death at
the very time when God exercises judgment? Death is the very
punishment of sin; therefore he flees and dreads death as the greatest
part of his penalty. Away, therefore, with such vagaries of the
rabbins! With these also Lyra's suggestion may safely be classed that
the text ought to be divided and made to mean, Whoever shall kill
Cain, shall surely meet with severe punishment. And when it is further
stated, He shall be punished sevenfold, they would explain it as
meaning that in the seventh degree--in the seventh generation--the
punishment is to be inflicted.

218. Such vagaries are worthy of the rabbins after having cast away
the light of the New Testament. However, they impose a double labor
upon us, inasmuch as we are compelled to defend the text and to clear
it of such corruptions, and to correct their absurd comments. If I
quote them occasionally, it is to avoid the suspicion of proudly
despising them, or of failing to read, and to give sufficient
consideration to, their writings. While we read them intelligently, we
do so with critical discrimination, and we do not permit them to
obscure Christ, and to corrupt the Word of God.

219. The Lord, accordingly, does not in this passage at all alter the
sentence upon Cain whereby he had been doomed to a curse on earth, but
merely vouchsafes to him this uncovenanted mercy for the sake of the
elect that are to be saved from that curse as from a mass of dregs.
That is the reason he said Cain should not be killed, as he feared.

There is, then, no necessity for doing violence to this text as Rabbi
Solomon does, who, after the words "whosoever slayeth Cain," puts a
stop; making it to be a hiatus or (ellipsis), as we find in that noted
line in Virgil (Aeneas, 135)--

_Quos ego--sed motos praestat componere fluctus._
Whom I--but now, be calm, ye boist'rous waves.

And then the expression, "shall be punished sevenfold," the rabbi
refers to Cain himself, who was punished in his seventh generation.
For Cain begat Enoch, and Enoch begat Irad, and Irad begat Mehujael,
and Mehujael begat Methusael, and Methusael begat Lamech.

220. And the Jews' absurd comment upon that passage (verse 23, below),
is that Lamech, when he was old, and his eyes dim, was taken by his
son Tubal-Cain into a wood to hunt wild beasts, and that, when there
shooting at a wild beast, Lamech accidently shot Cain, who in his
wanderings had concealed himself in the wood. Such interpretations ar