Lamech's Song of Vengeance

I stumbled onto this passage while researching escalation of violence in ancient texts. Lamech sings a poem to his wives about killing a young man who wounded him - and he frames it as justified retaliation. The tone is braggadocio, like he's proud of his disproportionate response.

What's eerie is how this sits in the genealogy after Cain and Abel, after God marked Cain with protection precisely because vengeance spirals out of control. Lamech embodies exactly what God was warning against - the human tendency to make justice into dominance, to turn defense into massacre.

The passage doesn't condemn him explicitly, which is part of its power. It just shows him, and we're meant to see the trajectory. This is what humanity looks like seven generations from the first murder, without repentance or restraint. In my work with incarcerated men, I see Lamech alive and well. They can articulate exactly why their violence was justified. The passage suggests that justification itself might be the problem.