And Lamech said unto his wives,—
"Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech,
For I have slain a man to my wounding,
And a young man, to my hurt.
If Cain shall be avenged seventy-fold,
Truly Lamech, seventy and seven-fold."
The construction is more favourable to the belief that the man of line third is the same as the young man of the parallel clause, than that he had slain two; the word rendered hurt is properly a wheal, the effect of a severe strife or wound.
As to the etymologies of the names mentioned by Mr. Crossley, we gather from God's words that she called her first son Cain, an acquisition (the Latin peculium expresses it more exactly than any English word), because she had gotten (literally acquired, or obtained possession of) a man. As for Lamech, or more properly Lĕmĕch, its etymology must be confessed to be uncertain; but there is a curious and interesting explanation of the whole series of names of the patriarchs, Noah's forefathers, in which the name of the other Lemech, son of Methusaleh, is regarded as made up of Lĕ, the prefixed preposition, and of mech, taken for the participle Hophal of the verb to smite or bruise. Adah,
אדה