Genesis 5

[chap. \ imperfections which impaired him, after he had eaten the forbidden fruit: that is, inclined to sin, and suhject to death. For his own likeness and image, wherein this son was begotten, seems to be opposed to the likeness and image of God, wherein Adam was made, (i. 2G.) which, though not quite lost, was lamentably defaced. Maimonidcs will have this to refer to SctrTs wisdom and goodness; he proving truly a man like to his father Adam: whereas the rest before him proved rather beasts. More Nevochim, par. i. cap. 7. Called his name Seth.] He intends to give here an account of those descended from Seth alone, not of his posterity by Cain, (who are only briefly mentioned in the foregoing chapter, verses 17, 18.) because in Seth the posterity of Adam were preserved, when all the children of Cain perished in the deluge. call his son Enoch, by the very name of Cain’s eldest son, (iv. 17.) And Methuselah also gave his son Lamech the name of one of Cain’s grandchildren, (iv. 18.)

Genesis 5:1

JL HIS is the book of the generations of Adam. i. e. Here follows a catalogue of the posterity of Adam. So the word book signifies, Matth. i. 1. an account of those from whom Christ the second Adam came; as here, an account of those who came from the first Adam. Yet not of all, but of the principal persons, by whom, in a right line, the succession was continued down to Noah, &c. As for the collateral lines, which, no doubt, were very many, by the other sons and daughters which the persons here mentioned begot, they are omitted: because no" more than I have said, w r as pertinent to Moses’s purpose. In the day that God created man.] This is repeated again, only to imprint on their minds that Adam was not produced, like other men, by generation, but by creation. In the likeness of God created he him.‘f This also is again mentioned; to remember men how highly God had honoured them, and how shamefully they had requited him. Ver’. 2. Male and female created he them, &c.] Of different sexes, to be joined together in holy marriage: as Moses had shewn, chap. ii. 22, 23, &c. Called their name Adam.] The common name to both sexes; like homo in Latin, &c.

Genesis 5:3

And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years. This doth not assure us he had no children but Cain and Abel till now; but only acquaints us with his age, when Seth was born. And begat a son in hisoivn likeness, after his image.] Not so perfect as himself, when he was created; but with those

Genesis 5:4

And he begat sons and daughters. After the birth of Seth he begat more children (as he had done, it is probable, many before), whose names are not here recorded: because Moses sets down only that race of men, from whom Noah and Abraham (the father of the faithful), and the 3Iessiah were derived.

Genesis 5:5

Lived nine hundred and fifty years. It is not reasonable to take a measure of the length of the lives of the patriarchs by the shortness of ours. For, as Josephus well observes, (lib. i. Antiq. cap. 4. and out of him, Eusebius, lib. ix. Pnepar. Evang. cap. 13.) they being men much beloved of God, and newly made by him, with a strong constitution, and excellent temper of body, and using better diet, the vigour of the earth serving at the first for the production of better fruits; all these things, joined with their temperance, constant exercise and labour, a sweet temper of air, their knowledge in the nature of herbs and plants, &c. might well contribute very much, to as long a life as is here mentioned. Which was but necessary, also (and therefore God’s providence took special care of them), that the world might be the sooner peopled; knowledge and religion more certainly propagated, by the authority of living teachers; arts and sciences brought to a great perfection, which could not have been effected in a short life, like ours. And therefore Josephus shews, that herein Moses hath the -testimony of all the Greeks and Barbarians also, who have wrote about ancient affairs. Of Manethus (for instance) who wrote the Egyptian history; Berosus, who wrote the Chaldean; Mochus, Hestiaeus, &c. who wrote the Phoenician; with a great number of Greek writers whom he mentions; who all say, men lived anciently a thousand years. None indeed came up to that full sum; but some so near it, that Ihey who wctc not exactly acquainted with the sacred story, might well speak in that manner. And this ought not to seem incredible to us in these days, when we consider how long several have lived in the later ages of the world; as Pliny reports in his Natural History, lib. vii. cap. 4S. Nay, in times nearer to us, there are instances of this kind, as the Lord Bacon observes, in his Hist. Vitro et Mortis; and Bartholin, in his Hist. Anatom. Rariorum Cent. v. Hist. 28. But nothing is more remarkable than that which Gassendus reports in the Life of Nicol. Peireskius, lib. v. That he received a letter from Aleppo, no longer ago than the year 1630, of a man then iu Persia, known to several’ persons worthy to be believed, who was four hundred years old: Idqueipsis omnino esse exploratum atque-indubium: and the persons that wrote this, were fully assured of the undoubted truth of it. Such instances indeed are rare; and there is one that thinks men did not generally live to such a great age in the old world: for Maimonides is of opinion, that none attained to so many years as are here mentioned, but only tlic particular persons expressly named by Moses; all the rest of mankind, in those days, living only the ordinary term which man did in afterlimes: or, in other words, this extraordinary length of days, was the privilege only of these singularindividuals; either from their accurate way of living and diet, or God’s special favour in reward of their eminent virtue and piety. (More Nev. par. ii. cap. 47.) But Nachmanides (another great Jewish doctor) opposes this with much reason; for, that their eminent virtue was not the cause they alone had this privilege, appears by Enoch, the most holy man of them all, who did not live to the age of four hundred years. And as there is no ground to believe these were the only persons who lived exactly temperate in all things; so it is manifest Moses doth not design to give us an account of those that lived longest, but of those from whom Noah descended; and it is incredible tliat they alone should be very long-lived, and nobody else, though descended from the same parents.

Genesis 5:6

And Seth lived a hundred and five years, and begat Enos. We must not think he lived so long before he begat any children: no more than that Adam had none till he was a hundred and thirty years old, when he begat Seth, (ver. 3.) for we know he had Cain and Abel, and, in all likelihood, many others before. Therefore, to explain this and other things that follow, ver. 18. and 28. which seem more strange, (for Jared is said to have lived a hundred sixty-two years before he begat Enoch; and Lamech a hundred eighty-two years before he begat Noah,) we must consider, as was noted ver. 4. that Moses sets down only those persons by whom the line of Noah was drawn from Seth, and Abraham’s line from Noah, by their true ancestors; whether they were the eldest of the family or no. Seth, it is likely, had many other children before Enos was born; as Noah, we may be confident, had before he begat Shem, Ham, and Japhet: which was not till he was five hundred years old, (ver. 32.) As Lamech also had several before Noah was born: though Moses doth, not mention them; because he was here concerned only to inform us, who was the father of Noah. Begat Enos.] The Arabian Christians, as I observed before, (iv. 26.) make him to have been a man of singular goodness.

Genesis 5:9

Begat Cainan. The same. writers represent him to have been like to his father: and say, he gave his children charge not to mingle with the seed of Cain. So Elmacinus. Yet there is but little difference between his name and that of Cain’s; no more than between Irad and Jared, and some other of Sem’s posterity and Cain’s: which may teach us, says Jac. Capellns, (in his Hist. Sacra et Exot.) " Ne fatale nescio quod omen nominibus propriis eflingamus: " — that ive should not fancy there is, we do not know what fatal omen in proper names. The wickedness of Judas Iscariot did not make the other Judas, called by that name, to think the worse of it. And therefore Jared feared not to

Genesis 5:12

Begat Mahalaleel. This name imports as much as a praiser of God: which Canaan imposed upon this son of his (as Jacobus Capellus fancies), because he was born after he had lived ten weeks of years (i. e. when he was seventy years old), in the beginning of the sabbatick year; which was the eighth jubilee from the creation. For, as there were sacrifices and a distinction of clean beasts and unclean, so he conceives there might be a distribution of years by sevens or weeks (as they spake in aftertimes), from the very beginning of the world. But there is no certainty of this: nor of what the forenamed Arabian writers say of this Mahalaleel, that he made his children swear, by the blood of Abel (so Patricides), not to come down from the mountainous country where they dwelt, to converse with the children of Cain. He is mentioned also by the Mahometans, as Hottinger observes in his Histor. Orient, p. 20. «

Genesis 5:15

Begat Jared.~\ The same Arabian writers make him also a strictly pious man, and an excellent governor: but say, that in his days some of Seth’s posterity (about a hundred in number), notwithstanding all his persuasions to the contrary, would go down and converse with the children of Cain; by whom they were corrupted. And thence, they fancy, he was called Jared (which signifies descending), either because they went down from the Holy Mountain, as they call it, where Seth’s posterity dwelt; or piety, in his time, began very much to decline. See Hottinger’s Smegma Orient, lib. i. cap. 8. p. 235, &c.

Genesis 5:18

Begat Enoch. Whom the Arabians call Edris; and represent him as a very learned man, as well as a prophet; and especially skilled in astronomy. See Hottinger, Histor. Orient lib. i. cap. 3. and Smegma Orient, p. 240. The Greeks anciently had the same notion of him, as appears by a discourse of Eupolemus, which Eusebius quotes out of Alexand. Polyhistor. lib. ix. Proepar. Evang. c. 17. where he says, Enoch was the first who taught the knowledge of the stars, and that he himself was taught, 11 *Ayyi\wv 0cou, by the angels of God; and was the same person whom the Greeks call Atlas. Certain it is, his story was not altogether unknown to the ancient Greeks; as appears in what they say of’AwaKoc, or Kawaicoc, which is the same with Enoch, whose name in Hebrew is Chanoch. For Stephanus, in his book De Urbibus, says, that this Annacus lived above three hundred years, and the oracle told the people, that when he died they should all perish; as they did in the flood of Deucalion: in which he confounds the history of Enoch and Methuselah, as Bochart well observes, (lib. ii. Phaleg. cap. 13.)

Genesis 5:21

Begat Methuselah. ‘Enoch being a prophet (as we learn from St. Jude), and foreseeing the destruction that was coming upon the earth by a deluge, immediately after the death of this son of his, gave him this name of Methuscla, which imports as much. For the first part of it, Met km, evidently carries in it the name of death; being as much as, he dies: and sela signifies the sending forth of water, in Job v. 10, And therefore Methusela is as much as, " when he is dead shall ensue an emission or inundation of waters/’ to the destruction of the whole earth. Which ingenious conjecture of Bochartus, (in his Phaleg. lib. ii. cap. 13.) is far more probable than any other account of his name.

Genesis 5:22

Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah. Of all the rest, Moses only says, they lived after they begat those sons here mentioned; but of this man, that he walked with God: i.e. was not only sincerely obedient to God (as we suppose his forefathers to have been), but of an extraordinary sanctity, beyond the rate of other holy men; and held on also in a long course of such singular piety, notwithstanding the wickedness of the age wherein he lived. And the very same character being given of Noah, (vi. 9.) it may incline us to believe, that, as Noah w r as a preacher of righteousness; so Enoch, being a prophet, was not only exemplary in his life, but also severely reproved the wickedness of that age by his word.

Genesis 5:24

And Enoch walked with God. Persevered in that course beforementioned, to the end of his days. And teas not.] He doth not say that he died (as.he doth of the rest in this chapter, both before and after), but that he was not any longer among men in this world. For, God took him.] Translated him to another place. Which plainly signifies the different manner of his leaving this world; insomuch, that the apostle saith, " he did not see death," (Heb. xi. 5.) which confutes the conceit of Aben Ezra, and R. Solomon, and others, who would have this word took to signify, that he was snatched away by an untimely death: contrary to the opinion of their other better authors, and particularly Manachem; who, in his commentary on this place, saith, " That God took from Enoch his bodily clothes, and gave him spiritual raiment." But whither he was translated, we are not told. The author of the book of Ecclesiasticus, chap. xliv. (according to the Vulgar translation), saith “into paradise.” And upon this supposition, the Ethiopic interpreter hath added these words to the text: " God translated him into paradise;" as Ludolphus observes, (lib. iii. Commentar. in Ethiop. Hist. cap. 5. n. 40.) And accordingly we find, in the calendar of that church, a festival upon July 25, called " The Ascension of Enoch into Heaven," (for they were not so foolish as to understand by paradise a place upon earth, but a heavenly mansion,) unto which he was advanced, li axpav dptrfic reXeiuxrtv, (as EusebillS Speaks, lib. vii. Proepar. Evang. cap. 8.) because of his consummate virtue… And it is no unreasonable conjecture, that God was graciously pleased to take him unto himself at this time, to support and comfort mankind in their state of mortality (Adam, the father of them all, being dead not above fiftyseven years before), with the hope of a better life, in the other world. For which reason, it is not improbable, that he was translated in some such visible manner, as Elijah afterward was, by a glorious appearance of the Schechinah, from whence some heavenly ministers were sent to carry him up above.

Genesis 5:25

Begat Lamech. The same name with one of Cain’s posterity, (iv. IS.) But as he was of another race, so he was the grandchild and the father of the best men in those days, viz. Enoch and Noah.

Genesis 5:27

All the days of Methuselah, &c. What was