LAMECH lā’ mĭk (לָֽמֶכְ, LXX and NT Λαμεχ, etymology uncertain, perhaps meaning strong man, or strong youth.) 1. A descendant of Cain, the son of Methushael (Gen 4:18-24) and the first polygamist. He was married to Adah and Zillah. By Adah he produced Jabal, the first tent dweller and Jubal who invented the harp and pipe, indicative of leisure time. By Zillah he begat Tubal-Cain, the first artificer in metals, and a daughter, Naamah. Lamech’s poem in Genesis 4:23f. is an example of early Heb. poetry with perfect parallelism. There are at least two interpretations of the poem: (1) Historical—Lamech had committed murder, and in remorse and self-justification he excused his crime as self-defense; (2) Anticipatory—It was a threat of what Lamech could do since his son, Tubal-Cain, had invented the sowrd. Cain could be avenged sevenfold, but with the sword Lamech could exact seventy sevenfold, going beyond the lex talionis that limited vengeance to exact equivalents. In either case Lamech, drunk with self-confidence and self-sufficiency, was not willing to wait for God’s justice to operate. He did not trust in God, but rather his weapons became his gods—a phenomenon paralleled in Mesopotamian religion. Delitzsch (Genesis, KD p. 119) called the poem an expression of titanic arrogance. In Lamech, Cain’s trend toward obstinate estrangement from God reached its climax.

2. A descendant of Seth, the son of Methusaleh, and the father of Noah (Gen 5:25-31; 1 Chron 1:3). This Lamech was tired of the unproductive toil spent on the unfruitful land. He expected the birth of his son (Noah) to remove the curse of Adam (Gen 5:29; 3:17ff.). As the son of Methusaleh, he was in the godly line of Seth. The Qumran Genesis Apocryphon also points this out. Since the number ten represented completion or conclusion to the Semite, Lamech hoped that the tenth generation from Adam would bring fulfillment of the Edenic promise. He had lived 182 years when Noah was born and died at the age of 777.

According to some critics, the Cainite Lamech of Genesis 4 and the Sethite Lamech of Genesis 5 were originally identical, with the two genealogies coming from one common legend or source. The J document (ch. 4) preserved one variant list, and the P document (ch. 5) preserved another. However, the differences of spelling and order of names is as striking as the similarities. A discussion of the objections to this theory is found in J. P. Lange, Genesis, tr. by Taylor Lewis (1882), pp. 261-273.

The genealogy of Christ (Luke 3:36) traces His ancestry back to Adam through the Lamech of the line of Seth.

Bibliography G. Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testament (1959), 57-59; E. Speiser, Anchor Bible, Genesis (1964).