Genesis 4:26

Enos properly signifies a miserable man, to note the great wickedness and wretchedness of that generation, which the Hebrew writers generally observe. To call upon the name of the Lord; to pray unto God, to worship God in a more public and solemn manner; praying being here put for the whole worship of God, as Genesis 12:8, Genesis 26:25, and in many other places. According to the marginal version, the sense is this: Then when the world was universally corrupt, and had forsaken God and his service, good men grew more valiant and zealous for God, and did more publicly and avowedly own God, and began to distinguish and separate themselves from the ungodly world, and to call themselves and one another by the name of God, i.e. the sons, servants, or worshippers of God as they are expressly called; and that, as it seems, upon this occasion, Genesis 6:2. And in this sense this phrase is elsewhere taken, as Isaiah 43:7, Isaiah 44:5, Isaiah 65:1. Some render the place thus, Then began men to profane the name, i.e. the worship, of the Lord, by idolatry or superstition. But this seems neither to agree with the Hebrew phrase, nor to suit with this place, where he speaks of the posterity of Seth; who were the holy seed, and the only church of God then in the world.