This one will give us rest — and Noah is named
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καὶ ἐπωνόμασεν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Νῶε λέγων Οὗτος διαναπαύσει ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων ἡμῶν καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν λυπῶν τῶν χειρῶν ἡμῶν καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἧς κατηράσατο Κύριος ὁ θεός.
The naming speech itself is quoted — the first time since v.2 that a patriarch’s name comes with any explanation at all. In the underlying Hebrew, the pun is a famous, slightly imperfect one: the name נֹחַ (Nōaḥ) most obviously echoes the root נוח (nûaḥ, “to rest”), yet the naming-speech itself actually uses a different verb, ְיְנַחֲמֵנוּ (yenaḥămēnû, “he will comfort us”, from נחם, nāḥam) — two similar-sounding but distinct Hebrew roots, “rest” and “comfort,” folded into one naming-pun, long remarked on by commentators. Swete’s Greek smooths this over with a single, plain verb of relief, διαναπαύσει, “will give rest” (see lexicon note on this rare compound). The reason given for hoping for rest reaches back explicitly to the ground’s curse at 3:17-19 (“cursed is the ground … in toil you shall eat of it”) — Lamech names his son as the answer, however it turns out, to a hardship inherited from Eden itself. Note, too, the plural “toils of our hands” (τῶν λυπῶν): Brenton’s 1851 edition instead reads the singular, “the toil of our hands” — same idea, different number, in this chapter’s last recorded textual variant.
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