Lamech is listed among the descendants of Cain. Often such lists are just a recounting of unfamiliar – and sometimes unpronounceable – names, such as with Lamech’s grandfather and father, Mehujael and Methushael (Genesis 4:18). It’s sometimes hard to make our way through long genealogies, though even when it is just a long list of strange names, we should reckon that someone cared enough to make sure that distant relative was remembered.

Then we get to Lamech, and we find out something about his sons, and we find out that he sang a song to his two wives, Adah and Zillah (4:19-24). Is it a song about how much he loves them? Or a song about how much he loves God? No. It is a song of boasting that he has killed someone.

It seems that some young man had hit and hurt Lamech. Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps it was a mugging. Lamech’s song does not reveal how the incident came about. Lamech decided he needed to get even, and so he killed the fellow. He boasted to his wives that he was avenged 77 times over (4:24), making him far superior to his ancestor Cain, who had had to get by with only the promise of a sevenfold vengeance protecting him (4:15).

We should wonder, though, just how minor the murdered man’s infraction must have been, for Lamech to be able to claim that he had paid the young man back 77 times over. We should also let it speak to us about how we never seem satisfied to get even, in the cycle of revenge. We push to get more than even, to make it plain that we have done to our enemies worse than they could ever do to us.

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Ah Lord God! How much we need you! Help us to lay vengeance aside; help us to recognize that our enemies-du-jour, and we ourselves, are all of us just poor sinners in need of your grace.