"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 L[)e]m[)e]ch, 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
_L[)e]_, the prefixed preposition, and of _mech_, taken for the participle
Hophal of the verb to smite or bruise. Adah, [Hebrew: 'DH], is _ornament_;
Zillah, [Hebrew: TSLH] may mean the _shade_ under which a person reposes;
or if the doubling of the _l_ is an indication that its root is [Hebrew:
TSLL], it may mean a dancer.