Genesis Chapter Five Series

GENESIS CHAPTER FIVE OVERVIEW

Overall what is happening in this chapter is that we have a genealogy of the race of humans from Adam until the flood.

Matthew Henry (1714) – Genesis 5

This chapter is the only authentic history extant of the first age of the world from the creation to the flood, containing (according to the verity of the Hebrew text) 1656 years, as may easily be computed by the ages of the patriarchs, before they begat that son through whom the line went down to Noah. This is one of those which the apostle calls “endless genealogies” (1 Timothy 1:4), for Christ, who was the end of the Old Testament law, was also the end of the Old Testament genealogies; towards him they looked, and in him they centered. The genealogy here recorded in inserted briefly in the pedigree of our Saviour (Luke 3:36-38), and is of great use to show that Christ was the “seed of the woman” that was promised.

We have here an account:

I. Concerning Adam (Genesis 5:1-5).

II. Seth (Genesis 5:6-8).

III. Enos (Genesis 5:9-11).

IV. Cainan (Genesis 5:12-14).

V. Mahalaleel (Genesis 5:15-17).

VI. Jared (Genesis 5:18-20).

VII. Enoch (Genesis 5:21-24).

VIII. Methuselah (Genesis 5:25-27).

IX. Lamech and his son Noah (Genesis 5:28-32).

All scripture, being given by inspiration of God, is profitable, though not all alike profitable.

KEY THEME

Account of Adam’s descendants

KEY THOUGHT

Adam was created sinless but due to the fall he died. All of Adam’s descendants were born with Adam’s fallen nature and they died (except Enoch – he was taken by God before his death because he walked with God).

“Adam was made in the image of God; but when he was fallen and corrupt, he beget a son in his own image, sinful and defiled, frail, mortal, and miserable, like himself: not only a man like himself, guilty and obnoxious, degenerate and corrupt. … Note: Grace does not run in the blood, but corruption does. A sinner begets a sinner, but a saint does not beget a saint.” Matthew Henry

KEY VERSE

Genesis 5:24 Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

Thomas Coke (1801) – (Enoch)

He (Enoch) was a man of fame, and a prophet: but he had qualities more worthy of emulation than these: he was a man of extraordinary goodness and probity. He walked with God, Moses tells us; and St. Paul says of him, that he pleased God, an expression which is the most beautiful of all eulogies. His eminent piety was crowned with a privilege which God has seldom granted, with an exemption from the law, which condemns to death the whole posterity of Adam. In each of the three great periods of the church, there has been an instance of a man taken up to heaven in body and soul, in order to support the hopes possessed by all true believers, of arriving at the same happiness. Enoch was the first of those examples, before the law; Elijah under the law; and Jesus Christ, our great Leader, under the gospel-dispensation!

KEY BIBLE CROSS-REFERENCE

Hebrews 11:5 By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; AND HE WAS NOT FOUND BECAUSE GOD TOOK HIM UP; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.