Jerome {Ep. xxxvi, ad Damasum, t. i, p. IGl) relates as a tradition of his predecessors and of the Jews that Cain was accidentally slain by Lamech in the seventh gener- ation from Adam. This legend is told with fuller de- tails by Jarchi. (See Kitto, Daily Bible Illust. ad loc.) According to him, the occasion of the poem was the re- fusal of Lamech's wives to associate with him in conse- quence of his liaving killed Cain and Tubal-cain ; La- mech, it is said, was blind, and was led about by Tubal- cain; when the latter saw in the thicket what he sup- posed to be a wild beast, Lamech, by his son's direction, shot an arrow at it, and tlnis slew Cain ; in alarm and indignation at the deed, he killed his son ; hence his wives refused to associate with him ; and he excuses himself as having acted without a vengeful or murder- ous purpose. Onkelos, followed by Pseudo- Jonathan, paraphrases it, ' I have not slain a man that I should bear sin on his account.' The Arab.Yer. (Saadias) puts it in an interrogative form, 'Have I slain a man?' etc. These two versions, which are substantially the same, are adopted by De Dieu and bishop Patrick. Aben- Ezra, Calvin, Drusius, and Cartwright interi^ret it in the future tense as a threat, ' I will slay any man who wounds me.' Luther considers the occasion of the poem to be the deliberate murder of Cain by Lamech. Light- foot {Decas Chorogr. Marc. p}-cem. § iv) considers La- mech as expressing remorse for having, as the first po- lygamist, introduced more destruction and minder than Cain was the author of into the world" (Smith). Shuck- ford, in his Connection, supposes that the descendants of Cain had lived for a long time in fear of vengeance for the death of Abel from the family of Adam ; and that Lamech, in order to persuade his wives of the ground- lessness of such fears, used the argument in the text, i. c. if any one who might slay Cain, the murderer of his brother, was threatened with sevenfold vengeance, sure- ly they must expect a far sorer punishment who should presume to kill any of us on the same account. Others regard Lamech's .speech as a heaven-daring avowal of murder, in which he had himself received a slight wound. Some have even sought to identify Lamech with the Asiatic deity Lemus or Lames (see IMovers, Phi'm. 477; Nork, Bibl. Mjithol. i, 235). Herder, in his Hebrew I^oetri/, supposes that the haughty and revenge- ful Lamech, overjoyed by the invention of metallic weap- ons by his son Tubal-cain, breaks out in this triumjihal song, boasting that if Cain, by the providence of (iod, was to be avenged sevenfold, he, by means of the newly- invented weapons, so much superior to anything of the kind known at that time, would be able to take a much heavier vengeance on those who injured him. This hy- pothesis as to the occasion of the poem was partly an- ticipated by Hess, and has been received by Ivosenmiil- ler, Ewald, and Delitzsch. Pfeiffer (Diff'. Scrip. Loc. p. 25) collects different opinions up to his time with his usual diligence, and concludes that the poem is Lamech's vindication of himself to his wives, who were in terror for the possible consequences of his having slain two of the posterity of Seth. This judicious view is substan- tially that of Lowth (De S. Poesi IJeb. iv, 91) and Mi- chaelis, who think that Lamech is excusing himself for some murder which he had committed in self-defence (" for a wound inflicted on me"), and he opposes a hom- icide of this nature to the wilful and inexcusable fratri- cide of Cain. Under this view Lamech would appear to have intended to comfort his wives by the assurance that he was really exposed to no danger from this act, and that any attempt upon his life on the part of the friends of the deceased would not fail to bring down upon them the severest vengeance (compare Dathe and KosenmilUer, ad loc; see also Turner's Companion to Genesis, p. 209). " That he had slain a man, a young man (for the youth of one clause is undoubtedly but a more specific indication of the man in the other), and this not in cool blood, but in consequence of a wound or bruise he had himself received, is, if not the only possi- ble, certainly the natural and obvious meaning of the
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■words ; and on the ground apiiarcntly of a difference be- tween his case and that of Cain's— namely, that lie had dune !/;»/(rprovaeati(m what Cain had done vithout it — he assures Intnselt' of an interest in the divine guard- ianship and protection immeasurably greater than that granted to Cain. This seems as plainly the import of Lamech's speech as lani!;uage could well make it. But if it seems to imply, as it certainly does, that Lamech was not an offender after the type and measure of Cain, it at the same time shows how that branch of the hu- man family wore becoming familiar with strife and bloodshed, and, instead of mourning over it, were rather presuming on the. divine mercy and forbearance to brace themselves for its encounters, that they might repel force with force. The prelude already appears here of the terrible scenes which, after the lapse of a few genera- tions, disclosed themselves far and wide — when the earth Avas tilled with violence, and deeds were every day done which cried in the ear of heaNen for vengeance. Such was the miserable result of the human art and the earth- ly resources brought into play by the Cainite race, and on -which they proudly leaned for their ascendency ; nor is it too much to say that here also, even in respect to the luetic gift of natiu-e, the beginning was prophetic of the end" (Fairbairn). See Antediluvians.