Genesis 4-5: Stop and Listen

And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.  So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.  After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. Gen 3:22-24 - NKJV

Genesis Three ends with God putting guards at the entrance to the Garden of Eden to guard the path to the tree of life.  No one was going to get past the cherubim with the flaming sword flashing back and forth to eat of its fruit.  Is it any wonder then, that Genesis Four is a story of disobedience which eventually ends in murder. In the New International Version, God asks Cain  "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."  Gen 4:6-7.  It appears that knowledge did Cain no good.   How many times do we find ourselves doing the same thing.  The Apostle Paul says I know what to do, but I don't do it   Romans 7:19 - NIV  God could have stopped the whole thing there, but already it appears he gave man the choice.  Cain went on with life and had children.  Adam's new son, Seth had children as well.  If you look at the genealogy of the two sons, they are very similar.  Cain's descendants included Enoch who bore Irad; and Irad  bore Mehboujael, and Mehujael bore Methushael, and Methushael bore Lamech.  Seth's genealogy includes Enoch who bore Methuselah and Methuselah, who lived to be Nine hundred and eighty nine, bore Lamech.  Its interesting that Methuselah's name includes the word "selah" that is found frequently in the Bible, but the meaning of which has never been authenticated.  Many suggest however that it may mean 'stop and listen' or  'to measure.'  And that is exactly what happened.
Lamech's son was Noah and we know how wicked the people had become by his time.  It was then, when men were living to be almost a thousand years old, that God decided that he was tired of "striving with men" and would limit their days on earth.  How frustrated he must have been with his creation.  What he had  not given them, "knowledge" they had taken and the length of years that they were privileged to, had been turned into license to sin in every imagined way.  He was so fed up with man that he would have wiped them off  the face of the earth if it had not been for Noah.