Brief Record of Cain's Offspring

We're in Genesis chapter 4 and we've been spending quite a bit of time in Genesis chapter 4.

! As a matter of fact, I'll just go ahead and warn you, we're not going to finish with it tonight either. Some good stuff here. Good stuff in the sense of instruction and giving us understanding.

So we want to make sure we get out of it all there is to get. Quickly, just to remind you where we've been. What we've seen in our study of Genesis chapter 4.

I kind of labeled it this way to kind of help us categorize it in our minds. We had, first of all, the first recorded children on planet earth.

We have the account of that. At least we have an account of those that are named for us. Though I think there were many others born.

So we have Cain, then Abel, then Seth. And then the society grows from there. And then second, we considered the first recorded worship on planet earth.

And this is a key part of this chapter. Because we have, of course, Cain and Abel's worship. And I'm using the term worship, by the way, because that's what this is.

When they came to bring an offering unto the Lord, this was their worship of the one true God. And Cain's worship was unacceptable. And Abel's was acceptable.

And we talked all about that. And why one was unacceptable and the other was accepted. And then the chapter closed. We kind of skipped to the end of the chapter, if you will recall.

And understood something about Seth's worship. The third son that's mentioned here. Seth's worship. And it was certainly correct worship.

Because I think very clearly it was like Abel's. Seth had learned from mom and dad about the acceptable worship according to God's word.

And so it was not only correct worship, but we also mentioned that this is the first mention of corporate worship. It was then with Seth and his offspring that the Bible says men, plural, began to call on the name of the Lord.

That is collectively they began to call upon the name of the Lord. And so worship became a corporate experience as well as a personal experience. So we had the first recorded worship on planet earth. And then third, we had the first recorded murder.

A lot of firsts going on. But then it makes sense. We're at the beginning of the Bible and the beginning of creation. So pretty much everything is a first, isn't it? But these are significant firsts. And so we had the first murder, recorded murder on planet earth.

I think the first murder, not just the first recorded one. And of course Cain murders his brother Abel. Alright? So all that's pretty clear. Now, in verses 16 to 24, which takes care of the rest of this chapter, even though we skipped ahead a few weeks ago and got a few of those verses at the end of the chapter.

Now kind of in the middle here we have these verses. Verses 16 to 24. And we have another first. We have the first recorded city on planet earth.

And really it's broader than that. I think we have the first recorded history of society. Basic is what we have. But we do have the first city planted or built or whatever term you want to use here on planet earth.

Alright, so. In these verses, in chapter 4, I'm going to read them here in just a minute. We have a brief record of Cain's offspring.

That's what we have here. And in that record we have Cain building a city. Alright, let me go ahead and read the text. Chapter 4, starting with verse 16.

And really verse 16, though in most Bibles it's marked as the beginning of the paragraph. 16 really goes with what happened before. But it serves as a good transition to what is now going to be revealed to us.

So verse 16. Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east or east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife.

And what was her name? Mrs. Cain. And she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city.

Not Enoch, but Cain did. And called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch. Now to Enoch was born Irad. And Irad begat Mahujael.

And Mahujael begat Methusael. And Methusael begat Lamech. Or begot Lamech. Then Lamech took for himself two wives.

The name of one was Adah. And the name of the second was Zillah. Interesting names, aren't they? And Adah bore Jabal. He was father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock.

His brother's name was Jubal. He was the father of all those who play the harp and flute. And as for Zillah, that's the second wife. She also bore Tubal Cain.

An instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron. And the sister of Tubal Cain was Nehemiah. Then Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, hear my voice.

Wives of Lamech, listen to my speech. Pretty pompous guy, wasn't he? For I have killed a man for wounding me. Even a young man for hurting me.

If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold. And then we'll just stop right there because we have already covered verses 25-26.

Alright, so, here's a brief record of Cain's offspring. His progeny.

And when we get to verse 25 of the chapter, I didn't go on to read verse 25. We've already looked at it. But when we get there, in the chapter, the Bible is through with Cain.

That's it. That's all we have about Cain. I mean, there is mention of Cain in other places in Scripture, but it's just mentioning what we already know about Cain. Alright, so, but as far as any historical revelation or history, what historical history, that's redundant.

We're done with him here by the time we get to verse 25. Because then, starting, and I mentioned this, I think, probably the last couple of times we have been together and we've been looking at this chapter.

I've mentioned this a couple of times, but starting with verse 25, and the announcement of Abel's replacement, which is Seth, the Bible is no longer concerned with any of Cain's descendants.

We don't care about that anymore. The focus will then be on Seth, starting with verse 25, and then on into chapter 5. The focus is going to be Seth and his descendants, which, of course, culminate with the birth of Jesus Christ, because Jesus came from that line.

And so, why then does the Bible stop with Cain and then take up Seth and forget about Cain from that point on? Why? Because, again, the Bible is only concerned with the unfolding of God's redemptive purposes in Christ for his chosen people.

That's what the Bible is about. This book is history. Not history, though there is history, but his story. That is Christ's story. It's all about him.

But then, having said that, let me add very quickly that that does not mean that the Bible does not include other history. Okay? Though the Bible does not record any further information about Cain and his physical family descendants, not past chapter 4, though it doesn't do that, the Bible does include important history concerning Cain's spiritual family descendants.

Now, what do I mean by that? Well, what I mean is that this really identifies the primary purpose of this chapter. Because, see, you have two families here in this chapter. Two families side by side, compared.

You have Cain's family, verses 16-24. And then you have Seth's family, verse 25 and on into chapter 5 and then on from there.

Now, this is what we need to understand. We need to understand that the two brothers and their families are not presented here for purposes of chronology.

If we'll understand this, then it'll solve some of our questions. You know, why do we mention him? And then, you know, was there anybody else? And why? It wasn't placed here so that we could get just a bare historical, chronological understanding of how things happened and who was born and so forth.

It's not here for chronology. Adam and Eve had other children that are not mentioned. And, in fact, Adam, according to Genesis 5, verse 4, was 150 years old by the time Eve had Seth.

And so, we can assume there were many other children born to Adam and Eve, perhaps hundreds of children by the time Seth was born.

Alright, so we're not... The Bible's not trying to present a chronology of children born some family tree in that sense. So, it's not for purposes of chronology.

So, why do we have these two families listed here? It's for purpose of comparison. To compare the two. Now, what do we mean by that?

God chose to build world history, the history of mankind, around two families in the broad sense. The family of Cain, the family of Seth.

And so, the comparison is between two families. And so, what's the point? You're wondering. Well, just this. There are still two, just two families today in the spiritual sense.

Or maybe I should put it this way. Two identifiable categories of people in the world today. They're represented by these two families here in Genesis chapter 4.

Just two identifiable categories of people. We might identify them this way. There is the secular family, those who, like Cain, rebelled against God. And then the sacred family, those who, like Seth, worship and obeyed the one true God.

And you cannot find a third category of people in the world today. And these two families, family of Cain, family of Seth, represent those two categories of people in the world today.

Okay? That's why God put this here. Not to give us just bare history, some kind of chronology of things, or the family of Adam and Eve.

They're put here for comparison. And so there are only two families of people in the world today. You're either a rebel against God. I hope there's no one here like that.

I hope no members of that family here tonight. But the fact is, you're either a rebel against God and His Word, or you're a worshiper of the one true God.

And there's no in-between. There's no other category. Alright, so having said that, let's walk through these verses a step at a time. Verse 16, Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord.

And this is a very poignant statement here. He went out from the presence of the Lord. Now, of course, it's obvious the idea here is that Cain lived the rest of his life outside of the presence of God, of Yahweh God.

And you might remember, as we were looking at chapter 4, started looking at chapter 4, you might remember God's curse of Cain. And not only his curse, but also what the Bible says about Cain's response.

This dialogue that Cain had with God when God cursed him and how Cain responded. And if you don't remember, let me just refresh your memory.

So all, in verse 4, or chapter 4 and verse 11, So now you are cursed. This is God speaking to Cain. You are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive, and this is the part I want us to see, a fugitive and a vagabond, or literally a wanderer, you shall be on the earth.

You shall be forever. And Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Surely you have driven me out this day from the face of the ground. I shall be hidden from your face.

I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond, a wanderer on the earth. And it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me. Now, what I want us to kind of see here, understand here, from this dialogue, what God said, what Cain said, is that Cain chose to live away from the presence of God.

He chose that. Same time, God sent Cain to live away from his presence. We have both things here. We have both God's righteous judgment, but we also have Cain's sinful choice.

And the same is true of all, with all who rebel and reject God and His Word. And where did Cain choose to live?

What was the Bible saying? The land of Nod. The land of Nod. That's what it said. He dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden, somewhere east of Eden, on the east of Eden.

Now, where was that? Anybody know? You can't check because it's not anywhere in the Bible.

We don't know where Nod was if Nod was a real place. And, you know, the Hebrew word for Nod, and I may have mentioned this last time, or maybe I mentioned it to someone we were discussing it afterward, but the Hebrew word means wanderer.

That's what the word Nod means. Wanderer, making a pretty clear reference to the curse. I mean, that's what Cain was.

Not only by choice, again, but also by God's judgment, Cain was to be, for the rest of his life, a wanderer somewhere outside the presence of God. It could be, and I'll just throw this out to you because we just really don't know, it could be that Nod is not a specific place geographically at all.

Just consider that. It could mean that wherever Cain hung his hat, and he didn't hang his hat in any one place because he was a wanderer, wherever he stayed at the moment, that was the land of the wanderer.

And it was very likely because of the reference east of Eden, that wherever it was, it was away from the Garden of Eden. And symbolic of away from God, away from his presence.

And so wherever he laid his hat at night, wherever that was, that place was the land of the wanderer because that's where Cain was. And he was a wanderer. Alright, just throw that out to you, and you can study that on your own and come say to me later, Brother Don, you're just wrong about that.

I know exactly where Nod was. But I think you'll find that the Bible nowhere speaks of the place named Nod. Named Nod.

Alright, so Cain became a wanderer. And he did so by his own choice and by the judgment of God. And that's why, by the way, you have no mention of God at all in these verses.

In verses 16. Other than in verse 16 you have the presence of God. But from 17 on to the end of the account of Cain's lineage, Cain's progeny, you don't have any mention of God.

Isn't that interesting? And why is that? Because God had no place in, not only no place in Cain's life, no place in the line of Cain.

No place at all. God has no place in a society that is completely secular. That's why we see less of God in our culture.

Because we become more and more secular and God has no place, no dwelling place in that sense, in a personal way, in a secular society.

So, you know, we think that the systematic removal of God from our culture is some new disturbing trend. It's not. It's old. It's real old. It goes all the way back to Cain.

Started there in the first century. God removed completely from the culture. Cain. It says here, verse 17.

Let's move on. In Cain, it says here, knew, knew his wife. And I don't have to explain to you what that means. You know that. But I would note this.

It says here, his wife, not just a woman. And so, even with Godless Cain, it was understood that the proper relationship between a man and a woman was a husband-wife relationship.

And so, you see, this kind of thing, this thing called marriage, not something that just evolved over time in civilized humanity, you know, as some answer to the adultery problem or whatever.

It's something God ordained. We know that from early on. God performed the first marriage. But even here in the account of Cain, he didn't just go out and find a woman.

He found a wife. That is, they were married. Where did Cain find his wife? The mom. Well, if God was the real place, I guess that's where he found her.

Well, it's obvious that she was one of his sisters. There's no other answer to that. If you believe in an inherent word of God and that you take it literally, the account in Genesis is literal, then where else is he going to find a wife other than among his sisters?

You say, well, that's ridiculous. But that's just what it was. You know, the Bible tells us, by the way, Genesis 5.5, and I mentioned this a while ago, in verse 4 it says Adam was 150 when Seth was born.

But in verse 5 it tells us that Adam lived to be 930 years old. And assuming that Eve lived as long as that, and if it's like it is today, she probably lived a lot longer than that.

Men usually died before their wives, but assuming that Eve lived as long or longer, then she could have had, again, 800, 900, 1,000 children, or more.

And each, of course, they would have children. Yeah, I know, ladies, you can't begin to imagine that.

I can't either. I can't imagine having one. but 800, 900, 1,000, easy in that amount of time. And they would have children, and children, and children, and their children have children, and children, and I'm telling you, I think we need to understand, get the sense of this, that the world population exploded, grew exponentially at a rapid, rapid rate.

And, you know, conservative estimates, just kind of doing some math there, about what could conceivably have happened, given the longevity of life, between the time, by the time you get to the flood, you know, 16, 1700 years there, the earth's population very likely was between 7 and 10 billion people.

Can you imagine? We hear so much talk about overpopulation today, as a matter of fact, I looked it up, the world pop clock that's put out by the U.S.

Census Bureau, the pop clock says as of November 1st, the world population is estimated at 6,972,000, or million, rather, 6,972,000, and a few others, just to round it off.

And yet, by the time of the flood, there could have been as many as 10 billion people on this planet. But in this period of time that we're speaking here, Adam and Eve, and during the earlier days, you know, earlier, how do you call it, 700, 800, 900 years early, but in that time period, many, many, many, many, many, they had many children.

But how could Cain marry his sister? I mean, you know, isn't that dangerous, considering, you know, the risk of terrible deformities and such?

You know, we can't do that today. And, of course, the answer, yeah, is very simple. I think the early days of the human race, during that time, there were no mutant genes in the gene pool.

It was relatively pure at that, in those early days. Now, that rapidly changed, and that's why God gave Moses the laws that would prohibit marrying inside the family, close family members and relatives.

But besides that, where else was Cain going to find his wife? It just wouldn't be anybody else. But I'll throw this out to you. The greater mystery is not where he found his wife and who she might have been.

The greater mystery is how could he find a sister that would marry him? I mean, come on. He was the murderer of her brother.

Now, that in itself, I think, is the bigger mystery, and we can't answer that. Anyway, verse 17, we'll go on from there. And she conceived, Mrs. Cain did, she conceived and bore Enoch.

And in case you're wondering, this is not the same Enoch that we find later in chapter 5, the one that walked with God and was not because he went home with God. Not the same Enoch.

And apparently the list of names that they had in those days wasn't very long. I mean, they didn't have these name books down there, you know, that's five, six hundred pages of names.

They had very few names that were used in that day, I would assume. And so there's a repetition. In fact, there are two repetitions, clear repetitions in the lineages of Cain and Seth.

You have Enoch, that I've already mentioned, and then you have Lamech, he also appears in both genealogies. It's caused some scholars to say, well, there's some kind of mistake here, or whatever.

But it's not unusual to have duplicate names. It's not even unusual in our own society, culture. You know, how many mics do we have in our church?

Not nearly enough. Not nearly enough. When I taught at Odessa Baptist Seminary several years ago in Ukraine, the academic dean of the seminary, his name was Alexander.

My interpreter and good friend there, his name was Alexander. I had three students in my class who were named Alexander.

And I worked with a pastor near there, his name was Alexander and he had at least two men in his church, two leaders in the church. They were also named Alexander. Now, we distinguished the two.

One was a little bigger than the other, so we called one of them little Alexander, but had the same name. Alexander is an extremely popular name in Ukraine. In fact, I read also that in Russia, Ukraine, in that part of the world, some of the former Soviet Union countries, that among the male names, there are only about seven.

That can be pretty confusing. It's confusing for me just with the name Alexander. Then I had several people I met and men that I worked with whose name was Vladimir.

That's very, obviously, very common. Igor had a number of those. A bunch of the sillies.

I'm not sure of the other seven. There's four right there that I know were repeated quite often among male names. So it's not unusual to have a repetition.

So what happened next? Well, the Bible says he built a city. And he called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch.

Cain, at least for a while, I guess, made an attempt to stop his wandering. I think we can understand that.

He decided to settle down. He had a wife and now she's about to have a son. Maybe, as one commentator noted, maybe she just came to her husband, Cain, and said, you know, I'm pretty tired of moving around like this.

We need to settle down. And so, I think that's what happened. So, the Bible says he built a city. But now, more literally, in the grammar, the way this is worded, it actually should say he was building a city.

I hate to admit this because I'm not a big fan of the NIV, but the NIV is the only translation that brings this out in their Hebrew translation. This is how they translate it. You may have an NIV in here.

I'm sorry if I just offended you. But in the NIV, it says, Cain lay with his wife and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. And Cain was then building a city.

That's what it says, was then. When? When she was having Enoch. It was a good time to kind of settle down for a while. I mean, she was pregnant and is getting close and now she has a child and you don't want to just help and move with a little infant.

It just makes sense. So they stayed in one spot. And so that's why the Bible says, then Cain was then building a city and he named it after his son Enoch.

Now when the Bible uses the word city, don't visualize Tulsa or Oklahoma City or any other city that comes to mind where there might be a million people or more living.

Don't visualize that. that's not the idea. In Hebrew the word city means a fenced in place. And that could just be about any size. A little bit more than that.

It would be at least a collection of somewhat permanent dwellings. And it could be two, three, four, five, or more. It doesn't have to be a large thing.

The point is that Cain was building this. And then we need to understand from that grammar that he was building gives us the idea that Cain tried to make a go of it but he just couldn't do it.

And he tried to settle down but he just couldn't. He was cursed. Cursed to be a wanderer. And so he was just building a city for a time.

For that time. And he left it to his son. His son Enoch to I guess maybe even to finish it and to grow it. to govern it. Whatever. And that's why it was named Enoch and not Cain.

Or as I think MacArthur put it that's why they didn't name it Enochville. Or why they named it Enochville and not Cain Town. Because he left it for him to conclude to finish.

The Bible then goes on. Well let me just say this. After he left it to his son. Apparently Cain moved on. But we really don't know anything else.

And that by the way is the last thing we know about Cain. The Bible goes on to tell us more about some of his offspring. Some good things by the way.

And at least one really bad thing. Alright so verse 18. Cain. Cain was born Irad and Irad begot Mahujael and Mahujael begot Methusel and Methusel begot Lamech.

Alright so that's verse 18. So here we have in this one verse verse 18 we have four subsequent generations of Adam making it now a total of seven.

Seven generations we have Adam then Cain then Enoch and now in verse 18 we have Irad Mahujael and Methusel and Lamech.

Alright so seven total. Now these were not the only children born. Again I'll say the same thing that I said about Adam and Eve. These were just simply representative names of each subsequent generation of people.

Then we are given a little bit of information about them. Alright what can we surmise of anything from these names? Well probably very little. We need to realize that these names originally that is when Adam and Eve lived and Cain and had children these names were not in the Hebrew.

Hebrew as a language didn't exist most likely then. But when Moses wrote down the account as it was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit he of course wrote it in the Hebrew tongue for Hebrews to read.

So it's a little difficult to know exactly what the names mean. We may be right but we may be wrong and so if we might be wrong then we ought not make too much of it.

But the name I read in the Hebrew anyway means of the city. means of the city. So it's likely he was a city dweller.

What does that mean? Well not much. Kind of marks the beginning of urbanization. You know they're not living in the country anymore now living in the city.

Beginning of business, commerce, whatever you associate with city dwelling. the names Mahujael and Methusael mean respectively God blots out and violence to God or the violence of God.

And I think the implication there is that sinfulness among this secular line had started to escalate and God's judgment was upon this secular society.

Then comes the name Lamech which means strong man and the Bible has a good bit to say about Lamech and we'll see some of it here and then the rest of it next time.

So verse 19, then Lamech took for himself two wives and that's significant. Here's another first. Lamech apparently introduced bigamy into the human race.

We have no mention of his before this. But it's clear, I think, very clear from Genesis 2.24 that God's design was monogamy.

Not bigamy. In Genesis 2.24 it says a man singular and his wife singular, not his wives plural, shall become one flesh singular.

God's design is monogamy. And by the way, contrary to evolutionists and those that apply the evolutionary theory to society, because you know evolution is applied to every area, every context, contrary to what they say, monogamy did not evolve as the human race evolved.

It started that way. That's the way God intended for it to be. And a bigamy or a husband having more than one wife was never God's intended purpose.

Lamech obviously was not the only one who had more than one wife. Even some of God's people did too, but that was not God's design and desire. all right, so then Lamech had two wives, where are we at on the time?

Just about up. He had two wives and the Bible gives us their names, and so every once in a while we'll have some ladies' names in the Bible, very often it seems.

And why their names are mentioned here, I don't really know. There's been some speculation about it, but the Bible says the name of one was Adah, and the name of the second was Zillah.

And we really can't draw any significance from their names. One commentator said that Adah means ornament, at least it does in the Hebrew.

Again, we don't really know if when Moses was inspired to write, if he just brought the name as a transliteration. We don't know.

But the name Adah means ornament, and Zillah, the name Zillah, means sweet-sounding voice. That's kind of interesting. So I guess Lemaic married one because he liked the way she looked, and he married the other because he liked the way she sounded.

Maybe she had a sweet little voice. I don't know. But that's all we know. But these two wives of Lemaic bore some children. In fact, there are four mentioned here, three sons and one daughter.

And the Bible tells us about the sons, the names of the sons, Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal. When you rattle it out that quickly, then you see, hey, these sound kind of similar.

They all end with A-L on the end, don't they? And then I don't know what happened with the daughter. She's Nehemiah. But the focus is on the sons.

Sorry, ladies, not on the daughter. We don't know anything about the daughter. There's only speculation about what the name means. And so we're just not worried about it. But the sons, each son's name has the same Hebrew stem.

Or, or Al, really is how it should be pronounced. And it means to produce. produce. And that's very fitting because that's what they did. They did produce.

All three of them, they were highly productive. And the Bible tells us what they did. The first one, the Bible says, And Adah bore Jabal, and he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock.

Now, Jabal, then, was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. Actually, the Hebrew word here means livestock.

And so, we're not talking here about shepherd, being a shepherd, a sheep. Sheep may have been included, but that's not the idea. Because this was not new.

Shepherding was already common. You remember Abel had that as his occupation. So, we're not talking about that. We're talking about something more than that. The word includes all domestic animals.

Cattle, sheep, others, other animals. And so, the idea here is that Jabal's expertise was in animal husbandry.

Breeding of livestock, birthing them, techniques for that, feeding, how to feed them and so forth. Even the slaughtering and butchering and how to do that, and skinning of the hives and tang.

It would include everything that had to do with livestock and he became an expert and the Bible was making note of it. you know, when you live hundreds of years, you can learn a lot in hundreds of years.

And if you have livestock and you deal with thousands and thousands and thousands year after year and you begin to experiment, try things and do things and learn a whole lot and that's what Jabal He contributed to mankind that way.

But then Jabal had a brother and his brother's name was Jubal and he, the Bible says, was the father of all those who played the harp and flute.

And so you might say that Jubal was the father of music. And we can, I think, surmise that he invented music. That's why the Bible is mentioning him here in this way.

It's another example of God's common grace. toward humankind. Can you imagine a world without music? Now some of it I can imagine doing without but in fact a whole lot of it I can.

But can you imagine there being no music and God was gracious and introduced music into humankind through an unbeliever, a rejecter of God, Jubal.

And I think he probably invented everything about music and even various instruments and so forth. And then as for Zillah, the other wife, she also bore Tubal Cain, an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron.

And then it mentions his sister Tubal Cain. The sister Tubal Cain was Nehemiah. So the other wife gave birth to Tubal Cain. And it's kind of interesting that with the birth of Tubal, they decided they wanted to honor Cain with his name.

And why would you want to do that? Honor a murderer, a rejecter of God. And it's just an indication of the downward track, the sinfulness, wickedness of this totally secular culture.

Now, Tubal's contribution was metallurgy. He was a scientist, had to have been. Scientist and a miner and I don't know, he just learned these things, worked with these things, and came up with this.

He apparently discovered the raw materials, though maybe God revealed that to Adam and Eve early on, we don't have any idea, but he was able to take those raw materials and smelt them and make iron and refine different metals and he developed the skill to make things out of bronze and iron.

It says all craftsmen, every craftsman in bronze and iron. He was an expert in all of that. By the way, evolutionists, of course, divide history into various ages.

You have the Stone Age, that was the first age, and they marked the time for the Stone Age somewhere around 100,000 B.C., all the way up to 4,000 B.C. Then after the Stone Age comes the Bronze Age, about 3200 B.C.

to 1200 B.C., and then after that we have the Iron Age from 1200 B.C. to 330 B.C. These people say, these experts say.

But here's Tuval Cain doing all of that, probably 6,000 B.C. And there's no Stone Age, no mention of Stone Age in the Bible, no Bronze Age, no Iron Age.

Just one period of time that all this took place. It lasted about 1600 years before the Flood, from Adam to Noah. All of this was developed and apparently passed on to the civilization after the Flood through Noah and his family.

And it was during this time when man worked with stone, I'm sure, but also bronze and iron and these things. And man perfected the breeding of livestock, and he invented music, and he discovered and developed metallurgy, built cities, populated the planet, all during this time, this antediluvian period of time in history before the Flood.

And what we get from this, I mean it's kind of amazing, but it's this, it's God's common grace poured out upon humankind during this period of time that we've all benefited from.

And yet it's all temporal, all material, here and then gone. time. And though we benefit from these things, but they are not our focus, we can live without all of these things.

But God was gracious to give us all these things to enjoy and for the betterment of our civilization. And then we have a fitting epitaph to the lineage of Cain, and that is Lamech, a boasting murderer, and we'll take that up next time.

Thank you.