למך

Lamech is the father who saw in his son the comfort from the curse of the ground. The son of Methuselah and the father of Noah, he stood at the end of the chain of generations before the flood, and at his son's birth he uttered a prophecy of hope: 'this one will comfort us from our work and from the toil of our hands, from the ground which God has cursed' (Genesis 5:29). For the comfort he named him Noach.

Ever since Adam's sin the ground was cursed, 'by the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread,' and the labor was hard and bitter. Lamech hoped his son would bring relief, and tradition tells that indeed in Noah's days tools were found that eased the farmer's work, and some say the true comfort was that Noah saved the world from the flood and began it anew.

Lamech died a little before the flood, and saw neither the calamity nor the salvation. He carried a hope that was fulfilled only after his departure, like many who sowed a seed whose fruit is eaten by generations that never knew them.

What do we learn from him? That a person can carry a great hope for the next generation even when he will not merit to see it fulfilled. Lamech teaches that a parent gives his child not only life but a mission and a hope, and that sometimes the comfort we yearn for arises only in the generation after us, from a seed we sowed and did not reap.