Genesis 5 | God’s Steadfast Love & Plan

Well, if last week we agreed that the end of Genesis 4 was the kind of section we might usually just shrug our shoulders at and say “okay,” then Genesis 5 is the type of section that, if we are all honest, we usually just skip right over. No shrug, just a flip of the page!

This is so interesting. Historians, people in other cultures, and older Americans love genealogy. Yet for most of us, genealogies are not as riveting as we may hope. In reading past commentaries on this section, there is almost a giddiness about the amount of data and the ways you can discuss and debate what this genealogy is telling us. I don’t think that is our usual experience here.

I sometimes wonder whether genealogical sections are not as engaging for most of us because we tend to be so individualistic as Americans. We are more concerned about our story, our path, and our potential, and less about how we fit into the big picture and the community we have been a part of. However, many cultures outside of America are very focused on the community they belong to. You see this in different ways in different places.

There is a heritage of this community connection with surnames—names that used to come from our family’s position or job. We have Smiths who likely had a grandparent somewhere who worked with metal. We have Morgans who may have been sea merchants. Collards, who were likely farmers of cabbage. We have Eagy’s, which means “first, or #1” in Hungarian. Perhaps aristocracy or just the first one off the boat at Ellis Island—we are torn as a family to which it means!

For my friends in Ethiopia, their names are literally based on their genealogy.

One of my friends is

Tesfaye Nenko Edema

That name literally comes from:

Tesfaye – my friend

Nenko – his dad

Edema – his grandfather

I also have a friend who is named

Tesfaye Tesfaye Tesfaye

Yep – strong family name choice, and they knew the consequence ahead of time!

I think as Christians, we often need to lean into this idea of community and the story we come from a little more than we do. I don’t just mean who we relate to today (that does matter), but rather the community we have been made a part of through faith. As Paul says to the Ephesians:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

(Ephesians 2:18–22 ESV)

All these images—citizens, family members, a building, a temple—speak to the broader scope of what we are now part of. We are part of a new nation of citizens under THE great King. We are part of a family that we didn’t make. We are part of a building, even a temple, that God is building to bring glory and honor for himself. We are part of something much larger than ourselves, and we should be a little more curious about that lineage and past.

Toledot

That is what we are seeing in these genealogies that appear in Genesis. Genealogies are there to connect us to the larger story and what GOD is doing, and therefore WHO we are in relationship to him. When we come to Genesis chapter five, this is part of a section that is called the toledot(s).

Toledot is just the Hebrew word for generations. And we see this type of section several times throughout Genesis. We see it in:

• Genesis 2:4 (Creation)

• Genesis 5:1 (Adam)

• Genesis 6:9 (Noah)

• Genesis 10:1 (Sons of Noah)

• Genesis 11:10 (Shem)

• Genesis 11:27 (Terah)

• Genesis 25:12 (Ishmael)

• Genesis 25:19 (Isaac)

• Genesis 36:1 (Esau)

• Genesis 37:2 (Jacob)

These sections become the spline, or the turning points, of the story being shared throughout Genesis. You have even seen this before now. You may have noticed I included Genesis 2:4 in that list. Note what it says there:

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

(Genesis 2:4 ESV)

All of Genesis chapter one was a recalling of the generations—the toledot—of heaven and earth. It is a telling of how things came into being, what came first, and what was second and third, and how things progressed to mankind and everything we know. It really isn’t that different from what we see in Genesis 5 and the account of humanity from Adam to Noah.

There are many ways scholars like to split these sections, like Genesis 5, and give them meaning. However, they are all usually trying to note two main things. First, they are noting the basic pattern of Genesis and how these toledot split it up. It tends to follow the same pattern:

Genealogy

Narrative

Genealogy

Narrative

and so forth…

Additionally, these retellings of the genealogical path usually trace the lineages of the godly and the ungodly. We are seeing the progression of humanity as a whole and as sinners, as well as God’s lineage of faithful individuals advancing toward his specific plans.

Every time we come to one of these genealogical sections, we should note that it usually starts or ends a section, and we are about to zoom in (as it were) and slow down a little to hear more about the story before picking up speed and covering a lot of time through another genealogy. And these genealogies show us something about the godly lines from Adam to Seth to Abraham, as well as the ungodly lines.  

We see the same pattern in the New Testament. Matthew is very aware of this pattern of Jewish storytelling. Note how he starts out his gospel:

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

(Matthew 1:1 ESV)

It is no mistake that the church fathers who compiled our Bible put Matthew’s gospel first in the New Testament. It is as if we turn the pages from Malachi and find that we are now in the next chapter of the grander story, no different than each section of Genesis. Between Malachi and Matthew was four hundred years of silence. Then, for the Jewish readers of the early Bible, this beginning of Matthew indicated that God was again moving the story forward.

But that isn’t all we see here in the genealogies. Some genealogies contain much more than we can dig out, some less. This genealogy isn’t just an indication of a new narrative section or just the lineage of godliness or ungodliness. This is a great example of why these types of sections can be quite enjoyable if we take the time to look at them. And more than enjoyable, they are full of hope!

Age

Probably the first thing we all noticed when we first read this section was age.

People lived a really long time! Seth lived to be 912 years old. Enosh lived to be 905. Kenan lived to be 910 years old. I take this to be another sign pointing to how much grace God is giving his people. Not only do people not die right away, but they live for hundreds of years! God is incredibly patient and long-suffering with his people. In fact, that could be a theme for genealogies in general. Our God is long-suffering.

This is God’s description of himself:

The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger [long suffering], and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…

(Exodus 34:6 ESV)

And we see it clearly in genealogies. If we feel we have waited a long time for something to happen, consider God’s perspective. These genealogies show how long God has been willing to wait and how much time he has used to bring about his plan.

In fact, we have here recorded the oldest person we know of throughout Scripture: Methuselah. Methuselah, which might translate as “man of God,” lives to be 969. Can you imagine that?! For us, that would be the same as being born in the year 1057. In that time span, you would have seen:

• The Schism between Eastern and Western Orthodoxy in Christianity

• 83 Popes

• The Crusades

• Marco Polo's discoveries

• Black Death

• The Ottoman Empire

• Columbus's reaching the Americas.

• Everything American, including:

• The American Revolution

• The Civil War

• WW1

• WW2

and so on.

From a technological perspective, you would have seen the beginnings and greater use of the:

• Compass

• Windmills

• Mechanical Clocks

• Gunpowder

• Gutenberg Press

• Scientific and Industrial Revolution

• Railroads

• Telegraph

• Telephone

• Cars

• iPhones

• AI

and more!

That is an incredible length of history. How else could we understand that long lifespan but as a display of God's incredible grace and long-suffering towards his people, over and over again?

And yet, as we talked about last week, there is sin in that common grace of long life. That means a long life would also mean a longer chance for sin. In fact, that is what we see in Scripture. Given long life means that by the time we come to Noah, God says:

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

(Genesis 6:5–6 ESV)

There is so much sin that God limits man’s lifetime.

Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”

(Genesis 6:3 ESV)

We are meant to see this as mankind continuing to regress rather than progress. Yes, God’s people continue to multiply and take dominion in many ways, but humanity as a whole is regressing. So much so that God limits their lifespan.

Interestingly, before this even happens, we see that even Methuselah only lives 969 years. We are told that for God, this isn’t even a day!

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

(2 Peter 3:8 ESV)

This means even the oldest of people listed here never even experienced what God would consider a day. Perhaps that is grace as well! I don’t know about you, but when I see the sin in my own life and the sin around me, I am increasingly ready for God to come back and move things on to the new heavens and the new earth. Yes, I long to never die, which is why a long life seems like a huge grace and harkens us forward towards the promises of life unending with God again. Yet here, under sin, it also seems like it was a kindness to limit the amount of trouble each of us could get into. To limit the amount of suffering and difficulties we experience from sin.

This points us to the next thing we should notice here…

Death

Death. We now see death repeatedly in the account of Scripture. Previously, death was introduced into the storyline only through direct sin from one person to another. Cain killing Abel. Lamech (Cain’s progeny) killed a young man. Yet now, finally, we see that everyone will die. It may have been after a long life, but eventually everyone in this lineage dies. Godly or ungodly, they are all still sinners, and God’s promise will come true. The consequences of sin will be death. This is quite the poignant exclamation mark at the end of each life.

“…and he died.”

“…and he died.”

“…and he died.”

“… And he died” is written eight times in this section. This is the natural outcome of Adam and Eve's choice, and our choice, to sin: Death. While we should notice the grace God gives his people in a lifetime here on this earth, common grace experiences, we should also notice that God is not a liar. Death comes for all.

Yet that isn’t true for us as believers. At least not ultimately. We are meant to notice something else here…

Seventh (Enoch)

We are meant to note especially the seventh person in this line. For Hebrew writers, the seventh of anything carries special importance. And that is true in this lineage and others as well. Previously, when we were learning about Cain and his progeny, the seventh person was Lamech. There, we saw that Lamech invented new ways to sin with polygamy, but also in killing in a way that was worse than Cain's.

Here we see Enoch is the seventh in the lineage of Seth. It says of Enoch:

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

(Genesis 5:21–24 ESV)

Enoch is the father of Methuselah, the oldest person recorded to have lived. It is interesting, then, how Enoch lives the shortest in this account: 365 years. Which would seem to say to me that there is something much more important than how many years one lives. Note especially what it says about Enoch:

Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

Enoch walked with God. That similar phrase is said of all the patriarchs:

Abraham:

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between you and me, and may multiply you greatly.”

(Genesis 17:1–2 ESV)

Isaac:

But he said to me, ‘The LORD, before whom I have walked, will send his angel with you and prosper your way.”

(Genesis 24:40 ESV)

Jacob, as he blesses Joseph:

And he blessed Joseph and said, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day,”

(Genesis 48:15 ESV)

The same is said of the prophet Hezekiah:

Now, O LORD, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.

(2 Kings 20:3 ESV)

There is something way more important than just a long life. We want to be those who “walk” with God. That is what God’s saints do—they walk with God.

[W]alk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

(Colossians 1:10–13 ESV)

This idea of walking with God is not just about worshipping or having communion with God; it is about being in obedience to and subordinate to God. As King David says at the beginning of 1 Kings:

When David’s time to die drew near, he commanded Solomon his son, saying, “I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, and show yourself a man, and keep the charge of the LORD your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn, that the LORD may establish his word that he spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your sons pay close attention to their way, to walk before me in faithfulness with all their heart and with all their soul, you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’

(1 Kings 2:1–4 ESV)

To walk in God’s ways is to live as God would have us live. That is WAY more important than living a long life. This is exactly what Solomon, David’s son, asks for. When God asks him what he wants, he asks for wisdom, an understanding heart, and the ability to discern good from evil. He wants to be able to walk in God’s ways. This is the heart we are all exhorted to have in Psalm 86:11:

Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.

(Psalm 86:11 ESV)

Or as Paul says again to the church at Colossae:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

(Colossians 3:16–17 ESV)

The Problem

Which brings us to the problem that we might be feeling as we think about this genealogy. When we look at these core aspects shown in this genealogy (age, death, and seventh), we might feel the same as the people of Adam's day, Moses’s day, and Hezekiah’s day. No matter how long or short our lives, death comes for us all. And we want hope. We want a hope that we too might be able to be seen as Enoch and have it said of us:

Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

(Genesis 5:24 ESV)

How amazing would that be?! Only two people have ever escaped the grip of death—Enoch and Elijah. We all want the hope that death doesn’t get the final word. Hopefully, now in being rescued like Enoch, but for sure ultimately. We want to know that what was said of Jesus might be said of us as well:

Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?

(1 Corinthians 15:54–55 ESV)

If we only stopped here in our evaluation of this genealogy, that ending would seem to be extremely rare—only Enoch here. He alone in this list walked with God and was no more. Only he seems to escape death. But praise God, he promises to deal with death and sin for us, and even here in this genealogy, we have gospel hope!

The Image of God

As we look at this genealogy, we see three other very important things. First, we see that the image of God continues. Part of the purpose of following father to first-born-son is to reiterate the same thing we saw in Genesis 1:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

(Genesis 1:27 ESV)

Every time we see another generation created, we see that God’s image continues. Humans are creating more humans, which means multiplying God’s image in each generation. We are to see that God is moving forward with humanity, even amidst sin, and that he is making sure his image is advancing as well.

But it is more than that! We are also to see:

The Son of God

Many people read these genealogies and think they are patriarchal for following the sons and not the daughters. But that is the story! We are waiting for THE SON! It isn’t patriarchal; it is just recording the most important piece of data that we should be wondering about and looking for. We are to be watching for the singular, male offspring of the woman who would come and crush the head of the serpent and deliver Adam and Eve and all their believing offspring from the clutches of sin and death.

Every time we see another son born, we are to ask, “Is this the one?!” That is exactly what Adam and Eve were doing; it is exactly what every person from Seth to Matthew was doing. “Is this the one?!” And every time we see “…and he died”.

We see the answer is, no, not yet. No, this is not the son. No, this is not the son.

Yet the pattern is also meant to show God’s image is moving forward and that he is in this process. We are still awaiting the son, and God is moving things forward with us towards that end. There is hope!

Hope and Faith (Noah)

In fact, we bump into even more hope at the most unexpected place in this list.  We see it at the very end of the genealogy.  We see hope and faith as we get to Noah. Look what this genealogy says in the last section:

When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” Lamech lived after he fathered Noah 595 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.

(Genesis 5:28–31 ESV)

Lamech (not the Lamech in Genesis 4) fathers Noah. And his life is 777 years—a perfection of perfection. This genealogy ends by bringing us exactly to the right place—Noah. Unlike all the other names, we get a reason stated for Noah’s name. This Lamech says:

Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.

This one, Noah, shall bring us relief. That would make you think that Noah’s name means relief. But it doesn’t. Noah means rest, not relief. Naham means relief, or satisfaction.

Noah = rest

Naham = relief, comfort, satisfaction

There has been a lot of work done to make Noah say 'relief' instead of 'rest'. That would seem, at first glance, to make the passage easy to understand. But perhaps that tension is exactly where we are meant to find ultimate hope in Genesis 5 this morning. Perhaps we are to wonder how we will get rest [Noah] from God’s bringing relief [naham]. And if we search, there is another place in Scripture where we see these two ideas of rest and relief together. It is in Ezekiel 5:13:

Thus shall my anger spend itself, and I will vent/rest [noah] my fury upon them and satisfy/relieve [naham] myself.

(Ezekiel 5:13 ESV)

In Ezekiel chapter five, God is revealing what is to happen to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is going to have God’s wrath poured out on it because of its continual, unrepentant sin that God might satisfy Himself. We all know that Jerusalem and Israel often point forward in Scripture to Jesus and his role as the true Israel. What if Noah is doing the same here as well?

I think that is what the writer to the Hebrews saw here as well. He says:

By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

(Hebrews 11:7 ESV)

God condemned the world and poured out his wrath on the world in the flood that he might ultimately bring satisfaction and comfort. His goal was to show his hatred of sin. His goal was to show that humanity needed a restart and that we needed rescuing.  Perhaps to even show what he had always promised he would bring for humanity—the death of death and the removal of all sin. We know that doesn’t fully happen through Noah, and that is what we will be studying next in Genesis. But it does happen eventually! Noah is an image of what is to come—the destruction of sin and the rescue of humanity through Jesus Christ by faith!

This is exactly the same type of language Paul uses to describe what happened to Jesus at the cross:

For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation [sacrifice of atonement/wrath] by his blood, to be received by faith.”

(Romans 3:22–25 ESV)

Jesus took the wrath of God that rested upon him, that we might receive comfort and grace as we accept his atoning work for us by faith. That is salvation. That is faith. That is hope!

Friends, we won’t see it this clearly in every genealogy, but each genealogy in Scripture is meant to point us ultimately to the same thing: gospel hope in Jesus Christ.

Age

Death

Seventh (Enoch)

The Image of God

The Son of God

Hope & Faith

When we see ages, we are to remember that there is something more than a long life.

When we see death, we are to remember that God has promised to overcome death for us.

When we see the perfect life of one who walks rightly with God, we are to remember that none of us can do that perfectly, so God will do it for us.

God’s image has been painstakingly passed down through his people for generations, so that ultimately, the SON of GOD, Jesus Christ, might come. God permanently enjoined to flesh, the Son of God, given that his wrath might rest upon him that we might find God’s comfort through our faith in him.

Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.

Noah is a type of Jesus! He is meant to give us hope in this line that one will come from the ground (risen from the grave) and will bring us relief from the toil we are all now under in sin and the curse. That is amazing hope!

As we come to the end of the first section of Genesis and begin to turn to the second section about Noah, we are meant to see gospel hope. We are to keep waiting for the gospel hope. We can expect that God will eventually bring us gospel hope. As we look at this genealogy, we are meant to think about:

Age

Death

Seventh (Enoch) [but importantly…]

The Image of God

The Son of God

Hope & Faith

Conclusion

There are different ways to add up all these years and the historical pattern. But many scholars add up the years and find that Methuselah lived as long as he did and then likely died at the flood. Perhaps that will be true for me and you as well. Perhaps the length of our life will perfectly coincide with the true rest and relief of God brought to us in the second coming of Jesus. The moment that he rescues us from this world, he immediately transforms us to be with him. May it be so, even today!

But even if it isn’t today, we are to see, through the lives of God’s saints and our own, a genealogy of hope. Hope that leads us to Jesus the first time, and hope that is leading us again to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Even if we don’t see Jesus return in our lifetime like a flood upon the earth, may it be said of us that we took our place. That we walked with Jesus. That our names might actually be recorded rightly as:

Ryan in Jesus

Mary in Jesus

Kyle/Kiel in Jesus

Sarah in Jesus

All of Main Street in Jesus!

And on and on!  Perhaps, maybe even more importantly, that our lives might be seen as:

Jesus Jesus Jesus

May that be what we see in the children of our community standing on the stage. Another generation and a chance for Jesus to be the hope that they have and know. God’s long-suffering has continued even to this day. May we use it to walk rightly with him and to share the knowledge of the gospel like a genealogy written in our daily life.

Response

Take a moment to think about this genealogy this morning. I hope you have your Bible with you, either in an app or on paper. Open it to Genesis 5 and ponder it this morning. What is God wanting to remind you about today?

• Is it a look forward to what we long for one day? Long life (Age), the conquering of death (Death), and even walking with God perfectly again (Seventh/Enoch) in the new heavens and new earth?

• Do you remember that you—each of you—are part of the lineage of God’s godly people, and he is using you, today, just like he used all these people we read about here?

• Is it that you need to see or remember gospel hope? To see that God has been long-suffering with us and will continue to guide and care for us in Jesus even today. See and know that God has and will provide for us through faith, as with Noah.