Page:An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828) vol 1.djvu/88

56 and the impenitence and apostasy of Cain, were a very great grief to him and Eve; and the more, because their own wickedness did now correct them, and their backslidings did reprove them. Their folly had given sin and death entrance into the world; and now they smarted by it, being, by means thereof, deprived of both their sons in one day, ch. 27. 45. When parents are grieved by their children's wickedness, they should take occasion thence to lament that corruption of nature which was derived from them, and which is the root of bitterness. But here we have that which was a relief to our first parents in their affliction.

I. God gave them to see the rebuilding of their family, which was sorely shaken and weakened by that sad event. For, 1. They saw their seed, another seed instead of Abel, v. 25. Observe God's kindness and tenderness toward his people, in his providential dealings with them; when he takes away one comfort from them, he gives them another instead of it, which may prove a greater blessing to them than that was, in which they thought their lives were bound up. This other seed was he in whom the church was to be built up and perpetuated; and he comes instead of Abel; for the succession of professors is the revival of the martyrs, and as it were the resurrection of God's slain witnesses. Thus we are baptized for the dead, 1 Cor. 15. 29; that is, we are, by baptism, admitted into the church, for or instead of those who, by death, especially by martyrdom, are removed out of it; and we fill up their room. They who slay God's servants, hope thus to wear out the saints of the Most High; but they will be deceived. Christ shall still see his seed; God can out of stones raise up children for him, and make the blood of the martyrs the seed of the church, whose lands, we are sure, shall never be lost for want of heirs. This son, by a prophetic spirit, they called Seth, that is, set, settled, or placed; because, in his seed, mankind should continue to the end of time, and from him the Messiah should descend. While Cain, the head of the apostasy, is made a wanderer, Seth, from whom the true church was to come, is one fixed. In Christ and his church is the only true settlement. 2. They saw their seed's seed, v. 26. To Seth was born a son called Enos, that general name for all men, which bespeaks the weakness, frailty, and misery, of man's state. The best men are most sensible of these, both in themselves and their children. We are never so settled, but we must remind ourselves that we are frail.

II. God gave them to see the reviving of religion in their family, v. 26, Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord. It is small comfort to a good man to see his children's children, if he do not, withal, see peace upon Israel, and those that come of him walking in the truth. Doubtless, God's name was called upon before, but now, 1. The worshippers of God began to stir up themselves to do more in religion than they had done; perhaps not more than had been done at first, but more than had been done of late, since the defection of Cain. Now, men began to worship God, not only in their closets and families, but in public and solemn assemblies. Or, now, there was so great a reformation in religion, that it was as it were, a new beginning of it. Then may refer, not to the birth of Enos, but to the whole foregoing story; then, when men saw in Cain and Lamech the sad effects of sin, by the workings of natural conscience; then, they were so much the more lively and resolute in religion. The worse others are, the better we should be, and the more zealous. 2. The worshippers of God began to distinguish themselves; the margin reads it, Then began men to be called by the name of the Lord, or, to call themselves by it. Now, that Cain and those who had deserted religion, had built a city, and begun to declare for impiety and irreligion, and called themselves the Sons of men; those that adhered to God, began to declare for him and his worship, and called themselves the Sons of God. Now began the distinction between professors and profane, which has been kept up ever since, and will be while the world stands.

CHAP. V.

This chapter is the only authentic history extant of the first age of the world, from the creation to the flood, containing (according to the verity of the Hebrew text) 1656 years, as may easily be computed by the ages of the Patriarchs, before they begat that son, through whom the line went down to Noah. This is none of those which the apostle calls endless genealogies, 1 Tim. 1. 4, for Christ who was the end of the Old Testament law, was also the end of the Old Testament genealogies; toward him they looked, and in him they centred. The genealogy here recorded, is inserted briefly in the pedigree of our Saviour, Luke 3. 36..38, and is of great use, to show that Christ was the Seed of the woman, that was promised. We have here an account, I. Concerning Adam, v. 1..5. II. Seth, v. 6..8. III. Enos, v. 9..11. IV. Cainan, v. 12..14. V. Mahalaleel, v. 15..17. VI. Jared, v. 18..20. VII. Enoch, v. 21..24. VIII. Methuselah, v. 25..27. IX. Lamech and his son Noah, v. 28..32. All scripture, being given by inspiration of God, is profitable, though not all alike profitable.

HIS is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him: 2. Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created: 3. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: 4. And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: 5. And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

The first words of the chapter are the title or argument of the whole chapter; it is the book of the generations of Adam, it is the list or catalogue of the posterity of Adam; not of all, but only of the holy seed which were the substance thereof, Isa. 6. 13, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, Rom. 9. 5, the names, ages, and deaths, of those that were the successors of the first Adam in the custody of the promise, and the ancestors of the second Adam. The genealogy begins with Adam himself.

Here is,

I. His creation, v. 1, 2. Where we have a brief rehearsal of what was before at large related concerning the creation of man. This is what we have need frequently to hear of, and carefully to acquaint ourselves with. Observe here, 1. That God created man. Man is not his own maker, therefore he must not be his own master; but the Author of his being must be the Director of his motions and the centre of them. 2. That there was a day in which God created man; he was not from eternity, but of yesterday; he was not the first-born, but the junior of the creation. 3. That God made him in his own likeness, righteous and holy, and therefore, undoubtedly, happy; man's nature resembled the divine nature more than that of any of the creatures of this lower world. 4. That God created them male and female, (v. 2.) for their mutual comfort as well as for the preservation and increase of their