ain a man to my wounding,
And a young man to my hurt;
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Truly Lamech seventy and seven fold."

All this is prosaic enough in matter, but the form into which it is
thrown gives it a certain dignity, and impresses it on the memory;
which last object was probably what the author of this sole fragment
of antediluvian literature had in view. He succeeded too--for the
sentiment was handed down, probably orally; and Moses incorporates it
in his narration, perhaps on account of its interest as the first
record of the distinction between willful murder like that of Cain,
and justifiable homicide. It is interesting also to observe the same
parallelism of style, no doubt with the same objects, in many old
Egyptian monumental inscriptions, which, however grandiloquent, are
scarcely poetical.[11] It also appears in that ancient record of
creation and the deluge recently rescued from the clay tablets of
Nineveh.

Now in the first chapter of Genesis, and the first three verses of
chapter second, being the formal general narrative of creation, on
which, as we shall see, every other statement on the subject in the
Bible is based, we have this peculiar parallelism of style. If we ask
why, the answer must, I think, be--to give dignity and symmetry to
what would otherwise be a dry abstract, and still more to aid memory.
This last consideration, perhaps indicating that this chapter, like
the apology of Lamech, had been handed down orally for a long period,
connects itself with the theory of the pre-Abrahamic origin of these
documents to which reference has already been made.

The form of the narrative, however, in no way impairs its precision
or accuracy of statement. On this Eichhorn well says: "There lies at
the foundation of the first chapter a carefully designed plan, all
whose parts are carried out with much art, whereby its appropriate
place is assigned to every idea;" and we may add, whereby every idea
is expressed in the simplest and fewest words, yet with marvellous
accuracy, amounting to an almost scientific precision of diction, for
which both the form into which it is thrown and the homogeneous and
simple character of the Hebrew language are very well adapted. Much of
this indeed remains in the English version, though our language is
less perfectly suited than the Hebrew for the concise announcement of
general truths of this description. Our translators have, however,
deviated greatly