Genesis 5 Study Notes

The name Enoch means “dedication.”

Enoch, as the seventh member of the Sethite genealogy, is given special emphasis. The name Methuselah may mean either “man of the spear” or “man of Shelah.”

Enoch’s life stands in stark contrast to Lamech, the seventh member of Cain’s line. Whereas Lamech was notorious for his immorality and violence, Enoch walked with God, much as Adam must have done before his sin in the garden (3:8) and as Noah did later (6:9). The phrase “walked with God” suggests living a life consistent with God’s will as well as experiencing fellowship with him. Perhaps it was Enoch’s entrance into parenthood with the birth of Methuselah that inspired him to take his relationship with God seriously. Imagine the level of spiritual maturity Enoch must have attained after 300 years of living wholeheartedly for God! Jude 14 indicates that Enoch was a prophet.

The description of Enoch’s life differs from the others in two remarkable ways: (1) His righteousness is highlighted through the double notation that Enoch walked with God. (2) The description of the end of his life is mysterious: he was not there because God took him. The NT confirms the meaning of this phrase: “Enoch was taken away, and so he did not experience death” (Heb 11:5). Enoch’s experience, like Elijah’s later (2Kg 2:11), anticipates an experience reserved for Christians living at the end of time (1Co 15:51-55; 1Th 4:17).

Methuselah’s 969 years marks him as the oldest person in the Bible. Ancient genealogies commonly attribute long life spans to people. While the Bible’s numbers are exceptionally large compared to modern life spans, they seem much more credible than those found in the Sumerian king list, which states that one individual reached the age of seventy-two thousand!

The Lamech of the Sethite genealogy (v. 28) stands in sharp contrast to the Lamech of the Cainite genealogy. Both Lamechs are the only individuals in their respective genealogies to have quotations attributed to them, but Cain’s Lamech spoke of murder and vengeance (4:23-24), while the Lamech in this chapter spoke words of hope and deliverance. The name Noah means “rest/relief.” Prophetically, Lamech declared that the son born to him would live up to his name: he would bring . . . relief to humanity from the agonizing labor that had resulted from Adam’s sin. The Hebrew verb “relief” is more commonly translated “comfort.”

A final point of comparison between the Cainite and Sethite Lamechs is the use of sevens. The first Lamech mentioned Cain’s sevenfold curse and pronounced a 77-fold curse on anyone who would bring death to him, while Seth’s Lamech lived 777 years before death came to him. For the numbers-conscious original audience, the author’s inclusion of a figure consisting of three sevens would have trumped the first Cain’s numbers and would have added a sense of completeness and perfection to the portrait of this man’s life.

5:32 The mention of Noah at the end of the Sethite genealogy serves as both a conclusion to this section of Genesis and a subtle introduction of the central human character in its next major section. A similar technique will be used in the case of Terah and Abraham (cp. 5:32 and 6:9 with 11:26-27).