Introduction.

[extreme] wickedness and ruin: For no sooner had our first Parents fallen and their punishment been set before Gen. 3:15. their eyes, than there immediately followed a merciful promise of redemption: I will put enmity between your seed and her seed, and that same shall crush your head. original: "Ik wil vyantschap setten tusschen uwen zade ende haren zade, en dat selve sal u den kop vertreden." This is the "Protoevangelium," considered by many theologians to be the first gospel promise in the Bible. So it was that, being nourished and awakened by this hope, they applied that same promise to the Gen. 4: 1. first son they obtained: Eve saying, I have obtained the man of the Lord, although it was not this one referring to Cain, and things turned out quite differently for him; indeed, [the promise] much more concerned the other, namely Abel, who presented an Image of the future Shepherd who would be killed through the envy of his brothers, just as it indeed came to pass.

Gen. 6: 2. Meanwhile, the world fell more and more into sins and injustices, and it seemed as though God had withdrawn His hand and completely forgotten to put His holy purpose into action; the wantonness and wickedness of the flesh increased, and the human race was as if clouded by a mist of sins. Yet in the midst of this Year of the World [Anno Mundi] 987. The "Anno Mundi" calendar counts years from the creation of the world; 987 AM would be roughly 3000 years before the common era. darkness, God showed an example of faith, and a living expression that He had prepared a Heavenly dwelling for His own, when He took from the earth the pious Enoch, which could serve as a great comfort to upright hearts. Meanwhile, seeing the evil still increasing, they were constantly waiting for a redeemer, comforter, and savior, whom they looked forward to with Year 1056. great longing: Lamech, the son of Methuselah, when he had seen the world in its corruption for one hundred and eighty-two years and was obtaining a son, spoke: This one shall comfort us in Gen. 5: 29. our toil and labor on the earth, which the Lord has cursed, calling him Noah for that reason. Yet he was not yet the one who was to come, but just as the stars in the Heaven bear witness to a grea- The text likely continues "great light" or "great sun," returning to the metaphor used on the next page.