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Once married, Cain begins a family and his firstborn son is named Enoch. Cain also builds a city called Enoch. This is a typical Genesis combination of place and personal names. The notion that Cain builds a city also contradicts the curse that Cain would always be a wanderer; he was actually the founder of the first city. Maybe God issued a parole. Genesis doesn’t say.

At this point in the narrative, two separate genealogies trace the descendants of Cain and his younger brother Seth, born after Abel’s death. The two lists include very similar names and both lists include an Enoch and a Lamech. The Seth list, the more important of the two in that it leads to Noah, also contains specific and fantastic ages for each ancestor.

The Descendants of Adam

Cain

Seth

Enoch

Enosh

Irad

Kenan

Mehujael

Mahalalel

Methushael

Jared

Lamech

Enoch

Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-cain

Methuselah

Lamech

Noah (becomes a father at five hundred years: his sons are Shem, Ham, and Japheth)

Before the introduction of the lineage of Seth, which traces a direct path from Adam to Lamech and then Noah, the list of Cain’s descendants also leads to a Lamech, the Bible’s first known polygamist, who takes two wives and has three sons. In a brief passage, an ancient song tells of Lamech avenging a murder, and it is commonly interpreted as an indication that man is falling into violent and sinful ways. But each of Lamech’s three sons is a skillful innovator: Jabal is the ancestor of the people who live in tents and raise livestock; Jubal is the ancestor of all musicians; and Tubal-cain is the ancestor of metalworkers.

The Seth genealogy, so similar to Cain’s, suggests that both developed out of a more ancient common source. The descendants of the protagonist of the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic are identified in a genealogy of ten individuals, each of whom lived extraordinarily long lives. And, like the ancients of the Bible, these Babylonian generations led up to a great flood.

Do the “sons of God” sleep around in the Bible?

Squeezed in between the generations after Adam and the time of Noah is a curious story (Gen. 6:1-4) about the mysterious “Nephilim,” a group most Sunday school teachers would be at a loss to describe. In a brief biblical episode that echoes the tales of Greek gods who mated with mortal women, the verses describe the “sons of God,” whose identity is unclear, though they might be angels who took wives from the daughters of humans.

After watching these goings-on, God decides this isn’t a good idea and puts a stop to it. God also decides to limit human life spans to 120 years. The biblical passage then calls the offspring of these angelic-human marriages, the Nephilim, the “heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.” Mentioned only once again in Hebrew scriptures, the Nephilim, which literally translates as “the fallen ones,” have a confusing or contradictory fate. Supposedly giants possessing superhuman powers—like the half-divine Hercules of Greek myth—the Nephilim should have been wiped out in the Flood that would soon inundate the earth. But they are still in Canaan during the time of Moses, according to book of Numbers.

Some early theologians saw these “sons of God” and their children, the Nephilim, as the fallen angels who were responsible for sin in the world. But the Nephilim are rather ambiguous. They are either “heroes of old” or the result of naughty intermingling between gods and men. Their mention here, along with God’s decision to limit the life spans of humans, hints at the fact that God is growing impatient with his most annoying creation. And that impatience is about to overflow.

BIBLICAL VOICES

The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people