242. This text greatly favors the opinion of those who believe that Adam was created in the region of Damascus, and that, after he was driven out of paradise for his sin, he lived in Palestine; and hence it was in the midst of the original paradise that Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jericho stood, in which places Jesus Christ and his servant John chiefly dwelt. Although the present aspect of those places does not altogether bear out that conclusion, the devastations of the mighty deluge were such as to change fountains, rivers and mountains; and it is quite possible that on the site which was afterward Calvary, the place of Christ's sacrifice for the world's sin, there stood the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the same spot being marked by the death and ruin wrought by Satan and by the life and salvation wrought by Christ. 243. It is not without a particular purpose, therefore, that Daniel uses the striking expression: "The end thereof (of the sanctuary, the sacrifice and the oblation) shall be with a flood," Dan 9, 26. As if he had said, The first paradise was laid waste and utterly destroyed by the mighty deluge, and the other, future paradise, in which redemption is to be wrought, shall be destroyed by the Romanists as by a flood. 244. We may carry the analogy further by stating that as Babel was the cause of the destruction of the Jewish people, so this disaster had its beginning with Cain and his offspring, who settled in that part of the earth where, at a later day, Babylon was founded. These are my thoughts and views, derived partly from the fathers. Though they may not be true, they are yet probable, and have nothing ungodly in them. And there can be no doubt that Noah, after the flood, saw the face of the whole earth altogether changed from what it was before that awful visitation of the wrath of God. Mountains were torn asunder, fountains were made to break forth and the courses of the rivers themselves were wholly altered and diverted into other channels, by the mighty force of the overwhelming waters. VII. GENERATIONS OF CAIN AND OF THE RIGHTEOUS. A. IN GENERAL. 1. Why Cain's generations were described before those of the righteous 245. 2. How the Holy Spirit is interested more in the generations of the righteous than in those of Cain 246-247. 3. Why the Holy Spirit gives this description of both 248. 4. The relation of the two to each other 248. 5. How the generations of the righteous are attacked and conquered by those of the godless 249. * Of Cain's marriage. a. Who was his wife, and the question of his being married before he committed the murder 250-251. * How to read the writings of the Jews 251. b. The question of his being married after the murder 252-254. * That some of his posterity were saved 254. VII. THE GENERATIONS OF CAIN AND THE GENERATIONS OF THE GODLY.