The House of Adam: An Integral Study of Genesis 5

Genesis 4, a generally ambivalent text about Cain and his descendants, ends with the hope of an alternative path or fresh start through the line of Adam and Eve’s third son, Seth (Sarna (1989) 40).* Genesis 5 expands on this possibility of new hope in the form of a lengthy genealogy of his line. Genealogies are a notorious(ly boring) part of the Bible, but they were included for a reason — even if that reason is largely opaque to us today. So while we’re going to cover this material quickly, it still bears covering.

[Note: I realize that these posts often get very detailed, so this time around I’ll be starting something new — and I hope to go back and insert this in past posts in the series to make it more useful: I’ll be starting with an integrated summary; interested parties can then go on and look in at the details of any piece they find interesting]

Integrated Summary

Genesis 5 both picks up from where chapter 4 left off, and offers an intentional alternative to it. Its main purpose of Genesis 5 is to bridge the stories of the first family and the flood story, through the lens of Adam and Eve’s third son, Seth. Like Genesis 4, this comes to us in the form of a genealogy, but this one is less narrative and more conventional in nature. The basic structure is: 1. age at firth of first son, 2. name of son, 3. years lived after becoming a father, 4. total years of life, and 5. statement of death. This conventional format is broken only for the figures of Adam, Enoch, Lamech, and Noah. The importance of these figures is also demonstrated by their positioning at symbolic places in the genealogy (first, seventh, penultimate, and tenth (last)).

It’s the importance of these figures, especially those after Adam, that sets this line up as an alternative to Cain’s. Where Cain’s line was responsible for important cultural advancements but was also marked by violence, self-protection, and boasting, we see in Enoch, Lamech, and Noah an alternative legacy defined by faithfulness. Enoch is said to have “walked with God” and instead of the normal simple statement of death, the text says he “was taken” — a detail that originally likely indicated simply his being saved from the coming devastation of the flood, but which proved in Second Temple Judaism to be fodder for all kinds of apocalyptic speculation. Lamech, for his part, is defined by the hope he places in his son, Noah, who is to be a source of rest and comfort for the toil of life on earth. This fatherly blessing ends up being fulfilled, but, in an ironic way.

So, while, in the broad scope of Genesis, we can’t help but think of this text as connective tissue, that doesn’t mean it has nothing to offer us, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. For it tells a story of the blessing of continuation of family, and, in focusing on figures like Enoch, Lamech, and Noah, offers a faithful alternative to Cain’s legacy.

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Text

For the text for today’s passage, see here.

The passage is a pretty straightforward genealogy, covering ten generations of Adam’s line through Seth in nine conventionally-structured sections :

• Age at the birth of the (implicitly) first son
• Naming of son
• Years lived after the fathering of this son
• Mention of other sons and daughters
• Total years of life
• Statement of death

A tenth section is begun but left incomplete. It introduces Noah’s narrative, which is not only picked up again in 6.5, but becomes the focus of Genesis for the subsequent four chapters.

Experience & Encounter

Genealogies are far from the most inspiring or enlightening parts of the Bible. But I couldn’t help on this read feeling the immense blessing involved in the continuity of the generations. I also noticed how the pattern in the text is adhered to perfectly, except for four people: Adam, Enoch, Lamech, and Noah: Adam’s section is the first, and receives the additional detail that his son is made “in his likeness, according to his image,” language which clearly refers to the Genesis 1 story’s assertion that humanity is made in God’s image and likeness. Enoch seems to be highlighted for his piety — a first in the Bible. He is said not just to live but to have “walked with God”; this is mentioned twice (5.22 and 24). He is also not said to have died but rather that “God took him.” The addition to Lamech’s section is, by contrast, not about him at all; rather it sets up his son Noah’s story by providing an explanation of his name. And finally, the chapter ends with the start of Noah’s section, which does not end — for Genesis has a lot more to say about Noah — and also differs in branching into three lines, reminiscent of how Cain’s line also branched into three at the end.

Explore

This section doesn’t inspire a lot of questions, but there are still some things I’d like to know:

• Do the conventions of Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) genealogies provide any insight into the text?
• What more can be said about the four figures set apart in the text, Adam, Enoch, Lamech, and Noah?

Genealogies

In a previous post about genealogy as a genre, I noted some of it’s defining characteristics:

Genealogy as a literary genre in the ANE had some common features: It was generally descending (i.e., it begins with the oldest ancestor and works down towards the present), patriarchal (i.e., fathers and sons, not mothers and daughters), monolinear rather than branching (i.e., fathers and sons, not including uncles and cousins), and fluid (i.e., they can be told in different ways at different times). This fluidity was achieved through such tactics as telescoping (i.e., skipping generations, or expanding on important figures) and patterning (i.e., arranging the material in balanced or symmetrical ways, often based on sacred numbers), and was done to tell an intentional story about the person whose genealogy is being described. If we keep these characteristics in mind — both in how they are obeyed and broken — the genealogies in the Bible cease to be boring lists of names and become wonderful and even insightful narratives.

We see a few of these characteristics at play in Genesis 5: It is completely patriarchal and monolinear until it branches at the very end, and is ordered into ten generations.

With this in mind, the question before us is: What is the story this genealogy is telling us? On its most obvious level, just like any ANE genealogy, its goal is to demonstrate continuity and prestige (Walton & Keener). But looking at ANE literature more widely, we see that flood stories were very common and that these were often preceded by genealogies building up to the flood story’s hero (Sarna (1989) 40). Moreover, these genealogies tended to be split into two patterns: one having seven generations (seven being the number of perfection in ANE numerology), the other featuring ten generations (ten being a universally significant number, likely thanks to our number of fingers) (Carr, Brueggemann, Sarna (1989) 40). It’s interesting then that the Cain genealogy featured seven generations and the Seth genealogy features ten, and that both genealogies put special focus on the seventh descendant from Adam: Lamech in chapter 4 and Enoch here.

Another common feature of ANE genealogies is incredibly long lifespans, which we also see here. Indeed, compared to those found in Sumerian kings lists (the shortest reign recorded in these is 18,600 years!), the hundreds-of-years-long lifespans recorded here are restrained (Walton (2001), Carr)! While, aside from Enoch’s 365 years, none seem meaningfully symbolic, the fact of the long lives remains and is nothing other than what was expected from the genre. It should also be noted that the years and lifespans are some of the elements that diverge most among the four major textual traditions of Genesis: the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Qumran texts, and the Masoretic Text (which most English-language Bibles follow) (Carr, Louth xlv). The numbers of the Masoretic Text add up so that everyone (except for those on the ark) dies before or in the flood. So we can posit either that these were the original numbers and the other textual traditions were the result of copying errors, or (more likely) that the numbers contained a lot of variation in the source texts and were later honed to make the math fit the timing of the flood story.

Standout Figures

Four figures are given special attention in the genealogy:

Adam

Adam stands out because of the detail about Seth being born in his image and likeness. This obviously parallels Genesis 1’s statements about humanity being created in God’s image and likeness. What’s less certain is whether this is intended to a) convey the passing on of God’s image to Adam’s descendants, b) convey the passing on of traits from parent to child, or c) some combination of both — “that Seth and his heirs are a strange, unresolved mixture of the regal image of God and the threatened image of Adam” (Brueggemann).

Enoch

Enoch and Lamech, are interesting because their names appear in both Cain and Seth’s lines. The most straightforward way to account for this is to assume this is just a reflection of what were becoming common names. But it’s also possible that the genealogies reflect different traditions incorporating a particularly well-known hero in local legend into the family record, which was a common trope in antiquity (Sarna (1989) 23, Brueggemann). Either way, while Cain’s Enoch is third in the line, this Enoch is seventh, which itself marks him off as special.

Enoch is set apart as special for his piety. Throughout the Old Testament, ‘walking with God’ refers to “a regular form of daily interaction,” what we might call a casual but consistent intimacy with God (see 1 Samuel 25.16, Micah 6.8, Malachi 2.6). Enoch’s comparatively short life and the unique way his death is described (’taken’ rather than died’) suggest he was intentionally spared from the coming judgement of the flood (Carr). But the text says nothing about where he was taken. This gap in the text proved to be a fruitful source of apocalyptic speculation in Second Temple Judaism, and Enoch become an almost superhuman figure mediating between heaven and earth (see 1, 2, 3 Enoch) (Walton (2001). But this is highly unlikely to have been the original sense of the text. There are parallels in Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths for heroes to be taken up into heaven to avoid death; the example of Utuabzu is particularly striking, as he was a Sumerian wise man, like Enoch the seventh man noted in a list of pre-flood figures, who ascended into heaven so that he would not have to undergo the normal course of death (Walton (2001, Walton & Keener). This is similar to the Elijah story from 2 Kings 2, and it’s most likely that this is the kind of tradition that originally existed around Enoch.

Lamech

The Lamech we meet here is a very different kind of person from the Lamech we see in the Cain line. That Lamech was violent, boastful, and self-sufficient; this one is known for the beautiful and faithful hopes he placed in his son, Noah (Carr). Whether these are two different traditions about the same figure (as Brueggemann implies), or simply a case of two men with the same name, the contrast is striking and likely intentional: Where the one is a symbol of violent self-security, the other offers a generous, other-focused ideal of generosity and comfort (Brueggemann).

Noah

Lamech provides an explanation of Noah’s name: “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed this one shall bring us comfort from our work and from the toil of our hands.” This is a classic case of folk etymology, as Noah’s name cannot be reasonably derived from the root nhm ‘comfort’. It’s more likely that it comes from nwḥ ‘rest’ (Carr). Either way, it seems to be a reference to Noah’s role as a grower of grapes and winemaker — something that definitely comforts (and brings rest) from work, even if this can be wildly abused (as Noah’s own story shows after the flood). The text ends with the names of Noah’s three sons, each of whom comes to be associated with one of the major areas of ANE civilization: Ham with Egypt, Shem with Mesopotamia, and Japheth with the Aegean (many have posited a link between Japheth and the Greek Titan Iapetus) (Sarna (1989) 44f).

Challenge

Because ANE genealogies are patriarchal, monolinear, and made to fit symbolic, conventional patterns, by necessity they leave a good number of people out. Since one of the primary reasons for including a ‘challenge’ section in my Integral hermeneutic is to ask questions about whose story is not being told here, it’s worth thinking through.

There are no women mentioned by name in this genealogy; likewise, until the very end, there are no younger brothers mentioned by name. But even if they weren’t considered worth mentioning by the genealogical conventions of the ANE (and even if, by the logic of the story, their lines are wiped out in the flood), they are still reminders that genealogies tell a story — even this one is an alternative story from Genesis 4: two genealogies, two stories about what it means to be human, two different legacies.

The Old Testament has a lot of stories about favoured children. As I always think it bears repeating, there is plenty of biblical evidence that just because the unfavoured children are marginalized in the story, this does not mean they are of no concern to God. Ishmael may not have been the child of promise, but God still blessed him and he, like his father, became the father of great nations. Esau may have sold his birthright to his brother for a pot of soup, but he was still blessed with a successful life.

Expand

The main purpose of Genesis 5 is to bridge the stories of the first family and the flood story. In the broad scope of Genesis, we can think of it as connective tissue (Sarna (1989) 40). But that doesn’t mean it has nothing to offer, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. For it tells a story of the blessing of continuation of family, and, in focusing on figures like Enoch, Lamech, and Noah, offers a faithful alternative to Cain’s legacy.

 

* See the series bibliography for details.