Genesis chapter 5 records the ten generations from Adam to Noah. Lamech, Noah’s father, gives Noah his name, but he also provides an explanation for the name given to his son.

“He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused  by the ground the Lord has cursed."

Lamech’s explanation is full of references back to the fall of man and the Lord’s cursing of the ground. Lamech is vocal concerning his burden and his need for “comfort” in his daily labor and toil. Lamech credits the Lord with having cursed the ground, which was the source of Lamech’s labor and painful toil, but Lamech does not accuse the Lord. Instead, in naming his son, Lamech expresses faith in the Lord’s promise of future relief from the cursed ground. Lamech’s hope in the Word of the Lord is tied in with Noah’s name, which is also noah in Hebrew.

The naming of Noah (noah) was a prophecy, a promise or a hope of Lamech that was focused on the life of his son Noah. There are a couple of questions with this besides asking was Lamech prophesying, praying or stating a known doctrinal principle?

The questions are how and when was Noah going to bring this “comfort” to those who suffered from the cursed ground? And, how is “Noah” connected to the word “comfort?” The word “comfort” is naham in the Hebrew which is similar to noah in the sound of its pronunciation, but its etymology connection is difficult to make, unless “rest” nuah is considered. Ezekiel 5:13 places these two words (“comfort” naham and “rest nuah) in parallel when Ezekiel writes:

“Then my anger will cease and my wrath against them will subside (nuah), and I will be avenged (naham).”

The “comfort” (naham) that “Noah” (noah) provided could be:

1. A continuation of the hope clung to since the Garden. Noah will continue the lineage until the “seed of the woman” brings deliverance from the serpent’s power. Then mankind will have deliverance from the curse. This would make Lamech’s words a promise or a statement of faith.
2. Noah’s sons, the first in this genealogy to have three sons named instead of only the first, eldest son, will provide the hope of the nations and establish the line of the Messiah - the line of Shem. This approach would give Lamech’s words a prophetic element.
3. Noah will deliver the human race from the wickedness and utter chaos the painful toil and cursed ground had driven mankind. The promise would be fulfilled ultimately by humanities worst nightmare – the Flood, from which Noah delivered himself and his family to continue the pursuit of the promise of God in a “new world.”
4. Lamech may have been anticipating that Noah was the promised “seed of the woman.” Noah would be the one to bring about the crushing of the serpents head, since Noah was the tenth generation from Adam, a number of completion and fulfillment. In addition to this, Enoch had made grand prophecies about Noah’s generation in combination with his visions of the coming of the Lord (Jude 14).
5. In Genesis 9:20, after the Flood when the seasons and climates had been established, Noah planted his own garden and created a vineyard that produced wine. This seems to have been a major accomplishment since it is noted in the book of Genesis. So, although Noah led humanity into its darkest hour during the days of the Flood, he also emerged and eventually took them to a place where the curse of the ground and the painful toil could be overcome to produce fruit and wine. A major accomplishment considering the earth had been laid waste by a worldwide flood a few years prior.

Any way we look at it, Noah was to provide comfort and rest in his day and project that hope and faith into the future towards the ultimate comfort and rest when the “seed of the woman” crushes the serpent’s head and delivers mankind into the kingdom of comfort and rest.

"In Christ’s day the world was filled with intellectuals and influential people. There were celebrated philosophers in Athens, unsurpassed scholars in Alexandria, the most powerful political leaders the world had ever known in Rome, and some of the most meticulous rabbis of all time in and around Jerusalem. Christ bypassed them all and called simple, crude, unknown, and uneducated fishermen from Galilee to be His disciples."
- John MacArthur

Angels in the Bible are never cute, chubby infants with wings and halos.

Angels in the Bible at times do appear in human fashion, but most times they appear as fearful beings in radiant light with supernatural power to strike the earth and humans with any number of plagues or barriers: blindness, darkness, deafness, boils, death, etc. Or, open the eyes of the human to see visions and experience transportation into the heavenly dimension.