ils. And therefore it was that he thus
exulted with joy at the birth of this his son, predicted good things,
and called upon others to join him in the same hope. His thoughts did
not dwell upon the plow, nor upon oxen, nor upon other trivial things
of the kind pertaining to this present life, as the blind Jews rave.
He was really filled with the hope that this his son Noah was that
seed to come which should restore the former blessed state of
paradise, in which there was no curse. As if he had said: Now we feel
the curse in the very labors of our hands. We toil and sweat in
cultivating the earth, yet it yields us in return nothing but briers
and thorns. But there shall arise a new and happy age. The curse on
the earth which was inflicted on account of sin shall cease, because
sin shall cease. This is the true meaning of the text before us.

80. But the holy father was deceived. The glory of bringing about that
renewal belonged, not to the son of a man but to the Son of God. The
rabbins are silly. Although the earth is not dug by the hands of men,
but by the use of oxen, yet the labor of man's hand has not ceased.
Enoch, by his translation, does not disclose the solace of bodily
easement, agreeable to the belly, but deliverance from sin and death.
Lamech hoped, in addition, for the restoration of the former state. He
believed to see the inauguration of this change in his grandfather
Enoch, and felt assured that the deliverance, or the renewal of all
things, was close at hand. Just so Eve, as we have already observed,
when she brought forth her first-born son Cain, said, I have gotten a
man with the help of Jehovah, one who shall take away all these
punishments inflicted on sin, and bring about our restoration. But,
like Eve, the good and holy Lamech was deceived in his ardent longing
for the restoration of the world.

81. All these anxieties plainly show how those holy patriarchs longed
for, hoped for, and sighed for, that great "restitution of all
things," Acts 3, 21. Although they herein erred, even as Eve erred and
was deceived with respect to Cain, this desire for deliverance in
itself, was of the Holy Spirit, and proved the truth and constancy of
their faith in the promised seed. When Eve named her son Cain, and
when Lamech called his son Noah, these names were but birth cries, as
the apostle represents them, of the whole creation, groaning and
travailing in pain together, and earnestly expecting the resurrection