naming this city, here in Psalm 49:

Psa 49:11  Their graves are their homes forever, their dwelling places to all generations, though they called lands by their own names. 

Psa 49:12  Man in his pomp will not remain; he is like the beasts that perish. 

Psa 49:13  This is the path of those who have foolish confidence; yet after them people approve of their boasts. Selah 

This was a way of seeking after immortality, of finding a way to live after death- the sin of Nimrod many generations later.  A better way is on our other path, where Seth's first son is named Enosh- a subtle difference to us, but a big one in Hebrew, where it means, simply, "human."  And this human had a better idea for immortality:

Gen 4:26  To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD. 

Immediately, the paths diverge.  One sought immortality through pride; the other through humbling themselves to the Lord.  The next generation brings to Cain's Enoch a son named Irad- "to hide away".  Adam and Eve had hid after sinning; Cain had sought to hide his sin from God.  Now this evil path was leading to a lifestyle of hiding away- like the pastor who had faulty integrity because it rested on an untrue telling of an old sin.  On the other side, Enosh gave birth (through his wife, of course) to Cainan (a Nest), who was at home with the Lord.

Fourth generations give to Cain, Mehujael, and to Seth, Mahalaleel.  I want you to see the contrast in these names:  Mahalaleel means, "praise of God"; Mehujael is the chilling, "Erased by God".  The ungodly line was moving farther away; the godly line was moving ever closer.  This puts me in mind of a lesson I learned about consequences.  Just as Samson didn't know he had lost contact with God after he ran out of lies for Delilah, the pastor this brings up had a hidden life of perversion, and died in extreme pain.  You can only ignore God so long.

The fifth generation is the flip to this- that things CAN change.  This time, the ungodly line gives us, like one raised stone, the name Methusael, a "man of God".  At the same time, the godly line gives us Jared- a name that means, "descent".  Even the ungodly can have one saved from it- even the godly cannot rely just on ancestry.  This reminds me of the pastor that went from a Biblical "expert" to retreating into a religion of ritual- and as the Tao teaches, ritual is the dead husk of faith.

At this point, the one-on-one matchup of the generations collapses.  Seth's line gives us Enoch- the good Enoch, who joins Elijah in never having died, but instead-

Gen 5:22  Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. 

Gen 5:23  Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. 

Gen 5:24  Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. 

Before you shake your head at Enoch living 365 years, remember: this was before the flood, and his son Methuselah would live 969 years.  Lest you think this is crazy talk, the Bible says it's also the future:

Isa 65:20  No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. 

After Methuselah came the good Lamech; and he would father Noah.  Noah is the next one to one matchup, and his match up was with the evil Lamech, whom we must look at next.  This Lamech- whose name's meaning is the lone mystery in the list, although the Jews think it MIGHT mean "vigorous youth"- lived in the days of the Watchers.  The Watchers- explained in the Book of Enoch and hinted at in Genesis 6- were angels who took on flesh, being tempted, it seemed, by the beauty of human women and the allure of sex.  They, according to Enoch, taught various arts to Cain's ungodly line, and these would become evident in the brief stories of Lamech's wife and his sons.

Lamech was the first (that we know of) to break the one-man-one-wife command, having two wives.  One was Adah, whose name indicates she learned of jewelry from one Watcher, the other was Zillah, who apparently was a student of makeup.  Now, Lamech is the one who the Bible tells us gave this mysterious line:

Gen 4:23  Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. 

Gen 4:24  If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold.” 

The 'sevenfold' he refers to is God's promise that whoever laid hands on Cain would be avenged by God sevenfold (Gen. 4:15).  While scholars disagree on what he meant by this, and the Jews try to say it was about his accidently killing Cain ( even though he says he killed a "young man"), what we can glean from it was that he was bent to violence- much like the pastor who became violent when his forceful dictatorship of his church was revealed.  Noah was born the promise of something better:

Gen 5:28  When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son 

Gen 5:29  and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” 

Lamech has three sons (and a daughter), whose names- while reflecting different subtle attributes of skills taught by the Watchers- are basically variations on the same theme- "bringing forth with pomp" (remember the quote from Psalm 49?), indicating that the strain of stubborn pride started in Cain still ran strong in the family.  Jabal was the first named, and was taught to be a nomadic herdsman; Jubal learned the arts of music; and Tubal (who the rabbis and commentators believe had the familiar  "-Cain" added on later) was the metal-worker and weapons-master.  One old commentator say that they were representations of the later Greek gods- Jabal was Pan, Jubal was Apollo, Tubal-Cain was Hephaestus, and sister Naamah (the name means 'pleasure') was Aphrodite.  In the meantime, as you may know, Noah had three sons as well.  Shem meant "name of honor"; from him the later Israelites would spring.  Ham meant "hot"; his descendants would spread to the tropical lands, Egypt and Africa; Japheth meant "Roomy", and his descendants would cover everyone else.

The problem with where these paths were growing- the ungodly, angel-infected, pride filled like of Cain was growing far too numerous; by the time of Noah, the godly were down to 4- and there is some reason to wonder about Ham.  But God had a plan, and preserved Noah through the purging Flood; and Cain and the immortality he sought, and the cities he built, were washed away.  Someday- maybe soon, from the looks of things- the scenario will play out again in disaster and fire.  Which path will you choose?