Who was Tubal-Cain (תּוּבַל קַיִן) in the Bible? | Son of *Lamech* Genesis 4:22

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The Bible tells how Cain, having murdered his brother, escaped from Eden to Nod where his wife bore him a son, Enoch. Cain then built, or started to build, a city and knowing himself to be accursed, he named it after his son Enoch. The succeeding verses then recount the birth of Enoch's grandson, Lamech, with the story of Lamech's two wives, and their four children:
Jabal, the father, or the originator, of the science of tending flocks. (Abel had been a shepherd, but Jabal had widened the class of animals that could be domesticated.)

Jubal, founder of the art of music.
Tubal-cain, inventor of the forge, skilled in brass and ironwork and in cutting instruments.
Naamah. The O.T. text simply names her as Lamech's daughter.

So much for the background, amplified slightly with notes from the early commentaries. The story, in so far as it concerns our present ritual, is derived from the earliest pillar legend incorporated in the historical portion of the MS. Constitutions, our Old Charges. It tells how the four children of Lamech, fearing that the world was to be destroyed by fire or flood, 'took counsel together' and decided to inscribe 'all the sciences' that they had founded, upon two pillars, one of marble and the other of lacerus' (clay-brick), because the one would not burn and the other would not sink in water.

Why Tubal-cain? I would say, because he was the forerunner of H.A.; indeed the O.T. (Gen. 4, v. 22, and I Kings 7, v. 14) uses precisely the same two Hebrew words in describing their craft, [choreish nechosheth] 'a worker in brass'. Tubal-cain was the founder of the craft in which H.A., above all, excelled and he was the direct link between the two earliest pillars and those of Solomon's Temple.

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