Genesis 5:1 - Meaning and Application

The opening words of this chapter serve as its title and main idea: it is the book of the generations of Adam. That means it is the record, or list, of Adam’s descendants, but not of every descendant. It focuses on the holy line, the chosen family through whom the promise was kept (Isaiah 6:13), and from whom, in regard to his human nature, Christ came (Romans 9:5). It includes the names, ages, and deaths of those who followed the first Adam as keepers of the promise, and ancestors of the second Adam, Christ.

The genealogy begins with Adam himself. First, we are reminded of his creation (Genesis 5:1, 2), which briefly repeats what was already said earlier about the creation of man. This is something we need to hear again and again, and to know well. God created man, so man is not his own maker. If he did not make himself, then he must not rule himself apart from God, but must let the One who gave him life direct his ways.

We are also told that God created man at a certain time. He was not eternal. He was not first in the order of creation, but came after the rest. God made him in his own likeness, righteous and holy, and therefore truly happy. Of all the creatures in this world, human nature most closely reflected the divine nature.

God created them male and female (Genesis 5:2), for their comfort with one another and for the preserving and growing of the human race. Adam and Eve were both made directly by God’s hand, and both were made in God’s likeness. So there is not the great distance or inequality between the sexes that some people imagine. God blessed them. Parents may bless their children, but God, the common Father of all, gives the blessing with authority. This blessing mainly refers to growth in number, though it does not exclude other good gifts.

He called their name Adam. Adam means earth, or red earth. God gave him that name. Adam had named the other creatures, but he was not to choose a grand name for himself. God gave him a name that would always remind him of his lowly origin and make him remember that he was taken from the dust (Isaiah 51:1). Those have little reason to be proud who are so closely linked to dust. God gave this same name to both man and woman. Since they were first one by nature, and later one in marriage, it was fitting that both should bear the same name as a sign of their unity. The woman is earthy as well as the man.

Next comes the birth of his son Seth (Genesis 5:3). Seth was born in the 130th year of Adam’s life, and it is likely that Abel’s murder had happened not long before. Adam had many other sons and daughters besides Cain and Abel before Seth was born, but they are not mentioned, because special notice is given only to the line through which Christ and the church would come. What stands out here about Seth is that Adam begat him in his own likeness, after his image. Adam had been made in the image of God, but after his fall into sin, he passed on to his son his own fallen nature. Seth was like his father, sinful and defiled, frail, mortal, and unhappy. He was like him not only as a human being, with body and soul, but also as a sinner, guilty, corrupt, and ruined.

Even David, the man after God’s own heart, says that he was conceived and born in sin (Psalm 51:5). That was Adam’s own likeness, the opposite of the divine likeness in which he was first made. Since Adam had lost that likeness himself, he could not pass it on to his children. Grace does not run in the blood, but corruption does. A sinner begets a sinner, but a saint does not beget a saint.

Finally, we are told about Adam’s age and death. He lived 930 years, and then he died, just as God had said: to dust you shall return. Though he did not die on the very day he ate the forbidden fruit, he did become mortal that day. From that time on, he began to die. His whole life after that was only a delay of judgment, a life already forfeited and condemned. It was even a dying life, wearing away little by little, like a man sentenced and slowly put to death.