Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/225



the division of classes represented by the three sons of Lamech. It is difficult to understand the prominence given to this classification of mankind into herdsmen, musicians, and smiths, or to imagine a point of view from which it would appear the natural climax of human development. Several recent scholars have sought a clue in the social conditions of the Arabian desert, where the three occupations may be said to cover the whole area of ordinary life. Jabal, the first-born son, stands for the full-blooded Bedouin with their flocks and herds, —the élite of all nomadic-living men, and the 'flower of human culture' (Bu. 146). The two younger sons symbolise the two avocations to which the pure nomad will not condescend, but which are yet indispensable to his existence or enjoyment—smith-work and music (Sta. 232). The obvious inference is that the genealogy originated among a nomadic people, presumably the Hebrews before the settlement in Canaan (Bu.); though Ho. considers that it embodies a specifically Ḳenite tradition in which the eponymous hero Cain appears as the ancestor of the race (so Gordon, ETG, 188 ff.).—Plausible as this theory is at first sight, it is burdened with many improbabilities. If the early Semitic nomads traced their ancestry to (peasants and) city-dwellers, they must have had very different ideas from their successors the Bedouin of the present day. Moreover, the circumstances of the Arabian peninsula present a very incomplete parallel to the classes of vv.$17b$. Though the smiths form a distinct caste, there is no evidence that a caste of musicians ever existed among the Arabs; and the Bedouin contempt for professional musicians is altogether foreign to the sense of the vv., which certainly imply no disparaging estimate of Jubal's art. And once more, as Sta. himself insists, the outlook of the genealogy is world-wide. Jabal is the prototype of all nomadic herdsmen everywhere, Jubal of all musicians, and Tubal (the Tibareni?) of all metallurgists.—It is much more probable that the genealogy is projected from the standpoint of a settled, civilised, and mainly agricultural community. If (with Bu.) we include vv.$20-22$ and $2$, and regard it as a record of human progress, the order of development is natural: husbandmen, city-dwellers, wanderers [?] (shepherds, musicians, and smiths). The three sons of Lamech represent not the highest stage of social evolution, but three picturesque modes of life, which strike the peasant as interesting and ornamental, but by no means essential to the framework of society.—This conclusion is on the whole confirmed by the striking family likeness between the Cainite genealogy and the legendary Phœnician history preserved by Eusebius from Philo Byblius, and said to be based on an ancient native work by Sanchuniathon. Philo's confused and often inconsistent account is naturally much richer in mythical detail than the Heb. tradition; but the general idea is the same: in each case we have a genealogical list