Genesis Chapter 5 Part 1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome back to our Genesis studies. Today we're going to be in chapter five. Chapter five is actually only only going to be two lessons. But before we get started in this, just a quick reminder that if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube, please remember to like, comment, follow, and subscribe. That really helps drive the content. If you're listening on one of the podcast platforms, Apple, Spotify, or something like that, please share it with your friends. And if you could, consider supporting the show or subscribing to the show. That really helps go a long way in the research and the time it takes to put all this together. I have a goal to get all the way through the book of Genesis, so we'll we'll see how that goes. The help that you give, the prayers that you send, the questions, the comments, liking, subscribing, it really helps reach people from all over the nation based on the numbers that I'm getting back. So if you could just consider supporting the show in some way like that. So for our study, let's get into this. In Genesis chapter 5. So far, we've made it through four chapters of Genesis together: creation, the image of God, the garden, the fall, the first murder, the line of Cain, and the quiet but explosive ending of Genesis chapter four, people beginning to call on the name of the Lord. And now we arrive at Genesis chapter five. And I want to be honest with you about something as I see this. When most people get to Genesis chapter five, they they they see it, they see a long list of names and possible ages, a repeating formula, and and and they do what most people do, what most of us have done with genealogy, is they just give it a quick skim. I'm gonna ask you just for today that you don't do that, that you you take a few minutes and really get deep into this study. Read it carefully, uh, because in this we find really deep, rich theology. It's not a filler. It is what I believe to be a carefully constructed theological statement about death, about the image of God, about human dignity and the grace of God persisting through a broken world. Um, and and and hidden inside the ten names of this genealogy, in the meanings of those Hebrew names, if they're read in sequence, is one of the most remarkable messages in all of Scripture, kind of hidden there in plain sight. And I gotta be honest with you, as I as I begin to study this and get deeper into it, the more I am fascinated by those ten names when read in order. We're gonna get into all of that as we go through this lesson. But but first, let's try to understand what this chapter is doing and why Moses wrote it. So let's read the text first. It says, This is the book of generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and he blessed them and named them man in the day when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. Then the days of A then the days of Adam, after he became the father of Seth, were eight hundred years, and he had another, he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died. Then Seth lived eight hundred and seven years after he became the father of Enosh, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. Enosh lived nine, uh Eosh lived 90 years and became the father of Kenan. Then Enosh lived eight hundred and fifteen years and became the father of Kenan. And he had other sons and daughters, so all the days of Enosh were 900 years and five years and he died. Kenan lived seventy years and became the father of Mahaliel. Then Kenan lived eight hundred and forty years after he became the father of Mahaliel. I think I'm saying that right. I may be butchering that name. And he had other sons and daughters, so all the days of Kenel were 910 years and he died. Mahaliel lived 65 years and became the father of Jarit. Mahaliel lived 830 years after he became the father of Jared. And he had other sons and daughters, so all the days of Mahaliel were 895 years and he died. Finally, an easy name. Jarit lived 162 years and became the father of Enoch. Then Jarit lived 800 years after he became the father of Enoch, and he had other sons and daughters, so all the days of Jarit were 962 years, and he died. So let's take this apart. The chapter opens with a phrase that would have really arrested the mind, capture the mind of any ancient reader. This is the book of the generations of Adam. The Hebrew word translate a book here is a word that means a written document, a record or a scroll. And that's really significant. Moses is not just presenting an oral tradition. He is identifying this as a written record, as a document. And the phrase, uh the phrase the generations of in Hebrew is a word that is the organ, one of the organizing phrases of the entire book of Genesis. It appears 10 times through the book of Genesis. Each time when you read those words, it really has the idea of introducing a new section whenever we get there. And so it's really, really important that we understand that. When you see the generations of, um, and as it introduces those new generations, it introduces a new family, a new line, a new chapter of the story. And we see this word used in Genesis chapter 2, verse 4. Uh we see it used in Genesis 5, 1 here, with the generations of Adam and Genesis chapter 6, verse 9, with the generations of Noah and so on, all the way to the generations of Jacob in Genesis chapter 37. And so Genesis is structured around three primary markers. And they are the chapters of the story, the generations of Adam. Genesis chapter 5 is one of the most important because it traces the line of Adam all the way to Noah, from the first man to the man through whom God would save all of creation. And it's 10 generations of covenant faithfulness. We see this even in the middle of death, we see this generation's upwarding. Now, notice what Moses does immediately after the opening line. Before he gets to a single name or a single age, before the genealogy begins, he restates the doctrine of the image of God. That is really important. In the day when God created man, he made him in the likeness of God, he created them male and female, and he blessed them. Why does Moses go all the way back to Genesis chapter 1 at this very moment? Because what he's about to do is amazing. He's about to list 10 names, and after every single one, he is going to write that phrase that I told you to pay attention to that that really makes everything feel like it's coming to an end, like it's undoing everything. He lists 10 names and then follows each one with saying, and he died. But before the drumbeat of death even begins, Moses anchors us to something that death cannot touch. These people are dying. But as they are dying, they are image bearers of God. We have to remember that that's first. The fall has introduced death, but the fall has not erased the image of God. Mortality has entered the human story, but dignity has not left it. This is one of the most important moves we see in the book of Genesis. And I think most people read right past that. That's what Moses is establishing. That even though they're dying, they bear the image of God. Every name in this list, every person who lived and died, was made in the likeness of the image of God. And every one of them, that means every one of them was important. Everyone had, everyone mattered. Every one of them was not just a number on a list, but a person of value, of worth. We see this with Jesus and the woman at the well, where the world thought she had no value. Jesus assigns her value. And it should be noted that Moses recites the image of God in the opening of this genealogy, I believe, to prevent us from seeing the long list of deaths as mere statistics. These are not just statistics. These are people, again, made in the image of God. And I think it's important that we view all of humanity that way. And then verse 3 adds something worth slowing down for when he says Adam became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. The same language used in Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, for God created humanity in our image, according to our likeness, is now used for Adam, fathering Seth in his own likeness, according to his image. Now, two things are happening here at the same time. First, the image of God is being passed on from generation to generation. Seth bears the image of God because Adam bears the image of God. And the image of God is not a one-time endowment to a single generation. It's transmitted from generation to generation. Every person in this list, every person since carries the image of God. Second, the fallen nature is also being passed on. Adam was made in the image of God, but after the fall, Adam fathered children in his own image, which was fallen, mortal, and bent towards sin. Both are true and both are being passed down. And this is often called the human condition. We are image bearers of God, but we are also fallen, both true at the same time. Augustine wrote that every human birth since Adam, uh, in every human birth since Adam, the human image, uh the image of God is transmitted, and so is the inclination towards sin. That means that we are simultaneously the most glorious and most troubled creatures in creation, noble enough to weep over our own fallenness, but fallen enough to need someone to rescue us. Now, let's look at the structure of what follows, because I do not believe this is accidental. Every entry in the genealogy follows the same pattern. Um, this person lived X years and became the father of this person, and then this person had this many sons and daughters, or had other sons and daughters, and then so all the days of this person was this many, and then he died over and over and over, ten times the same formula, the same rhythm, the same ending, and he died. Now, here is what that structure is communicating. In literature, repetition creates an expectation. When a pattern begins to repeat, the reader begins to anticipate the ending. And then when the pattern breaks, the reader feels it. It kind of takes them by surprise. And so what Moses is doing is he's building up almost like a drum beat. He lived, he fathered, he died. He lived, he fathered, he died, and on and on. Ten men, ten lives, and after each one, he died. And the repetition there is the point. Moses is making you feel the weight of what Genesis chapter 3 introduced. God said, In the day you eat of it, you will die. Genesis chapter 5 is the proof of that promise. Every entry in this list is the fall made biographical. And here I want to dwell on those three words just for a minute. And he died. And he died. They appear after each one. Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Jared, uh, Methuselah, uh, Lamech later, which we'll read a little bit more about at the end. Eight times we read, and he died. No matter how long they lived, 930 years, 912 years, 962 years, and he died. The ages there are staggering. What is showing us that is that no matter how long a person lives, they can never outrun the sentence. Now, this is important. This is the voice of Genesis chapter 3 echoing throughout Genesis chapter 5. You are dust, and in dust you shall return. And he died, and he died, and he died over and over again. There was an early church father, Ephraim of Syrian, uh, he was a fourth-century theologian who wrote that Genesis chapter 5 is the graveyard of the pre-flood world. This is what he said. He said, Moses placed it here so that no one would ever read about the long lives of the patriarchs and forget that even they, even men who lived a thousand years, could not escape the sentence of Genesis chapter 3. And that is that the wages of sin are death. That's what we read from Paul in Romans chapter 6, verse 23. So Genesis chapter 5 is the bill being paid, one name at a time. So here's the question I know that many people are asking, many of you might be thinking this, and I've been asked a thousand times. Did these people really live hundreds and hundreds of years? And I think this is possibly one of the most discussed questions in biblical scholarship, actually. And I want to give you an honest landscape of the debate because faithful Christians have held different positions. And this is one of those things, kind of like eschatology and creation. I do not believe that we should be willing to break fellowship over this. So let me just give you the primary positions on this. Position number one is that it's literal years. And this is the most straightforward reading of the text, that these are real people who lived real years that were really that length of time. And many scholars in this camp point to the pre- that the facts that the pre-flood world may have had different atmospheric and biological conditions. The genetic effects of the fall may have accumulated gradually, reducing lifespans over time. And this position was held by virtually all of the church fathers from the ancient times, without question. Now, position two was the genealogical compression. Some scholars argue that ancient genealogies were often selective, not recording every generation, but skipping some, using the verb fathered loosely to mean just an ancestor. And under this reading, the ages would refer not to one person living that long, but actually to a dynasty or clan heads rather than individual lifespans. For example, instead of one of them living for 900 years, their dynasty, their descendants were kind of in control and over things for 900 years. Position number three is what's called a numerical symbolism. Some ancient Neri scholars note that in the Mesopotamian king's list, pre-flood rulers were given reigns of tens of thousands of years. And by this reading, the Genesis numbers, while large, are dramatically modest compared to the surrounding cultures and may use the um a numerical convention familiar to the ancient readers. So the question always comes which one of these positions is correct? And I'll be honest with you godly, careful, orthodox, incredibly wise scholars hold all three positions. What they all agree on is this, though, and this is where I think we need to land: that these are these are real people, these are not myths. Um, the line of Adam to Noah is a real historical genealogy, and the theological message of mortality is real, and that the image of God persists, and that is non-negotiable. Um, do not let the debate over ages cause you to miss what Moses is actually saying here. The ages are the frame, but the theology is the painting. And here's something that will reframe, I hope we'll reframe this entire chapter for you. Genesis chapter 5 is not the only ancient text with a long genealogy of pre-flood figures with extraordinary lifespans. I mentioned earlier the Sumerian King's List, uh, one of the oldest documents ever discovered. It lists eight kings who ruled before the great floods, and their reigns are staggering from one who lived 28,000 years to one who lived 43,000 years. These are not hundreds of years, these are tens of thousands of years. And then that king's list says that the flood swept all over the earth, and after the flood, the lifespans dropped dramatically. Now, the parallel to Genesis chapter 5 there is unmistakable. Both describe extraordinary pre-flood lifespan, both are followed by a flood, and both show a decline in the human lifespan after the flood. But the differences are equally striking and I believe theologically important. The Sumerian's Kings list features kings and rulers and political figures who reigned over cities. Genesis chapter 5 is just ordinary people, fathers and sons, whose primary accomplishment was that they lived and that they passed on the bloodline. Now, the Sumerian figures live for tens of thousands of years, numbers so large that they are clearly, clearly symbolic. The Genesis figures live for hundreds of years, but are largely restrained by comparison. The Sumerian kings are surrounded by the mythology of their gods and their cities. The people of Genesis chapter 5 are surrounded by the drumbeat of the mortality. Each one finished with, he died. Genesis is engaging in the same cultural conversation as the surrounding world, but telling a completely different story. Not kings, but just family men, not immortal heroes, but mortal image bearers, not mythology, but a traceable history, and not tens of thousands of years. There's a birth, there's a life, there's activities within that life, and then a death. And the God of Genesis does not need legendary figures to make his point. What God does is he makes his point through ordinary people, he always has, who lived and fathered and died, and we're still made in his image. Now, we come to this part of this lesson that I have been building toward, and I want to be upfront about something before I share it. What I'm about to show you is not in the text of Genesis chapter 5 itself. It's not something that Moses states directly, but it is something that has fascinated Bible scholars, Hebrew linguists, and theologians, and this is what it is. When they look at the meanings of the ten names in this genealogy read in sequence, it says something that is quite remarkable. And I've seen various arguments circulate it. Some are more careful than others, some go a little bit far out there. And so I want to share it carefully with appropriate caveats and let you draw your own conclusions. But even if you were uncertain about how intentional Moses was, what is undeniable is that the meaning of these names read together tells a coherent and stunning story. So what I would encourage you to do is grab a pen and paper and write on one side of your paper the ten names that are listed there. And again, that one in the middle, Mahaliel, I believe that's how you say it. I probably would be pronouncing that really wrong, but just bear with me when I say that. Okay. So the first one is Adam. Put Adam in the dash, Seth, Enoch, Kenan, Mahaliel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamek, Noah. Adam, Seth, Enoch, Kenan, Mahaliel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamek, and Noah. Now, here's their Hebrew meanings, the most widely accepted Hebrew meanings. I went through three different books and a couple of online programs to make sure this was 100% accurate because I didn't want to share it if it wasn't, and it is. Adam, the the Hebrew word Adam means man. So Adam, dash, man. So now you know what it means. Seth means appointed. Enosh means mortal. Kenan means sorrow. Mahalel means the blessed God. Jared means shall come down. Enoch means teaching. Methuselah means his death shall bring. Lamic means the despairing. Noah means rest and comfort. So I'm just gonna read the translations, what those Hebrew names translate to in sequence and see if you catch it. Man appointed mortal sorrow. The blessed God shall come down with the teaching. His death shall bring the despairing rest and comfort. You put that into sentence form, and this is what it says Man is appointed mortal sorrow. The blessed God shall come down teaching, his death shall bring the despairing rest and comfort. If that is accurate, that is one of the most amazing things that I have found as we've gone through the book of Genesis. Because what that is, is the gospel. And it is at least possible that this is found written in code in the names, in the genealogy, in the oldest book of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 5. In that you would see the incarnation, the teaching ministry of Christ, the atoning death, and the rest and comfort given to the despairing. And many scholars out there believe this message was encoded in the ten Hebrew names. Now, again, please, I am not saying that this is certain, but it is at least very interesting. Now, the individual name meanings I gave you are well established in Hebrew scholarship. The name Seth meaning appointed. We discussed that in Genesis chapter 4. The name Enosh meaning mortal. We discussed that as well. Mahaliel, uh meaning uh praise or blessed, the an el meaning God, the praised God or the blessed God. Jared from a root meaning to descend or to come down, Enoch from a word meaning to dedicate or to train. Methuselah, uh, the most discussed. His name appears to come from the roots meaning uh death. Lamech, widely understood to carry the idea of despair or despairing, and then Noah from a word that means comfort or rest. And so the individual meanings are not invented. And so the sequential readings of those meanings in the sentence they form together is an observation made by modern scholars. We even see this in the names of the parents of John the Baptist. At the closing of the Old Testament, there were 400 silent years. And the people in those 400 years between Malachi to the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist believed that God had forgotten about them. So after 400 years, God breaks his silence, announcing the birth of John the Baptist to his parents, who were Zechariah and Elizabeth. Now, this is important because the name Zechariah translated means God remembers, and the name Elizabeth means God's oath. So God breaks 400 years of silence with people whose names mean God remembers God's oath. So Moses could have intentionally encoded this in Genesis chapter 5 as the Holy Spirit led him to write. Now consider this: that Moses was a highly educated man, trained in all the wisdom of Egypt, that he would have known Hebrew as a native language, and he would have felt the weight of every name. So Genesis is clearly structured with uh theological intentionality. Every name in the Bible carries meaning. And Moses never assigns names carelessly. Whether this was the intention or not by Moses, it's undeniable that the Spirit of God who inspired the text knew exactly what he was doing. And what the names say when they are read together is exactly what the rest of the Bible teaches: that the blessed God came down and his death brings rest to the despairing. This is not eisegesis. This is the heartbeat of the entire Bible hiding in a genealogy that most people skip right past. Now, let me draw out the apologetic significance of this for just a moment. One of the most common arguments against the Bible is that it is a human document compiled by different writers over centuries with without any unified divine intelligence behind it. Well, whenever you read something like Genesis chapter 5, the ten names, the ten genealogies in the oldest book of the Bible, written thousands of years before Christ was born, this does not prove inspiration in an airtight philosophical sense, but it's the kind of thing that makes honest skeptics pause for just a minute because there are only two explanations. And it's this that the the most extraordinary, it's either the most extraordinary coincidence in all of literary history, or it's the fingerprints of a divine author who knew the end from the very beginning. Isaiah chapter 46, verse 10 says, declaring from the end, uh the end from the beginning, and from the ancient times, things which have not been done, saying, My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. Genesis chapter 5 looks like that verse, that God is accomplishing everything that he said he would from the very beginning. He's making it visible. And as we walk through the names, we have to consider that we read that Adam lived 930 years and then he died. This is another point I want to bring out. This means that Adam was alive when Lamech, Noah's father, was born, that he overlapped with eight of the ten patriarchs in this genealogy. Now think about what that means. That means that Adam, the man who walked with God in the garden, who heard God's voice in the cool of the evening, who watched the garden gates close behind him, was alive to tell his great-great-grandchildren what it was like in the garden, what what God's voice sounded like, what they felt when the gates were closed. Adam was available to answer those questions for most of human history, building up to the time of the flood. And the oral tradition of Eden was not a fragile rumor passed through hundreds of generations. It was the living memory of a man who was there and who lived long enough to tell almost everyone in the pre-flood world directly himself. Seth, the appointed one, lives 912 years, the one whose birth Eve attributed to God's divine appointment, the one through whom the promise of Genesis chapter 3, verse 15 will eventually travel through, building up to Christ. And Seth does not receive an extended, the extended treatment Cain did in Genesis chapter 4. He doesn't build a city, he doesn't compose poetry about vengeance. He lives, he fathers, and he dies. And that in the context of the line of Cain's cultural noise is its own kind of faithfulness. Not every person God uses will make headlines. Some people that God uses are simply people who live faithfully. They pass the seed to the next generation and die trusting the one who appointed them. From Enon and Canaan and Jared, these are names, these are lives, centuries upon centuries of human existence, and after each one, and he died. And we know almost nothing about these men individually. The text gives us nothing but the formula. And I believe that's the point. Most of human history is not recorded. Most lives are not famous. Most people live, they have children, and they die without a biography, without a monument, without a name remembered by anyone outside of their immediate family. And Genesis chapter 5 says this. It says that even if there's not a lot of detail about their lives, they still mattered. Every one of them was made in the image of God. Every one of them is named here in a permanent record of Scripture, not forgotten, not erased, but named. And this is one of the most counter-cultural things that the Bible does. Because in the ancient world, only the powerful people were remembered, kings and warriors, and builders of cities. But in Genesis chapter 5, we see the names of ordinary people preserved, whose only recorded achievement was living, having children, and dying. Because in God's record, they matter. Every ordinary person sitting in your church, in your subdivision, in your home, they all matter. Every person that you pass on the street, every person whose name no one outside their family will ever remember. Are all made in the image of God, named and known, and they matter. Genesis chapter 5 is the theological foundation of human dignity for everyday life. And I would take that even further and say that the Bible teaches that they are your family. And honestly, when I make statements like that, I've been heavily criticized for that stance. But I believe I can defend that in the Bible, that we are all brothers and sisters. If we are followers of Christ, we have been grafted into the family with one father, and we are all brothers and sisters. So you listening, if you're a Christian, we are brothers and sisters. Now, let's move on past that. One of the things our modern world works the hardest to suppress is the awareness of death. We build extraordinary machines to delay, to delay death. We keep our dying out of sight. We put people dying in hospitals behind closed doors, and we surround ourselves with noise and entertainment and distractions so that we don't have to sit back with the silence that Genesis chapter 5 creates. But here's what our avoidance of death reveals. The fact that we fight so hard against the awareness of our death shows that we know that at some deep level, it's not supposed to be this way. Animals do not build philosophies around the denial of death. Animals don't write poetry about immortality. Animals don't lie awake at night staring at the ceiling, wondering about their mortality. Animals have no concept of time. But we do because we were made for eternity. And there's something inside of us that knows that. That's what Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11 says that God has set eternity in our hearts. And that's why death feels so wrong. That is why we can't make our peace with it no matter how long we try. It was not supposed to be part of our story. Genesis chapter 5 is the sound of something that was not God's original design playing out over nine centuries of human life, one name at a time. That means that Genesis chapter 5, verse 1 restates the image of God at the top of the genealogy of now mortal people, and the implication is staggering. This is what it is. And even fallen people, even people east of Eden, even people under the sentence of death, still bear the image of God. And this matters. When our culture reduces people to just their productivity or their usefulness or their contribution or their ability to perform, Genesis chapter 5 says that is not the measure of a person. The measure of a person is that they bear the image of God. The elderly person whose memory is gone still bears the image of God. The child in the womb bears the image of God. The prisoner, the refugee, the homeless man, the person with a severe disability, every one of them made in the image of God, made in the likeness of God, bear the image of God. Genesis chapter 5 is the longest argument for human dignity in the book of Genesis. Ten names, ten lives, all of them mortal, all of them image bearers, and all of them mattering to the Creator. It's also important to note that genealogy, uh Genesis chapter 5 is a genealogy. And the New Testament has two genealogies of its own. Matthew chapter 1 and Luke chapter 3. Matthew's genealogy traces Jesus from Abraham forward to his birth. Luke's genealogy traces Jesus all the way back to Adam, all the way back through David, all the way through Abraham, through Noah, through the names of Genesis chapter 5, and then all the way to Seth, son of Adam, the son of God. Luke connects the genealogy of Jesus directly back to Genesis chapter 5. And that line runs directly from Adam through Seth, through the patriarchs, and all the way to Jesus Himself. And that's really important for us to understand. And so when we go through this, these these thousands and thousands of years that exist are really, really important. So let me wrap this up and to the very best of my ability. The first half of Genesis chapter 5, this is what we've seen. We've seen the book of generations from Adam to Noah. And that the image of God rested at the top of a genealogy of the dying because mortality does not erase dignity. And the genealogy of uh of Jesus in Luke chapter 3 is directly, it's running directly through those names all the way to the Son of God. Now, here's a word I want to leave you with. Most of us who are listening to this or making videos like this or talking about the Bible will never be famous. We will never build cities, and most of us will never be remembered a hundred years after we're gone. We live, we love the people around us, we pass something to the next generation, and then we die. Genesis chapter 5 says that you matter, that your life is seen, that your life is named, that your life has been made in the image of God. And the gospel says that that life will not end, your life will not end with the words, and he died. Because the one whose name means the blessed God shall come down teaching. He came, and he died, and he rose again. And his death brought rest and comfort to the despairing. And that includes you. And that includes me. In our next lesson, we'll look at Genesis chapter 5, verses 21 through 32, where we see that one man breaks the pattern, where we read that Enoch walked with God and then he was no more. And we'll talk about the oldest man who ever lived and the birth of the man who will carry the weight of the world through the flood. Until next time, I hope that you have a blessed day.