The Generations of Adam
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2019 · 10 March 2019
All of Genesis 5 is our study tonight. This is important because this describes genealogy. As you study the Bible, you understand why genealogies are critical. Genesis 4 and 5 are important because they provide the Messianic genealogy. But it is also important because Genesis 4 and 5 is the only authentic history of the time from the creation to the worldwide flood.
The period of time from the creation of Adam to the flood is 1656 years. And calculation of the numbers mentioned through Genesis 5 leads us to the total mentioned above. From the creation of Adam to the flood, which drowned the entire human race with the exception of Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives. That clearly reveals the age of the universe and the age of man.
Enoch had a son at age 65, and Noah had three sons at the age of 500. That's a vast amount of time in which to produce children, and that accounts for the large increase in the world population. We also learn from this genealogy that people lived to be around 900 years old. And there wasn't a lot of death, which meant that the population increased at an amazingly rapid rate.
But this genealogy is also given to us to provide the hope that we can escape death. There is a man in this genealogy, who didn't die - who was delivered from death and escaped divine judgment. And the genealogy itself is part of the line of Messiah. So that when Jesus is declared to be the Messiah, you can trace His lineage back through these people to Adam and God.
It also gives a clear line to Noah. God chose the line of Seth down to Noah, so that when the flood came, the one man who was in the line that God had chosen for the Messiah survived along with his sons. And one of them, Shem, was chosen to continue that line. This is the line of the promised seed back in Genesis 3: 15, the seed who would come to bruise the serpent's head.
There is no reason to assume it's not literal. It is literal simply because the numbers are so specific. If God was talking in generalities, there wouldn't be these exact numbers that flow all through Genesis, identifying the age of these people. Some people believe that this cannot be right because there are billions of years and evolution, mutation and natural selection before the earth is what it is today.
But as we come to Genesis 5, the numbers specifically indicate it was only 1656 years; and that the people between Adam and Noah are the people named here. They are the ones described specifically. They are the first born all the way through. There were other children born, as we will see, to these individuals; but they are the first born people to carry on that generation.
We believe it is a literal genealogy. To show you how precise this is, turn to 1 Chronicles 1 in the Old Testament, where there is a repeat of this genealogy. 1 Chronicles 1:1-4 opens with these words: "Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth." There is no variation; there is no deviation from Genesis 5.
Now turn to Luke 3 for a moment, because it will indicate this very same genealogy; only we see it backwards because it ends really where it began. If you will notice Luke 3: 38; this is the genealogy of Jesus. And at the end of verse 38, it says He is the son of God, and then it says he's the son of Adam, Seth, Enosh, Cainan, Mahalalel, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah and Shem. The same again.
Turn to Jude 14 - a little epistle next to the Book of Revelation. It says, "Enoch was in the seventh generation from Adam." And when you go back to Genesis 5, or when you go back to 1 Chronicles 1, or when you back to Luke 3, indeed Enoch is the seventh name after Adam in all of them. There are no breaks in this genealogy. This is in fact a very precise genealogy.
When you work with these numbers a little bit it becomes very fascinating. We learned that Adam overlapped Methuselah for 200 years. So Adam is still alive 200 years into his life. So Methuselah could have met Adam. Methuselah actually overlapped Noah for 600 years. So only one man bridges Adam to Noah. Why is that important? It's very important because there was no written revelation.
Have you ever tried to pass information around to a group of people and it gets confused after it was passed many times? That's why God made sure that these people stretched across that whole span of time - so that Methuselah knew firsthand about Adam and could pass it on to Noah. Noah overlapped Shem for 400 years. And Abraham died before Shem!
Shem could have told Abraham firsthand about the flood. It is very likely that Shem was still alive during the lifetime of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. All the way down into the life of the nation Israel; all the way down to Jacob. You only need four people to connect Adam to Abraham. You just need Adam, Methuselah, Shem and Abraham, because God was passing down this divine truth.
For Abraham then, the account of the creation would be like referring to accounts by his great grandfather. Accurate truth was handed down. If you look at it carefully, creation occurred about 4,000 B.C. And here we are 2,000 years after Christ. That's why we say we believe creation started approximately 6,000 years ago. This genealogy provides for us this kind of insight into the actual timing.
So the accuracy at this point doesn't depend on oral tradition, even though oral tradition could be trusted because there was such an overlapping of people's lives. They knew exactly who was who. We are talking about only ten generations, and ten overlapping generations. They really knew who followed who in terms of the line of first-born sons. So this self-contained unit fits into Genesis.
If you want to get a good view of Genesis, the first section of Genesis is the generations of the heavens and the earth in Genesis 2:4. In Genesis 5: "This is the book of the generations of Adam." Go to Genesis 6:9, "This is the record of the generations of Noah." In Genesis 10, and you have the generations of the sons of Noah. In Genesis 11: 10, the generations of Shem. Genesis 11:27, the generations of Terah.
Genesis 25: 12, the generations of Ishmael; Genesis 25: 19, the generations of Isaac; Genesis 36, the generations of Esau; Genesis 37, the generations of Jacob. So Genesis 5: 1 starts with, “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.” It was the sixth day in Genesis 1:27.
On that sixth day God created man. "He named them Man," because this isn't just the story of one man and his wife. This is the story of all of us. We all descended from Adam and Eve. Adam acted in behalf of all humanity. And when he fell, the whole human race fell with him. And that is where the genealogy begins. Do you still remember what happened to Abel?
He was a righteous son, killed by his unrighteous brother Cain. So Cain's line couldn't be the chosen line, because Cain was an unbeliever and an apostate who sought to live outside the presence of God. And so God gave them another son. And then he had a son. A grandchild for Cain and Abel. His name was Enosh, and he must have been a godly son because at that time, men began to call upon the name of the Lord.
It's in the line of Seth that you begin to be introduced to worship. The line of Cain is apostate; the line of Seth is worshipping. And they then become the chosen line. And it is going to be out of the line of Seth that the promised seed will come - that the conqueror will come - the one who will destroy Satan and bring paradise back. Now the pattern in these genealogies is very consistent.
You have ten names from Adam to Noah, in the same pattern. The age of the father at the birth of the firstborn; the name of the firstborn; then the name of the duration of life of the father after the firstborn; reference to other children, and then death. That pattern is consistent from verse 1 - 32. Verse 3, "When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image."
Now that is a sad note. Adam was created in the image of God. Unfortunately, Seth was made in the image of man. While still having something of the image of God in him, he is mostly dominated and marked by the image of man. This is the image of a fallen person having a sin nature. So Adam becomes the father of a son who does not bear the image of God but bears his image.
Then it tells us the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth, "were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters." And then it tells us "all the days of Adam were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died." Notice in verse 4, "he had other sons and daughters." And Adam passed the same sinful energy to them; the same power of sin, dominant in human flesh.
God had told Adam that he would die, but it took 930 years for that to happen. Wouldn't you say God is gracious? That is the first recorded natural death in the Bible. There's only one other death. Abel - and he was murdered. God said, "You eat of that fruit and you'll die." But he lives 930 years; and that is reflective again of the nature of God, who is a saving God, who withholds what the sinner deserves.
All the men in this genealogy were born before Adam died. He saw it all. He saw the righteous line, and he saw wickedness prevail. Ultimately, he saw even those in the line of Seth go bad so that, by the time the flood came, God only saved eight. If you just live 70 years, you know how powerful sin is. Imagine if you knew for 930 years that you yourself had brought sin upon the whole human race.
Now we are introduced to Enoch which means, "devoted” to God. Verse 21-24, “When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. 22 Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. 23 Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. 24 Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.”
All of a sudden, once in verse 22, and once in verse 24 it says that Enoch walked with God. No such comment is made anywhere else. We find more about Enoch in Jude verses 14 and 15. Jude is writing about false teachers here who "have gone in the way of Cain," and he names some false prophets. And verse 14, "And about these also Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied."
Enoch prophesied against the false prophets. They rebelled against the truth that Adam knew firsthand and had declared. What did Enoch prophesy? "Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all." Here was a preacher who stood up and said, "God is going to judge you." Enoch looked, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, through history at the coming of Jesus Christ.
The Apostle Paul names the Egyptian magicians, as Jannes and Jambres, and they aren't called that in Exodus. Peter said, "Noah was a preacher of righteousness," and you're not going to find that in Genesis, either. The New Testament inspired writers were given this information directly by God. And here was Jude, writing this epistle, and he was told exactly what Enoch said.
Let's look at Genesis 5:21 for comments, “Enoch lived sixty-five years, and became the father of Methuselah." In Hebrew this means, "Man of the sending forth." So his name signifies that he will not die until judgment has come. Almost every commentary clearly indicates that Methuselah died in the year of the flood. He is the man who will live until the judgment of God.
After Methuselah dies, in verse 27, after 969 years, the flood came to drown the world. And he lived longer that anybody else ever. It is twice said here that Enoch walked with God. Can you imagine walking with God for 300 years? This man was faithful for 300 years. Three hundred years in an environment that was advanced culturally but very wicked.
Why does God do this? Because the Lord is showing us that there is victory over death. Listen to Hebrews 11:5, "By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death." He is an illustration that if you walk with God, you will conquer death. We have that hope too, the rapture of the church in 1 Thessalonians 4. Some of us are going to be taken up. But even the believers who die will conquer death.
What does it mean to walk with God? It means to be reconciled to God through faith. It means to have come to God and asked forgiveness for your sins so that a relationship between you and God can be established. It means to agree with God, it means to be in fellowship with God, to love God. It will always be a spiritual relationship of intimacy. Enoch walked with God.
Verse 26-29 says, “Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech 782 years and had other sons and daughters. 27 Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died. 28 When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son 29 and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.”
Noah means, "rest," or "comfort." In Hebrew it means, "to breathe again." Noah brought a breath of fresh air in a world of multiplied wickedness where the line of Seth was going corrupt. Genesis 6:9 says that Noah was a righteous man who walked with God. Verse 8, says he "found favor in the eyes of the Lord." And because of that, he brought into the world a breath of fresh air.
And verse 32 says, "Noah was five hundred years old, and he fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth." Shem is mentioned first because he was the line of Messiah. Shem means, "a name," and out of him came a name that is above every name. The flood came when Noah was 600. His sons married and were saved with their wives. Here is the history of redemption pictured in that genealogy. Let us pray.