ANNOUNCER: There are many places in the Bible where genealogies are given, and so why does God include them in His Word? What is so important about a family tree? And more specifically, what can we learn from the genealogies that are in Genesis chapter 5? Hey, friend, we’re glad you’re joining us today. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society, and it’s called Grace In Focus, our website, faithalone.org, where you can read our articles by books in our store, read our blog, subscribe to our magazine, and get information about our online seminary. It’s all there at faithalone.org.

And now with today’s question and answer, here are Bob Wilkin and David Renfro. 

BOB: So what’s on tap, David, for this show? 

DAVID: Why does God include genealogies, lists of genealogies in the Scripture? 

BOB: So a genealogy is basically a person’s family tree. 

DAVID: Family tree, right. 

BOB: And it can go back 10 generations, 20, 50, 100 generations, whatever. 

DAVID: But the question, you know, so-and-so begets so-and-so. So-and-so begets, so-and-so. How’s that inspired Scripture? Meaning, what is the significance of the genealogies, and one of them that I think it’s fascinating is the genealogy in Genesis chapter 5. 

BOB: Okay, I agree. Now, what we find in Genesis 5 is that we’re looking through the very truncated genealogies of what we call the patriarchs, right? The first generations from Adam down to Noah, and what we look at is just the father, his eldest son, except in the case of Adam, because his eldest son was Cain. But eldest son, the one that’s in the line of Messiah, and then we get the age of the father, when his eldest son was born, and the age of the patriarch when he died, right? And each one of these ends with the unique expression, and he died.

DAVID: Over and over. 

BOB: All the way through here. 

DAVID: But there’s one exception. 

BOB: One exception, it’s a little sermonette, a guy named Enoch, but notice, let’s first of all, take a look at the ‘and he died.” It occurs in verse 5. 

DAVID: So all the days that Adam lived were 930 years and he died. 

BOB: So notice, before the flood, people were living seven, eight, nine hundred years. Methuselah is the oldest one, 969. But here is Adam 930, which means more than 930, because on the day he was created, he had the apparent age, he wasn’t created as a baby, he was probably looked like he was 20. 

DAVID: Yeah, it’s interesting that all these numbers are very high for all these people, and I heard that God’s original intent was that we live a thousand years. But sin messed that up. 

BOB: Well, of course, before the fall, his original plan was forever, no death. But once Adam and Eve sin, now His plan was a thousand years. 

DAVID: A thousand years, yeah. 

BOB: And then the sin that messed it up is mentioned in the next chapter, Genesis 6. But before we get there, you’re right. We’re finding people living nearly a thousand years. And we don’t know, some people may have lived more than a thousand. Now, how about verse 8? 

DAVID: Verse 8 says, so all the days of Seth were 912 years and he died. 

BOB: So Seth was Adam’s son in the line of Messiah, and he lived 912, and then in verse 11, 

DAVID: The days of Enosh were 905 years and he died. 

BOB: So again, and he died, and he died, and he died. And so then after Enosh, we get someone named Canaan, and how about verse 14? 

DAVID: All the days of Canaan were 910 years and he died. 

BOB: And then we get someone named Mahalalel, verse 17. 

DAVID: All the days of Mahalalel were 895 years. Oh, he died young. 

BOB: And he died. And then next was the jeweler. 

DAVID: Was it Jared? 

BOB: Isn’t Jared the jeweler? There’s Jared’s jewelery stores in Dallas, and verse 20. 

DAVID: All the days of Jared were 962 years. That’s pretty long. 

BOB: Except for Methuselah, he’s the oldest recorded, and he died. Okay, let’s skip 21 through 24 for a minute and go to Methuselah. So verse 27. Methuselah was the son of Enoch. So Enoch was the son of Jared, and then Enoch had a son named Methuselah, and Methuselah is spoken of in verse 27. 

DAVID: Right, and it says all the days of Methuselah were 969 years. That makes him the longest living human. 

BOB: Recorded. 

DAVID: Recorded. 

BOB: Now, we don’t have any women listed in these genealogies, which was fairly typical in Jewish or Gentile genealogies. And so we have that. Then his son was called Lamech. Lamech is the shortest of the patriarchs in terms of lifespan, and that’s in verse 31. 

DAVID: But all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died. 

BOB: Now, his son was called Noah. Noah. Chapter 6 just talks about that he was 500 years old, and he begot Shem, Ham and Japheth. But if you go to Genesis 9 and verse 29, we get the conclusion of the matter for Noah. 

DAVID: All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died. 

BOB: So Noah lived 950 almost as much as Methuselah and Jared, and he died. When I had Dr. Allen Ross at Dallas Seminary, he called Genesis 5 the temporary reign of death, and he said, and this is a direct quote. He said, people are dropping like flies in Genesis 5. Because the way Moses tells this, it’s not so much about how long they lived. He just gives a couple of verses and he died, a couple of verses and he died. He’s compressing these people’s 969 years, or 930 years. He’s condensing it into a few seconds. 

DAVID: And we don’t know anything else about their lives. 

BOB: Right. We are told a little in many of these cases elsewhere in Genesis, but here, very little. 

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BOB: Because the emphasis on all this is the temporary reign of death, and the reason Alan Ross called this the temporary reign of death is because there’s a day coming when there’ll be no more death. Ross said that verses 21 through 24 are a sermonette telling us about a future day in which there will be no more death. David, could you read 21 to 24? 

DAVID: It says, “Enoch lived 65 years and begot Methuselah, and after he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were 365 years,” and this is unique to this chapter, “Enoch walked with God and he was not.” What does that mean? 

BOB: Yeah, it means God took him away without dying. 

DAVID: Yeah, in other words, it’s almost like a like a one-person Rapture. 

BOB: Yeah, well, like Elijah was taken up in the whirlwind with the flaming chariot by it.

DAVID: The only other person in the Old Testament that did not physically die. 

BOB: And by the way, those two guys could be the two witnesses in the book of Revelation, who die at the midpoint, if so, then that would mean that everybody dies except for the people alive at the time of the Rapture. But there is a coming day when there will be no more death. That’s called the new earth. And the Millennium, there will be very little death. People are going to be living from the beginning to the end of that, for the most part. Isaiah 65:20 says that there will be like trees. They have a lifespan of people and you know, trees can live thousands of years. 

So what Enoch is, is the example of what can be. Remember, Adam and Eve walked with the Lord in the garden in the cool of the day, Genesis 3:8. Now we have Enoch walked with God and God took him. The sermonette here in verses 21 through 24 says, this is what’s going to happen one day. And of course, Job knew that one day he was going to walk with the Lord in his flesh. Daniel, he talks about the resurrection unto eternal life in Daniel chapter 12. And of course, the book of Hebrews tells us that all of the patriarchs were looking forward to the coming kingdom. 

So I love Genesis chapter 5. And so coming back to your question, what’s the significance of all these names and dates? 

DAVID: Well, if you look at the meanings of these names, Adam means man. Seth means appointed. Enoch means mortal, Canaan means sorrow, Mahalalel means the blessed God. Jared means come down. Enoch means teaching. Methuselah means his death shall bring it. 

BOB: And his death brought the flood because, guess what? Methoselah died in the year of the flood. 

DAVID: Methuselah’s death brought the flood. Lamech means despairing and Noah means comfort. And way back in many years ago, Ray Steadman, I heard a sermon by him and he said, put those words together. And here’s what he had to say or something similar.” It is appointed for mortal man to have sorrow, but the blessed God shall come down teaching that his death shall bring the despairing comfort.” If you study some of this stuff and you’re normally genealogies aren’t all that exciting, but if you study this stuff, there is, some call it a hidden meaning. And so there’s a message here that the Lord will come down. And this, all the sorrow that we have in our lives and in our world today will be gone. You know, we know that from the New Testament. But this is in Genesis 5 for crying out. It’s a universal message, isn’t it? 

BOB: It is. And we do know that Old Testament names mean something. For example, Avraham means father of many peoples, right? And so he is the father of both the Jewish people and the Arab people. And ultimately, all the families of the earth will be blessed from Avraham.. And you’ve got the same thing with lots of the names in the Old Testament. 

DAVID: And I think that the designation of those names, like the order in which they are, is that hidden meaning. What does Adam mean? What does Seth mean? In other words, you got to do a little bit of extra Bible study instead of just do the surface stuff. And we should do that in every passage. 

BOB: Every passage. Amen. Well, thanks so much, David. And thank you all. And let’s keep grace in focus. 

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We do thank you friend for joining us all this week here on Grace in Focus. It is our pleasure to have you with us, and now for the weekend. We hope that you have a great one, some rest, some enjoyment, some worship, and we look forward to seeing you again on Monday for more Grace in Focus.