Adam's descendants to Noah

Story: Adam's descendants to Noah

Passage: Genesis 5

Characters: Lots of people

Interaction: There is actually very little interaction here. This is a list of the descendants of Adam through the line of Seth.

Notes: While there is not much going on here, there are a few things to note. Verse 3 describes Adam's son as someone in his own likeness and after his image. This is similar to how God described Adam when He created him. This is the first indication of how we are children of God. Verse 5 is interesting to me. After all of the detail and beauty that is described about the creation of man and the beginning of Adam, his death is described in the abrupt cold words, "and he died". There is no beauty here as this was not God's intention for man, but rather a result of the curse of sin. The death of every person is described the same way except for Enoch. Enoch is an interesting person to read about. We know very little about him other than that he walked with God and did not die but was taken by God. The phrase "walked with God" in the Septuagint means "pleased God". As we will read in the next chapter, humanity was not pleasing God very much at this point so it is significant that Enoch pleased God and that as a result, God took him and he did not die. When Noah was born, his father Lamech named him because he said that Noah would bring them relief from their work and the toil of their hands. While Noah's life did bring about a revitalization and a promise for the Earth, it came through the destruction of all of humanity except for his family. So this name was accurate, but not in the way that Lamech was thinking. I'm not sure why this is, but Noah had his sons after he was 500 which is significantly different than everyone else mentioned in this passage. This is the line of Seth. Seth was not the firstborn of Adam, yet this was the lineage which God had blessed. According to the culture, Seth did not deserve this special treatment and yet God gave it to him anyway.

Questions: How many sons and daughters were people having? How quickly was the Earth being populated? Were there people following and pleasing God in the line of Cain?

Lessons: We can learn a little bit from Enoch. Even though we don't know much about him, we know he walked with God and pleased God. Our goal in life should be to please God and walk with him in his will.