=3. In the Hebrew history=, therefore, names are not to be regarded as mere sounds or combinations of sounds, attached at random to certain objects or persons, so as to become the audible signs by which we distinguish them from each other, but very frequently proper names had a deeper meaning and were more closely connected in men’s thoughts with character and condition than among any other ancient nation with the history and literature of which we are acquainted.[13] Thus it is that, as Archbishop Trench says, words are often the repositories of historical information.[14] CHAPTER III. THE DESCENDANTS OF ADAM. =1. As the history proceeds= it becomes very plain that the descendants of Adam are selected with a purpose, which a general acquaintance with Scripture reveals. That purpose was to record the ancestry of Abraham and so of the children of Israel. Other descendants are occasionally mentioned when any interesting or important event suggests itself to the historian, but the main purpose is never lost sight of. Thus the descendants of Cain are briefly enumerated through his first-born, Enoch, “the teacher,” as his name signifies. He was the first builder of a city, and may, as Geikie suggests, have been the first to teach men “the culture of city life,” or “the elements of physical life.” =2. His descendants= were Irad, “the swift one,” perhaps because of his hunter’s life; Mehujael, “the stricken of God,” for some unrecorded transgression; Methusael, probably bearing the name God in the syllable “el,” and meaning “champion of God,” suggesting some religious act; as if, even among the race of Cain, God “had not left himself without a witness.”[15] =3.= But we find Lamech, “a wild man,” who first =introduces polygamy=, for ever hereafter to be associated in origin with the race of Cain. One of his two wives was named Adah, a Hebrew term for “ornament,” and is found in the compounds Adaiah, “whom Jehovah adorns,” and Maadiah, “ornament from Jehovah.” There must have been a personal attraction which made the name appropriate.