The Kenites.

"In the days of the Messias they shall add three other cities of refuge. But whence? From the cities of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, and the Cadmonites. Concerning whom God gave a promise to our father Abraham; but they are not as yet subdued."

We may borrow light concerning these nations from those words of Moses, Genesis 10:18, "Afterward the families of the Canaanites were dispersed." First they replenished Phoenicia, and the northern country of the land of Canaan; by little and little, the whole land of Canaan within Jordan. Then they spread themselves into the land which afterwards belonged to the Edomites, and there they were called Horites from mount Hor; and the children of Seir, from Seir the father of those families, he himself being a Canaanite. On the east, they spread themselves into those countries which afterward belonged to the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Midianites; and they were called Kenites, Kenizzites, Cadmonites, from one Cain, one Kenaz, and perhaps one Cadmon, the fathers of those families; if so be the Cadmonites were not so called from the aforesaid causes.

The mention of a certain Cain calls to my mind the town or city Cain, which you see in the maps placed not far from Carmel: in that of Doet, adorned (shall I say?) or disfigured with a Dutch picture of one man shooting another, with this inscription, "Cain was shot by Lamech," Genesis 4. A famous monument forsooth! That place, indeed, is obscure, Genesis 4: and made more obscure by the various opinions of interpreters: and you, Doet, have chosen the worst of all. If the words of Lamech may be cleared from the text, (and if you clear it not from the context, whence will you clear it?) they carry this plain and smooth sense with them: He had brought in bigamy: that also had laid waste the whole world, Genesis 6. For so wretched a wickedness, and which, by his example, was the destruction of infinite numbers of men, divine justice and vengeance strikes and wounds him with the horror and sting of conscience; so that, groaning and howling before his two bigamous wives, Adah and Zillah, he complains and confesseth that he is a much more bloody murderer than Cain, for he had only slain Abel; but he, an infinite number of young and old by his wicked example.