What Does Genesis 4:26 Mean?
And to Seth, to him also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call out in the nature of the LORD.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.THE KEY
The same Hebrew verb names Enosh and calls upon the LORD, linking human mortality to a voice that turns toward divine nature.
THE MEANING
Your mortality is named without being hidden, and your voice still has somewhere to turn. To call on the LORD’s name is to call on the nature carried in that name, not merely to repeat a formula.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that mortality closes the story: here, the mortal is named, and people begin calling on the LORD’s nature.
THE ROOT
וַיִּקְרָא
wayyiqra
GROWS FROM
ק־ר־א
q-r-ʾ
To call, summon, or proclaim.
“call out” in this verse is wayyiqra. The Hebrew repeats qara: first a man calls the child Enosh, then people begin to call on the LORD’s name. English makes these sound like separate uses of “call”; the shared root links naming and invocation, with the LORD’s name carrying nature.
ALSO GROWS
qeri’ah: A calling or reading aloud.
קְרִיאָה
This branch keeps the voice audible: calling on the LORD’s name is speech that expresses what that name holds.
miqra: A convocation or assembly.
מִקְרָא
A calling can gather people together, opening the verse’s repeated call into a shared turning toward the LORD’s nature.
אֱנוֹשׁ
Enosh
GROWS FROM
אנשׁ
ʾ-n-sh
To be weak or frail; the root also describes grievous sickness.
“Enos” in this verse is Enosh. Enosh is more than a personal label: its name is bound to mortal humanity. The scene places the beginning of calling amid human fragility, where the LORD’s nature becomes the name toward which people call.
ALSO GROWS
enosh: A mortal human being.
אֱנוֹשׁ
The name carries the vulnerability of human life into the verse’s first act of calling.
anush: Grievously sick or incurable.
אָנֻשׁ
This related form keeps the root’s sense of frailty visible beneath the name Enosh.
THE PATTERN
When vulnerable human life calls on the LORD’s name, the call opens toward deliverance.
And he pulled up from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and stretched out his tent, with Bethel to the west and Hai to the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD, and called upon the nature of the LORD.And in the nature of the LORD I call; O LORD, please, let my living soul slip free.For everyone who calls upon the nature of the LORD will be delivered.THE THREAD
And the LORD passed by before his face, and called out, The LORD, The LORD God, compassionate and full of favor, slow to flare, abounding in faithful love and truth,The Hebrew verb translated “proclaimed” is qara, the same root repeated in Genesis 4:26. Here the LORD’s name is spoken together with the qualities carried in it, opening the phrase “call upon the name” as a call toward the LORD’s nature.
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