Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/224

 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 T$O$ 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). —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 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. 18$14$, Jer. 30$11$.— on acc., see G-K. § 29 g. The Niph. would yield a better sense: 'avenges himself' (Bu. Di. Ho.).