contents of the song furnish no hint of such an occasion (We.); and the position in which it stands makes its connexion with the genealogy dubious. On that point see, further, below. It is necessary to study it independently, as a part of the ancient legend of Lamech which may have supplied some of the material that has been worked into the genealogy.—The vv. may be rendered:
23 Adah and Zillah, hear my voice!
Wives of Lamech, attend to my word!
For I kill a man for a wound to me,
And a boy for a scar.
24 For Cain takes vengeance seven times,
But Lamech seventy times and seven!
23a. Ho. raises the question whether the words 'Adah and Zillah' belong to the song or the prose introduction; and decides (with V) for the latter view, on the ground that in the remaining vv. the second member is shorter than the first (which is not the case). The exordium of the song might then read:
Hear my voice, ye women of Lamech!
Attend to my word!—
the address being not to the wives of an individual chieftain,
but to the females of the tribe collectively. It appears to
me that the alteration destroys the balance of clauses, and
mars the metrical effect: besides, strict syntax would
require the repetition of the (
Hebrew characters).—23b. The meaning is that
(the tribe?) Lamech habitually avenges the slightest personal
injury by the death of man or child of the tribe to which the
assailant belongs. According to the principle of the blood-feud,
(Hebrew characters) and (Hebrew characters) ((Hebrew characters) is not a fighting 'youth,'—a sense it
rarely bears: 1 Ki. 128ff., Dn. 14ff.,—but an innocent man-child
[Bu. Ho.]) are not the actual perpetrators of the
outrage, but any members of the same clan. The parallelism
therefore is not to be taken literally, as if Lamech
selected a victim proportionate to the hurt he had received.—24.
Cain is mentioned as a tribe noted for the fierceness
(Greek characters); V in vulnus [livorem] meum.—24. (Hebrew characters) again introducing the reason,
which, however, "lies not in the words immediately after (Hebrew characters), but in the
