[And He Walks With Me] Genesis 5
3-32 For the significance of genealogies in Genesis, see note on 4:17-24.
As of 2022, the average life expectancy in the US was 77 years. We are impressed when people live past 100. The lifespans described in Genesis 5 are unimaginable. Yet, they are not unprecedented in the antediluvian (pre-flood) world. In fact, Sumerian historical records indicate eight Sumerian kings reigned for a total of 241,200 years, for an average lifespan of more than 30,000 years. Interestingly, “The Sumerian King List uses the standard Sumerian sexagesimal system. If the notation is read with decimal values rather than sexagesimal values, the numbers are in the same range as the Biblical numbers, and the totals of the lists are nearly identical.”[6]
21-24 Enoch represents the seventh generation of humanity. Whether that should be interpreted as a literal seventh generation is debatable; ancient genealogies often skipped generations. It could be that the genealogy was strategically tailored so that Enoch was the seventh generation mentioned because the number seven was significant in ancient Semitic cultures. It represented completion and perfection. Enoch, then, was the culmination of the God-ward trajectory of Seth’s family line. As such, he stands in stark contrast to the seventh generation of Cain’s line, Lamech (see 3:19-24).
Enoch’s account broke the rhythmic pattern of the first six generations in several ways. First, there is the note of how Enoch walked with God. No one had literally walked with God since Adam and Eve were exiled from the garden at the end of chapter 3, but the phrase is here used to symbolize Enoch’s godly life. What an apt illustration! When one walks with someone, they are moving in the same direction at the same pace, and they are typically conversing back and forth as they do. Enoch’s life was characterized by such an intimacy and alignment with God! In fact, his relationship with God was so close that the phrase is repeated for emphasis in vs 24. Second, Enoch’s life lasted 365 years. The previous six generations lived an average of 919 years. Enoch’s life was less than half that. Third, Enoch’s life did not end in death. Rather, he was not there because God took him. The method by which God took him is unspecified, but Enoch became the first of only two people in history to not die. (See 2 Kings 2:1-12 for the account of Elijah being taken up into heaven by a chariot of fire with horses of fire.) A godly life breaks the general pattern of life in this world. It does not conform to the behavior of the surrounding world, and its ending is something entirely different. Indeed, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 explains that, when a godly person dies, believers will not grieve like the rest because they have hope that the dead in Christ will rise first and we who are still alive…will be caught up together with them. Notice that this promise only applies to those who will always be with the Lord.
27 If you do the math, Methuselah’s life ended in the year of the flood recorded in chapters 6-8. This may have been sheer coincidence, but there also may have been some correlation. Namely, did God wait until after Methuselah died to send the flood? Was this another way that God honored Enoch? Did the generations following Methuselah take a sharp turn away from the Lord such that God waited for Methuselah, the only righteous person other than Noah, to die before launching the flood? Was Methuselah included among the wicked people who were killed in the flood? We can speculate, but we will never know.
30 If Lamech lived 595 years after he fathered Noah, he was alive to see Noah begin construction on the ark at the age of 500. In fact, he died only 5 years before the flood (7:6).
32 While the other generations of this genealogy measure a person’s life based on when they had kids (e.g., Enoch was 65 years old when he fathered Methuselah (21)), Noah already had at least three sons by the time his age was given. This indicates that, as significant as the birth of his first son was, there was a far greater watershed moment in his life. That moment will be identified in the next chapter as the day God revealed the flood was coming.
[6] Keener and Zondervan 2016, Genesis 5