genesis 5 - genealogy + miscellanea

Genesis 5 is simply a genealogy, tracing the lineage of Adam all the way to Noah.

Here we go:

Adam to Seth to Enos to Cainan to Mahalaleel to Jared (not the one from the Subway ads) to Enoch to Methuselah to Lamech to Noah

That’s…not very interesting.

Much more interesting are the following:

1. Genesis 5:2 invokes the creation of multiple humans from Genesis 1:27 (“Male and female created he them… and called their name Adam” (emphasis in original)). “Adam” simply means “man” or “humanity” in Hebrew; its use was analogous to the modern English word “man” in referring to either depending on context.

2. Note that God is here referred to as “God”, which translated the name of the creator-god El. There is no reference to Yahweh (“LORD”) until 5:29, which implies that the bulk of this chapter came from the Priestly source.

3. The persons named in this chapter are known as the “antediluvian patriarchs”. Note the absurdly long life spans attributed to them – an average of 907.5 years (discounting Enoch, whom I will discuss below). This is in keeping with the mythological character of these persons, and may reflect vestigial evidence of a Biblical version of the Ages of Man – in such concepts, early humans were both closer to the divine, and consequently exceedingly long-lived.

4. Enoch does not die. Instead, he “walked with God”, and “God took him”. In other words, he ascended directly to Heaven. This is significant in that the Book of Enoch, which is attributed to him, describes his discoveries after ascending to Heaven.

5. This chapter ends with the birth of Noah’s children Shem, Ham, and Japheth. We will learn more about Ham later.

Genesis 5 is of little interest otherwise, except to people constructing elaborate histories of a 6000-year-old Earth. Things pick up in the next chapter.