Lamech | |
|---|---|
 Lamech holding the infant Noah, byJames Tissot | |
| Children | Noah, and other sons and daughters |
| Father | Methuselah |
Lamech (/ˈleɪmɪk/;[1]Hebrew:לֶמֶךְLemeḵ, inpausaלָמֶךְLāmeḵ;Greek:ΛάμεχLámekh) was apatriarch in thegenealogies of Adam in theBook of Genesis. He is part of thegenealogy of Jesus in Luke 3:36.[2]
And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son:
And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters:
And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years: and he died.
Lamech is the eighth-generation descendant ofAdam (Genesis 5:25), the son ofMethuselah, and the father ofNoah (Genesis 5:29), in the genealogy ofSeth in Genesis 5. In Genesis 5:12-25, Lamech was a son of Methuselah, who was a grandson ofJared, who was a grandson ofKenan descended from Adam.[3]
Genesis 5:28–31 records that Lamech was 182[4] (according to theMasoretic Text; 188 according to the Septuagint[5]) years old at the birth of Noah and lived for another 595[5] years, attaining an age at death of 777[5] years, five years before theFlood in the Masoretic chronology. With such numbers in this genealogical account, Adam would still have been alive for about the first 56 years of Lamech's life.
InIslam,Lāmik (Arabic: لامك) is also mentioned inIslam in the various collections oftales of the prophets who precededMuhammad, which mentions him in an identical manner. He is the father of theislamic prophetNuh.
When Lamech named his son Noah, he prophesied: "This[same] shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed." (Genesis 5:29) The people were cumbered with the toil of cultivating a ground that had been cursed inGenesis 3:17, and they hoped for relief through Noah.Albert Barnes noted: "In stating the reason of the name, they employ a word which is connected with it only by a second remove. נוּח nûach and נחם nācham are stems not immediately connected; but they both point back to a common root נח (n-ch) signifying 'to sigh, to breathe, to rest, to lie down.'"[6] At Noah's sacrifice in the new world after the flood, the LORD said, "I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart[is] evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done."[7]
According to a local Afghan legend, Lamech was buried 50 km (31 mi) fromMihtarlam.Ghaznavid SultanMahmud of Ghazni built a tomb and gardens over the presumed burial site. Mihtarlam itself is said to be named after Lamech.[8][9]
Lamech is portrayed byMarton Csokas in the 2014 filmNoah, handing his son the skin of theserpent who trickedAdam and Eve to eat theForbidden Fruit inthe Garden of Eden, before he is murdered byTubal-cain with abattle axe.
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