People of the Bible (OT)

(Aids to Bible Studies)

The accounts of the people appearing in the early pages of the Bible yield only Slight materials for the delineation of character. What is given suggests that each is placed in the biblical record because of the one leading idea, trait, tendency, or test, that he or she represents. The names are connected with the points of which the persons are examples. Thus the name “Adam” probably means either “ruddy” or “the one made,” and leads in either case to the idea of the origin of man. The name “Eve,” meaning “life,” has in it the suggestion of motherhood, as of one giving life to another. All else that is related of Adam and Eve simply outlines the great facts that belong to all humanity—the childlike, primal innocence, the temptation, the bitter experience of sin, the sorrow and struggle, but at the same time the hope for a brighter future—that mankind are ever exhibiting. The name Abel perhaps means “breath,” suggestive of the fleeting aspect of his career, or it means “son,” a very appropriate term. Cain stands for the worldly tendency, Abel for the spiritual. Enoch, whose name means “dedicated,” and Noah, meaning “rest” or “comfort,” tell of the beginnings of godliness and of human co-operation with the Divine. There is practically now little room to question the fact that the Genesis account places the Garden of Eden in the Euphrates Valley, in the region where the Euphrates and the Tigris come nearest to each other and where the city of Babel or Babylon afterward arose.