Adam and Eve no longer had any boys living with them. Abel was dead. Cain lived far away. It seemed like there was no more hope for the woman’s seed. Then Seth is born. He followed in Abel’s footsteps and served the Lord in love. The Lord God gave Seth so that in this way the way to the Saviour would be kept open.
We then see how the seed of the woman developed further over against the serpent’s seed. Seth received a son from the Lord and named him Enosh. Through this naming Seth confessed his faith, his dependence on the Lord. For the name Enosh means weakness, frailty. This is so different from the self-conceit and arrogance of Lamech. The seed of the serpent shows evermore in their development how they rely on themselves, whereas the seed of the woman, the people of God, confess their own weakness. They expect their protection, future, and redemption from the Lord.
The last part of Genesis 4:26 also points in that direction, At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.
Notice that we find here the name of the Lord: Yahweh. Doesn’t that contradict what we read in Exodus 3:13 and Exodus 6:2? In the texts in Exodus, we read that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know the name Lord.
The point of these texts is that God’s children did not know the full meaning of the name Lord
at that time. They did use the name, but its significance was still obscure to them.
People began to invoke the name of the Lord. To avoid a misunderstanding, that does not mean that they only started praying at that time. This is not about ordinary prayer but about calling together, worshipping the Lord together. You could say that you are dealing here with the first church service in history. It is the time when God’s people, unlike the seed of the serpent, begin to worship the Lord together. We see other examples of public and communal worship of the Lord in the book of Genesis in Genesis 12:8; Genesis 13:4; Genesis 21:33; Genesis 26:25.
The seed of the serpent allows itself more and more to be governed by the survival of the fittest. On the other hand, the seed of the woman worships the Lord together and in its own weakness people seek the strength and help of the Almighty. Here one may see the difference between two kinds of people as expressed in Psalm 20:7 - Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in (or: will remember) the name of the Lord our God.
25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.”