And the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth,
were
eight hundred years
The Septuagint version is seven hundred; for having added one
hundred years more the should be, to the years of his life before
the birth of Seth, here they are taken away to make the number of
his years complete: and he begat sons and
daughters;
not only after the birth of Seth, but before, though we have no
account of any, unless of Cain's wife; but what their number was
is not certain, either before or after; some say he had thirty
children, besides Cain, Abel, and Seth; and others a hundred
F3. Josephus says the number of
children, according to the old tradition, was thirty three sons
and twenty three daughters. F4 (These families had at least
five children, for one son is named as well as other sons and
daughters. Therefore there must be at least three sons and two
daughters in each family. For a family to have at least three
sons and two daughters, according to the laws of chance, a family
must on the average have nine children for this to be a near
certainty. Hence the families listed in this chapter must have
been large by today's standards. Given their long life, this is
not at all unusual. However even today, the Old Order Mennonites
of Waterloo County in Ontario and Lancaster County in
Pennsylvannia, have many families this large. Ed.)