such joy as to conclude that the
glad day was near which should witness the fulfilment of the promise.
That Enoch was taken up living, to be with the Lord, appeared as a
salient display of divine mercy.

76. As Adam and Eve, after the reception of the promise, were so
absorbed in their hope that, in their joy to see a man like
themselves, they identified Cain with the promised seed, so in my
judgment Lamech committed a similar pious error when he gave his son
the name Noah, and said: This same shall comfort us, and shall deliver
us from the labors and sorrows of this life. Original sin, and the
punishment thereof, shall now cease. We shall now be restored to our
former innocent state. The curse shall now cease which rests on the
earth on account of the sin of Adam; and all the other miseries
inflicted on the human race on account of sin, shall also cease.

77. Such considerations as these prompted Lamech to base upon the fact
of his grandfather's rapture into paradise unaccompanied by pain,
sickness and death, the hope that presently the whole of paradise was
to be ushered in. He concludes that Noah was the promised seed by whom
the earth was to be restored. This notion that the curse is about to
be lifted is expressed in unmistakable terms. Not so; neither the
curse of sin nor its penalty can be removed unless original sin itself
shall have been removed first.

78. The rabbins, those pestilent corrupters of the Scriptures, surely
deserve aversion. This is their interpretation of the passage in
question: He shall bring us rest from the toil and labor of our hands
by showing us an easier way of cultivating the earth. With a
plowshare, by a yoke of oxen, the earth shall be broken up; the
present mode of digging it with man's hand shall cease.

I wonder that Lyra is satisfied with this interpretation, and follows
it. He ought to have been familiar with the unchanging practice of the
Jews to pervert Scripture by substituting a material meaning for a
spiritual one, in order to gain glory among men. Could anything more
derogatory to the holy patriarch be said than that he gave such
expression to his joy over the birth of his son Noah on account of an
advantage pertaining to the belly?

79. No; it was a much greater concern than this which filled his mind
with anxiety. It was the wrath of God, and death, with all the other
calamities of this life. His hope was that Noah, as the promised seed,
would put an end to these ev