Genesis 4:26

And to Seth, to him also there was born a son,.... When he was an hundred and five years old, Genesis 5:6 and this is mentioned as a further proof and instance of God's goodness to Adam's family in

And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD. Called his name Enos - or Enosh; i:e., man, weak, frail mortal.

Enos properly signifies a miserable man, to note the great wickedness and wretchedness of that generation, which the Hebrew writers generally observe. To call upon the name of the Lord; to pray unto God, to worship God in a more public and solemn manner; praying being here put for the whole worship of God, as , , and in many other places. According to the marginal version, the sense is this: Then when the world was universally corrupt, and had forsaken God and his service, good men grew more valiant and zealous for God, and did more publicly and avowedly own God, and began to distinguish and separate themselves from the ungodly world, and to call themselves and one another by the name of God, i.e. the sons, servants, or worshippers of God as they are expressly called; and that, as it seems, upon this occasion, . And in this sense this phrase is elsewhere taken, as , , . Some render the place thus, Then began men to profane the name, i.e. the worship, of the Lord, by idolatry or superstition. But this seems neither to agree with the Hebrew phrase, nor to suit with this place, where he speaks of the posterity of Seth; who were the holy seed, and the only church of God then in the world.

Genesis 4:26 And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.Ver. 26. Then began men to call upon, &c.] Publicly, and in solemn assemblies to serve the Lord; and to make a bold and wise profession of his name: "shining as lamps" amidst that "perverse" generation of irreligious Cainites, "who said unto God, Depart from us," &c. This Job speaks there of these wicked, "which were cut down out of time, their foundation was overflown with the flood." The Jews translate it to this day, Then began men to fall from God; as Maimonides, their most learned rabbi, observes. ωςφωστηρες.

(26) He called his name Enos.—Heb., Enosh, that is, man. We thus find language growing. Up to this time there had been two names for man: Adam, which also in Assyrian—another Semitic dialect—has the same meaning, as Sir H. Rawlinson has shown: and Ish, a being. (See on Genesis 2:23.) We have now Enosh, which, according to Fürst and others, signifies mortal; but of this there is no proof. Most probably it is the generic word for man. and is used as such in the Aramaic dialects. Thus in Syriac and Chaldee our Lord is styled bar-enosh, the son of man: not the son of a mortal, but the son of man absolutely. Then began men (Heb., then it was begun) to call upon the name of the Lord (Jehovah).—That is, the notion of Divinity began now to be attached to this name, and even in their worship men called upon God as Jehovah. Eve, as we have seen, attached no such idea to it; and when, in Genesis 4:3, we read that Cain and Abel brought an offering to Jehovah, these are the words of the narrator, who in the story of the fall had expressly styled the Deity Jehovah-Elohim, that is, Jehovah-God, or more exactly, “the coming God,” in order to show that Elohim and Jehovah are one. Two hundred and thirty-five years had elapsed between the birth of Cain and that of Enos, and men had learned a truer appreciation of the promise given to their primal mother, in Genesis 3:15, than she herself had when she supposed that her first child was to win back for her the Paradise. Probably they had no exact doctrinal views about His person and nature; it was the office of prophecy “by divers portions” to give these (Hebrews 1:1). But they had been taught that “He who should be” was Divine, and to be worshipped. It is the hopeless error of commentators to suppose that Eve, and Enos, and others, knew all that is now known, and all that the inspired narrator knew. They thus do violence to the plainest language of Holy Scripture, and involve its interpretation in utter confusion. Read without these preconceived notions, the sense is plain: that the name Jehovah had now become a title of the Deity, whereas previously no such sacredness had been attached to it. It was long afterwards, in the days of Moses, that it became the personal name of the covenant God of the Jews.

Verse 26. Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.] The marginal reading is, Then began men to call themselves by the name of the Lord; which words are supposed to signify that in the time of Enos the true followers of God began to distinguish themselves, and to be distinguished by others, by the appellation of sons of God; those of the other branch of Adam's family, among whom the Divine worship was not observed, being distinguished by the name, children of men. It must not be dissembled that many eminent men have contended that הוחל huchal, which we translate began, should be rendered began profanely, or then profanation began, and from this time they date the origin of idolatry. Most of the Jewish doctors were of this opinion, and Maimonides has discussed it at some length in his Treatise on Idolatry; as this piece is curious, and gives the most probable account of the origin and progress of idolatry, I shall insert it here. "In the days of Enos the sons of Adam erred with great error, and the counsel of the wise men of that age became brutish, and Enos himself was (one) of them that erred; and their error was this: they said, Forasmuch as God hath created these stars and spheres to govern the world, and set them on high, and imparted honour unto them, and they are ministers that minister before him; it is meet that men should laud, and glorify, and give them honour. For this is the will of God, that we magnify and honour whomsoever he magnifieth and honoureth; even as a king would have them honoured that stand before him, and this is the honour of the king himself. When this thing was come up into their hearts they began to build temples unto the stars, and to offer sacrifice unto them, and to laud and glorify them with words, and to worship before them, that they might in their evil opinion obtain favour of the Creator; and this was the root of idolatry, c. And in process of time there stood up false prophets among the sons of Adam, which said that God had commanded and said unto them, Worship such a star, or all the stars, and do sacrifice unto them thus and thus and build a temple for it, and make an image of it, that all the people, women, and children may worship it. And the false prophet showed them the image which he had feigned out of his own heart, and said it was the image of such a star, which was made known unto him by prophecy. And they began after this manner to make images in temples, and under trees, and on tops of mountains and hills, and assembled together and worshipped them, c. And this thing was spread through all the world, to serve images with services different one from another, and to sacrifice unto and worship them.

26. Enosh] This word, used in Hebrew poetry, means “man,” and is thus to be compared with Adam. then began men] In the Hebrew it is impersonal, “then was a beginning made.” The origin of Jehovah worship is here connected with the line of Seth, and is probably intended to be contrasted with the origin of secular callings in the line of Cain. to call upon] “Properly, as always, to call with, i.e. to use the name in invocations, in the manner of ancient cults, especially at times of sacrifice; cf. Genesis 12:8, Genesis 13:4, Genesis 21:33, Genesis 26:25.” (Driver.) the name of the Lord] i.e. the name of Jehovah. This statement by J, who uses this title by preference, is in conflict with the statement that the name was first revealed to Moses (E), (P), Exodus 3:14; Exodus 6:2. But in view not only of this text, but also of recent cuneiform decipherments, shewing the probability that a form of the name was known in Babylonia before the time of Moses, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the name belongs, as the tradition of J evidently taught, to prehistoric antiquity.

SETH AND ENOS, 25, 26. Having traced the development of the race of Cain, the sacred writer now turns to record the origin of that godly line whose genealogy appears at greater extent in the following chapter. 25.