Seth and Enoch
63
the day upon which God had rested. They chose their own time for
labor and for rest, regardless of Jehovah’s express command.
Upon receiving the curse of God, Cain had withdrawn from his
father’s household. He had first chosen his occupation as a tiller of the
soil, and he now founded a city, calling it after the name of his eldest
son. He had gone out from the presence of the Lord, cast away the
promise of the restored Eden, to seek his possessions and enjoyment
in the earth under the curse of sin, thus standing at the head of that
great class of men who worship the god of this world. In that which
pertains to mere earthly and material progress, his descendants became
distinguished. But they were regardless of God, and in opposition to
His purposes for man. To the crime of murder, in which Cain had led
the way, Lamech, the fifth in descent, added polygamy, and, boastfully
defiant, he acknowledged God, only to draw from the avenging of Cain
an assurance of his own safety. Abel had led a pastoral life, dwelling in
tents or booths, and the descendants of Seth followed the same course,
counting themselves “strangers and pilgrims on the earth,” seeking “a
better country, that is, an heavenly.”
Hebrews 11:13, 16
.
For some time the two classes remained separate. The race of Cain,
spreading from the place of their first settlement, dispersed over the
plains and valleys where the children of Seth had dwelt; and the latter,
in order to escape from their contaminating influence, withdrew to
the mountains, and there made their home. So long as this separation
continued, they maintained the worship of God in its purity. But in
the lapse of time they ventured, little by little, to mingle with the
inhabitants of the valleys. This association was productive of the worst
results. “The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair.”
The children of Seth, attracted by the beauty of the daughters of Cain’s
descendants, displeased the Lord by intermarrying with them. Many
of the worshipers of God were beguiled into sin by the allurements
that were now constantly before them, and they lost their peculiar,
holy character. Mingling with the depraved, they became like them
in spirit and in deeds; the restrictions of the seventh commandment
were disregarded, “and they took them wives of all which they chose.”
The children of Seth went “in the way of Cain” (
Jude 11
); they fixed
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their minds upon worldly prosperity and enjoyment and neglected the
commandments of the Lord. Men “did not like to retain God in their
knowledge;” they “became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish