(12) But the Cainites also had to boast: for they had among them the very wisest men in all kinds of worldly dealings, also the very most beautiful glorifiers and hypocrites, who caused much trouble to the true church and plagued the holy patriarchs in many ways, so that we can justly count them among the very holiest martyrs, who have constantly confessed God and his word. For as Moses indicated above, the Cainites outnumbered them early on in strength and skill. Although they had to shy away from their father Adam, they nevertheless tried various ways and means to suppress the true church of the pious, especially since the first patriarch Adam died. For this reason they have caused the punishment of the Flood all the sooner with their godless nature and have pulled it over their necks.
(13) But the violence and wickedness of the Cainites served this purpose and caused the holy patriarchs to teach their church all the more faithfully and diligently. For how many mighty sermons they will have preached throughout that time! At the same time Adam and Eve often spoke of the first blessed state and glory in Paradise, and diligently warned their descendants against the serpent, who had caused so much misfortune through sin. How diligently they will have explained the promise of the seed! How bravely and courageously will they have comforted their own and given them courage that they should not let themselves be overcome by the honor and violence of the Cainites, nor by their misery and misfortune!
14 Moses omits all these things, because it is too long and too extensive to write.
and will keep the revelation of these things until that day of eternal glory and redemption.
15 Thus he describes the Flood, which was cruel and horrible. For he willed that each one should think more diligently about such great things.
(16) So then, he has recently described and shown the form of the first and initial world, which was exceedingly good, and yet had a great multitude of the very worst people: so that not more than eight men were saved in the flood. What do we think will happen before the last day, because now that the gospel has come to light and has been revealed, there are so many who despise it that it is to be feared they will gain the upper hand in a short time and make the world full of error, and the word will be completely destroyed?
For Christ says a terrible word Luc. 18, 8: "When the Son of Man comes, do you think that he will also find faith?" and Matth. 24, 37. he compares the last times of Noah, which is all terribly said. But the world is secure and ungrateful, despises all promises and threats of God, is full of all sins and becomes more and more angry and perverse day by day. For after the kingdom and power of the pope, who ruled the world only with fear of punishment, have ceased among us, the people, despising the pure doctrine, are now becoming vain unreasonable animals and beasts; the holy and pious teachers and preachers are becoming fewer and fewer, and everyone is indulging in his lusts. But it will come about that the last day will attack the world like a thief, 2 Petri 3, 10., and will seize and creep up on the people in security, ambition, tyranny, fornication, avarice and all kinds of vices.
(18) And because Christ himself said it before, let us not think that it is fictitious. For since the first world, which had so many excellent patriarchs, is so miserably corrupt, what have we not to fear in such weakness of nature? Therefore, may God grant us that in the faith and confession of His Son Jesus Christ we may soon
may be gathered to these fathers and die within twenty years, that we may not see such abominable misery and distress of the last times, both spiritual and bodily, amen.
Second part.
From Adam and his son Seth.
V. 1. This is the book of man's generation.
(19) Adam, as follows, is a common name of the whole human race, but for the sake of honor it is applied to Adam alone; for it is like an origin of the human race. The word sepher means a sight and comes from saphar, which means to tell. The book of the lineage of Adam is called: the narration of the lineage of Adam or his descendants.
Since God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.
From these words the blinded Jews have taken cause to fable, how Adam slept with his Eve in paradise the day he was created, from which she became pregnant. They have many such fables. For as far as the understanding of divine scripture is concerned, one must not expect anything pure or wholesome from them.
21 But Moses says it because he wants to tell Adam's time completely and count the days of his life from the day he was created, so that he may show that there was no generation before Adam. Because one must keep difference between the procreation and creation. Before Adam there was no procreation, but only the creation. Therefore Adam and Eve were not born, but created and the same directly from God Himself. But he adds: "In the image of God he made him", so that one should understand, when he will say afterwards that he begot Seth, that he counts his years from the first day in which he was created.
(22) What God's likeness or image means, we have said above. And even though the teachers almost all understand God's likeness and image to be one thing, as far as I know, it is not the same thing.
through diligent attention, there is a difference between these two words. For zelem they have actually called an image, or figure. As when the Scripture says, "Tear down the altars of your images," the word zelem means nothing other than a figure or image that is set up. But humility, which means a likeness, is a perfect image. As an example, when we speak of a dead image, as on a penny or coin, we say that it is the image of Brutus or Caesar etc.; but the same image does not therefore look quite like and resemble Brutus and Caesar.
23. because Moses says that man is also made in the likeness of God, he indicates that man is not only similar and like God in that he has reason or understanding and a will, but that he is also conformed to God, that is, he has such a will and understanding, so that he understands God and so that he wills what God wills etc.
(24) If man, created in such a perfect image and likeness of God, had not fallen, he would have lived in eternal joy and gladness, and would have had a cheerful and firm will to obey God. But through sin, both the likeness and image of God were lost; yet it is restored to some extent through faith; as Paul says Eph. 4, 23. Col. 3, 10. For we begin to know God, and the Spirit of the Lord Christ helps us to desire to be obedient to God's commandments.
(25) Although we have only the firstfruits of such gifts, this new creature in us only rises, but is not brought to perfection, because we are in this flesh. The will to praise God, to give thanks, to confess, to be patient etc. arises to some extent, but only after the firstfruits. For the flesh follows its kind after that which is its, and the things that are God's it resists: so such gifts in us only begin to be repaid, but the tithes or perfection of this conformity will come to us in the life to come, after the sinful flesh has been submerged and destroyed by death.
V. 2. He created them male and female, and blessed them, and called their name man, at the time they were created.
(26) Above I said that the common name Adam or Man was given to Adam alone for the sake of honor and excellence. And here I leave undone the Rabbis who say that no man can be called Adam or Man unless he has a wife; item, neither can a woman be Adam or Man unless she has a husband. Such things may have flowed from the teachings of the fathers, but the Jews falsify them with their foolish delusions and thoughts.
27 But Moses remembered the blessing to show that it was not taken from man for sin; even as this gift of childbearing and dominion remained to Cain, though he had slain his brother.
V. 3. And Adam was an hundred and thirty years old, and begat a son in his own image, and called his name Seth.
(28) Moses does not remember Abel, for he departed without an heir and is presented to us as an example of the resurrection of the dead. Neither does he remember Cain, because he was cut off from the line of Christ for sin and was cast out of the true church.
29 The Scriptures do not indicate what Adam did with Eve during these hundred years. Some of our commentators, however, add another hundred years that Adam should have lived with Eve before Cain slew his brother Abel, and thus give Adam two hundred and thirty years before he begat Seth. But this seems to me to be believable, as I have also told above that the pious parents have suffered these hundred years and have mourned the great accident of their house. For after Adam was first cast out of paradise, he begat children, sons and daughters, who were like him, and perhaps Abel was at his thirty years when he was struck dead. Thus it can be seen that the children were not much younger than their parents, who were not born, but created.
(30) Therefore I believe that the pious parents gave room to their sorrow and abstained from childbearing, not of the opinion, as the Jews lie, that Adam, like a monk, had vowed eternal chastity, and would also have kept it, if he had not been commanded by an angel to sleep with his wife again. But such fables belong to the Roman pope, he is worthy of them and nothing better. But Adam was not so godless; for that would have meant to avenge his heartache and to throw away the gift of blessing, which God has left to nature even after sin. Such a thing was not in Adam's power; for God had created him, as Moses indicates, as a man who needed a wife, and had in his nature an instinct, given by God, to beget children. If he now abstained from this, he abstained in such a way that he wanted to leave his grief and heartache, which he had from this miserable fall of his children, alone for a while, but in his own time he wanted to come back to his Eve.
(31) But the fact that Moses says of Adam, "He begat a son in his own image," is disputed by many theologians. But this is the simple opinion that Adam was created in the image and likeness of God or was an image, created by God and not born; for he had no parents. He did not remain in this image, but fell out of it through sin. Therefore Seth, who is born afterwards, is not born in the image of God, but in the image of his father Adam, that is, he is not only like his father with mouth and nose, as one speaks, but he is also like him, so that he does not only have eyes, ears, mouth and nose, fingers, speech, and gestures etc. like his father, but he is also like him with other characteristics, both of body and soul, with manners, nature, and will etc. In all this Seth does not have God's likeness, which Adam had and lost again, but he leads his father Adam's likeness; and this is an image and likeness not created by God, but begotten from Adam.
This image includes the original sin and the punishment of eternal death, which fell from Adam because of sin. Just as Adam, through faith in the future Seed, was restored to his lost image, so God also raised up the image of Seth, after he had grown up, through the Word; as Paul also says in Gal. 4:19: "But I bear you again with fears, until Christ take form in you."
(33) As for the name Seth, I have said above that it is to be taken as a command, namely, that it is a word to wish one good fortune and foretell good things, as if Adam had wanted to say: Cain has not only fallen, but has also brought down his brother; so now let God grant that this son may sit, stand and be laid as a certain foundation, which the devil may not overthrow. Such a blessing, wish or prayer is included in this name.
V. 4, 5: And after that he lived eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: and all his days were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
This is also a part of the blessed state in the first time of the world, that the people have become so old and have lived long, which, if we wanted to compare it with our lifetime now, is unbelievable. But it is asked, how and from where it has come that the people have lived so long? And I am not displeased that some say that nature was better then and everything that was used for food and drink was healthier. They also kept to the most moderate food and drink; it is unnecessary to say how much this alone contributes to health.
35 Although the bodies were much healthier then than they are now, the members were not as completely strong and vigorous as they were before the fall in paradise. But this blessing of the body was also helped by the fact that after sin they were regenerated and born again through faith in the promised Seed; therefore, through this faith sin also became weaker.
And as far as we have now come from such righteousness of faith, so much have we also lost from the strength and powers of our bodies.
(36) As for the nourishment of the body, it is well to believe that at the same time an apple, a fruit, was more noble and worked more wholesome nourishment than now and lousy; so also the roots, which they used, had more odor, strength and taste than they have now. And so all these things, namely, holiness and righteousness, temperance, good fruits, healthy and pure air, served and helped to long life, until the new order of God came, by which much of the life of men departed and it became less.
(37) But now, if we will diligently look at and consider our lives, our bodies are more corrupted than nourished by eating and drinking. For how much less and worse have the plants and fruits become, because we live in the highest intemperance? Our first parents, however, first lived moderately, and then chose for food and drink only that which was convenient and useful for the nourishment and strengthening of the body. But now there is no doubt that after the flood all fruits will be worse than before; as we see now and in our time that all things go bad and decrease. There is not so great a difference between the wine and fruit of the Flood and ours as there is between the fruit before the Flood and that which grew out of the salty and rotten ground after the Flood.
(38) Such and such other things are reported by some to have been the causes of such a long life, which I do not disapprove of. I am satisfied with the fact that God wanted people to live so long in the best part of the world. And let us see that God, as Peter says in 2 Epist. 2, 4, 5, did not want to spare even the first world, just as He did not spare the angels in heaven. It is such a horrible and terrible thing about sin. Sodom and Gomorrah are the best part of the earth.
and yet they perished because of sin, Gen. 19:24. Thus the Scriptures everywhere point to the greatness of sin and exhort to the fear of God.
39 Thus we have the reason or rather the origin of the human race, namely Adam with his Eve, from whom is born Seth, the first branch of this tree. Since Adam lived eight hundred years after Seth was born, he saw and had a great generation from that time on. And this was also the time of the righteousness renewed by the promise of the future seed. But after that time, when men multiplied, and the children of God were mixed with the daughters of men, the world began to be evil and corrupt, and the glory and majesty of the holy patriarchs were despised.
(40) But it is a lovely spectacle, if you do not mind the effort of reckoning, when you see how in the same first age of the world so many gray patriarchs lived with each other. For if you diligently add up the years of our first father Adam, you will see that he lived longer than fifty years with Lamech, who was Noah's father. Therefore Adam saw all his descendants up to the ninth generation, all of whom had innumerable sons and daughters; which Moses does not tell, but suffices himself that he counted the tribe and the next branches up to Noah.
(41) But there were undoubtedly many brave and high saints in the same number, whose histories, if we had them, would far surpass all the histories of the world. For the exit of the children of Israel from Egypt, the passage through the Red Sea, through the Jordan, the prisons and redemption etc. are nothing in comparison. But as the first world has perished, so have the histories of the same perished with it. So now the most distinguished history is the Flood, whereas the others are all barely a speck. But from the first world we have nothing more, than the names, which are nevertheless also signs of the most important stories.
Perhaps Eve also lived until the eight hundredth year and saw such a great generation. But what care, diligence and work did she have to visit, adorn and teach her children and grandchildren? What cross, sighing and misery will she have had because of the fact that the Cainite family has so violently opposed the true church? But some of them were also converted by accidental grace.
Therefore, it was a very golden time, whereas our time can hardly be called filthy and dirty, since nine patriarchs lived at the same time with all their descendants and were one in the doctrine of the promise of the seed. All this Moses recently indicates, but does not explain it according to the length, otherwise it would be a history over all histories.