immediately after the fall upon the ground for man's sake, from that moment commenced its effects upon our guilty parents-Thorn and thistle began their growth upon the ground, and man went forth to eat bread by the sweat of his face.

And as it was declared to Adam after the fall, that the earth should not yield to him its productions but by severe labour and toil, so also against Cain, after his additional sin, that of murder, was a similar curse denounced, but to a more extended degree. In the fourth chapter of Genesis, after the description of the murder of Abel, we read the denunciation of God against guilty Cain. "And now art thou cursed from the earth (—ab humo— from the ground), which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest Tл8, the ground, it shall not henceforth yield* unto thee her strength. A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be y, in the earth +."-Here we perceive a former general curse magnified in one particular instance

•л. It shall not add to give.-poolne -LXX.-addet-the same word as in Gen. iv. 2. xxv. 1. and 2 Kings xxiv. 7. translated “again.”

+ Gen. iv. ii. 12.

for the punishment of one particular individual. While Adam by his toil should obtain his food for his support from the spot of ground, which he might take to himself to cultivate, Cain on the contrary should find, that the ground which he had undertaken to till for himself should yield no more any produce, however great might be his labour upon it: and moreover, that he should no longer remain with his family, but should be a fugitive from them, and a vagabond in the earth.

The third instance, in which the curse of God upon the ground occurs, in the twenty-ninth verse of the 5th chapter of Genesis, as cited by Mr. Penn, comes now under our consideration. "This same" (not this "child," as Mr. Penn has most inaccurately quoted from "our common English version," as he has also, doubtless unintentionally, translated the corresponding word ouros, this same, from the text of the LXX.)"This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands because of the ground" (not "earth" according to Mr. Penn,) "which the Lord hath cursed." Now it appears to me that the following would be the more correct way of rendering this passage-translating it from the Hebrew text, instead of following, with Mr. Penn, that of the LXX.-This same shall refresh us from our work and toil of our

hands*, from the ground, which the Lord hath cursed-that is, through this Noah we shall obtain ease from the labour and toil of our hands which we have hitherto experienced, and still experience, from the ground, which the Lord cursed at the fall by rendering. it productive only by the greatest labour-by the sweat of the face-a sense, in which Castellio, in his translation, understands it: "Hic nos recreabit a negociis nostris et manuum laboribus, quos nobis exhibet terra a Jova infelicitata."

As Eve, at the birth of her first-born, Cain, exclaimed, "I have gotten a man from : the Lord +," or, as it has been translated by some, "I have gotten a man, the Jehovah," thereby supposing that she had borne the promised seed; and as a similar meaning is generally attached to her expression at the birth of Seth ; it is most probable, in the present case, that Lamech, at the birth of Noah, imagined that He should be the promised seed, who should restore

* Not - the kαι anо тns yns of the LXX., but TNT-the same words which are translated in our English version, in Gen. iv. 10. " from the ground," and in Gen. iv. 11. "from the earth." If the LXX. translated from a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures, which read, may not that copy have been incorrect in this 29th verse of Gen. v.?

to them the blessings of Paradise, and thereby ease them of their labour and toil *.

From the circumstance of Eve's supposing that, in the birth of Cain and afterwards of Seth, she had gotten the promised seed, it cannot with any degree of probability be thought, that Adam, by transgression shut out from all converse with his Maker immediately after the fall, was made acquainted beforehand even with the death of his own son Abel, which happened in so short time after that event, much less of that dreadful calamity which should overwhelm so many of his posterity after the lapse of so great a number of yearst. And had that event been

*I am aware that this passage (Gen. v. 29.) has been considered by many to signify, that it was revealed by God to Lamech before the birth of Noah, that his son should be an husbandman-a planter of vineyards, and thus, by the introduction and use of wine, he should be the means of giving comfort and refreshment to his family and descendants. But such an interpretation I conceive to be scarcely tenable for the cultivation of the vine is attended with labour and toil, and its produce (as it was in the case of Noah himself) may be abused to excess. And it would seem, that a circumstance so trivial in its nature would hardly be the subject of an immediate reve lation from God as affording matter for comfort to Lamech's family and race.

+ Such an interpretation is indeed opposed to the ideas of our immortal bard upon this subject: but the biblical student will consider well the claims of the fictions of Poetry, however beautiful or ingenious, for removing the doubts or supplying the deficiencies of Sacred History.

revealed to Lamech at the birth of Noah, it would not surely be a source of comfort or ease to him to foreknow, that all his children and their families, and the whole human race, with the exception of Noah and his family only, should perish by the waters of a flood.

From the preceding considerations therefore I am induced to conclude, that Mr. Penn's argument on this subject is wholly untenablethat whatever might have been the nature of the threatened curse, of which we read in the Prophet Malachi, a curse which, in its primary sense, had reference not to the earth in general, but to the land of Judea only, no notice of the flood (for there is none recorded) was given but to Noah five hundred years after his birth, when men began to multiply, and the wickedness of men was great in the earth—that the purpose of God to destroy the world was not made known, until one hundred and twenty years before that destruction took place, according to the express declaration of Scripture *-and that such overwhelming punishment is spoken of in the sacred volume as a curse only after its termination, where the Almighty promises, that He will not again destroy the world by a similar calamity.