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Faith-filled and Faithless: Two Lamechs

I've had a hard time this summer, feeling sad a lot and struggling with ups and downs in my moods, but I feel like the Lord gave me something from my Bible reading that helped me get through so I thought I'd write about it here.

I was touched by the contrasts of the two Lamechs in Genesis 4 and 5. The genealogies briefly mention two different men named Lamech. The first Lamech mentioned was a vengeful, polygamous murderer. One may be tempted to believe this first mention of polygamy had nothing to do with the fact that Lamech was a murderer, but I'm not convinced that is true.

Methushael fathered Lamech. And Lamech took two wives... Lamech said to his wives: "Ada and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold." (Genesis 4)

This Lamech, it seems, was not a man of faith. He thought, perhaps, that God saw the bad thing that had happened to him and wasn't doing anything. Maybe he thought (like some of us sometimes), "I've tried praying. God's not listening. He doesn't care. It's all up to me." He was either an outright or functional atheist. This lack of faith took him, frighteningly enough, down the path of murder.

In the next chapter we meet a different Lamech, Lamech the father of Noah.

When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, "Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands." (Genesis 5:28-29)

I was told years ago that the language in this passage indicates that this Lamech believed his son Noah might actually be the Snake-Crusher mentioned back in Genesis 3:15, the Messiah.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

He was wrong about that, and if you had any doubt if Noah was the Messiah or not, Genesis 9 makes it clear he was not. The last we hear of Noah is a disgraceful scene of drunkenness. This time reading, though, I was struck by Lamech's faith in God's promise to send a Messiah, contrasted with the other Lamech's lack of faith. Lamech was wrong about his son being the Messiah. But he was right that this was a special child God was going to use in a significant way. And he was absolutely right that God would send a Messiah, many years later in Jesus Christ.

He didn't know exactly what God was doing. And neither do you or I. But his faith was not misplaced. Nor will our faith in God's promises disappoint us even when the circumstances of life don't turn out quite like we hoped.

Back to the polygamy, if a man thinks God doesn't care and it's all up to him, it seems to me that he might try extra hard to establish his family line forever by perversely taking two wives when that was never God's intention for marriage.

As far as I know, the first Lamech's family line is gone. Faith-filled Lamech's family line lives on through... well, the entire world's population. We're still living his legacy of faith. That's pretty amazing.