Genesis five is really weird. We have these people who lived really long lives but the numbers are very strange when you look closely at them. Also, what does it mean to walk with God and what on earth happened to Enoch?
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Parents, all scripture is from the CSB, Christian Standard Bible).
Today, we’re going to cover all of chapter five because there isn’t a lot of context here—just a lot of legendary materials people had written up later and we’re not really going to go into any of that. Remember, we read this to try and figure out what God was saying to the original audience and how we can learn from that. I am not going to read everything, just the highlights.
This is the document containing the family records of Adam. On the day that God created man, he made him in the likeness of God; 2 he created them male and female. When they were created, he blessed them and called them mankind. 3 Adam was 130 years old when he fathered a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. 4 Adam lived 800 years after he fathered Seth, and he fathered other sons and daughters. 5 So Adam’s life lasted 930 years; then he died. 6 Seth was 105 years old when he fathered Enosh. 7 Seth lived 807 years after he fathered Enosh, and he fathered other sons and daughters. 8 So Seth’s life lasted 912 years; then he died… 21 Enoch was 65 years old when he fathered Methuselah. 22 And after he fathered Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and fathered other sons and daughters. 23 So Enoch’s life lasted 365 years. 24 Enoch walked with God; then he was not there because God took him. 25 Methuselah was 187 years old when he fathered Lamech. 26 Methuselah lived 782 years after he fathered Lamech, and he fathered other sons and daughters. 27 So Methuselah’s life lasted 969 years; then he died. 28 Lamech was 182 years old when he fathered a son. 29 And he named him Noah, saying, “This one will bring us relief from the agonizing labor of our hands, caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.” 30 Lamech lived 595 years after he fathered Noah, and he fathered other sons and daughters. 31 So Lamech’s life lasted 777 years; then he died. 32 Noah was 500 years old, and he fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
So, here’s the deal, we aren’t going to hear anything about Cain’s descendants ever again, but we will hear a lot about the inventions they came up with. God cared about them and so we know things about them, but their story is over now. God is going to focus on the ancestors (that’s everyone who comes before—like all your grandparents and great grandparents are your ancestors) of the people in the wilderness that Moses is telling these stories to. This is their story of how God chose a people for Himself out of all the families of the earth, but we aren’t there yet. That won’t happen until Genesis 12 and the story of Abraham. We still have to talk about Noah and the flood, in a couple of weeks, and the Tower of Babel, before that happens.
But you are probably so bored right now and saying, “Dang, Miss Tyler, these folks lived a super long time and waited forever before having babies. What gives?” And so, this week we are going to talk about numbers in Scripture and genealogies in the ancient world. You see, ancient people cared very much about certain numbers and we don’t always know why. We can guess, but they never put out a book that says, “Okay, this number means this and that number means that and etc. and etc.” People have gone back and they look at patterns and have sorta tried to piece things together but honestly, we are guessing a lot of times. Except—well, except when we started to find a whole lot of information through archaeology and about all the countries around ancient Israel. So, when we see the number seven now, we know a lot about that. And the number seven shows up a lot in Genesis chapter five. In fact, this week is all about the numbers five and seven because every single number in the chapter is related to those two numbers and only those two numbers.
“Oh no, Miss Tyler, not a math lesson!” Yep, sorry, but it won’t be too hard. You see, people have always wondered if all those numbers were real or if they were symbols for something else and now scholars think that they meant something important to the Israelites in the wilderness, something that we don’t understand anymore. The reason scholars believe that is because every single one of those numbers (with one exception), end in 0, 5, 2, or 7. I mean, no one ever had a kid or died at an age ending with 1, 3, 4, 6, or 8 and only one ever died in a year ending with 9? Were those safe years? Years that no one had to worry about dying? Or was there some sort of message in those numbers? Hmmm…if so, then we don’t know what it was anymore because no one wrote it down. Probably because everyone knew it, it was part of their context and culture and they never thought anyone would ever forget! Oops.
But why 0, 2, 5, and 7? Well, a man named Donald V Etz, who was a mathematical genius,figured out that’s what happens when you have numbers that are all multiples of fives—you know, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, etc…–or multiples of fives plus the number seven. When you add seven to a five, you get a number ending in two and when you add seven to a number ending in zero you get a number ending in seven! Even the one number ending in nine, you just get that by taking a number ending in five and add two sevens to it. Can that be a coincidence? Nope. Are all numbers in Scripture like that? Oh heck no. When we look at the lists of kings later in the Bible, we have all sorts of random numbers for the length of time they were king, so we know those are just historical numbers. Just like the numbers that you would find in our modern history books. But here, before the flood, we have these super big numbers that seem to be some sort of a code. And like so many things in the Bible, we don’t know how to decipher that code. But that’s okay. I mean, until the last two hundred years, there were all sorts of things in the Bible that we couldn’t understand but now, because of archaeology, we understand them much better. Before that, people were guessing and some of the guesses were good and others were very bad because we didn’t have enough information about their world to know how to make an educated guess.
Now, is any of that really important to know? Will it change anything about what the Bible means? Nope. It’s just something cool to know and look at and I bet if you tell people that most of them will be super surprised. It’s okay to notice cool things about the Bible that we don’t understand. What’s important is what I always tell you—learning about who God is and how we can trust Him and what He wants from us. Everything other than that is just the icing on the cake. And yes, we can live without icing. Cake is still yummy without it. Yes, mom, I am talking to you. (My mom likes like an inch of icing on top of her cake, which is too much for me. It makes my teeth hurt.)
What about this big, long Genealogy, this long list of generations of Adam’s family up until the time of Noah? Why is that in the Bible? Doesn’t it seem like a big waste of space? Should we even care about all these people? Well, those are really good questions and there are actually three answers. One, in the ancient world, putting a genealogy into a story is one way of saying, “a long time went by before something interesting happened.” We might say, “many years passed and Adam died and so did his children and grandchildren until one day, a man named Noah was born.” But they wouldn’t ever do such a thing, they would put in names and ages. A lot of times, they would skip over generations entirely so they could have an important number of people mentioned—especially in multiples of five or seven. Genesis five is like that, we have ten generations, which is five times two. In fact, if you make a list of the people in Genesis five, you will see that Enoch is the seventh name and Noah is the tenth name—more sevens and fives! In Matthew chapter one, there will be three sets of fourteen generations, and fourteen is seven times two. Of course, they skipped a few generations of kings to make the numbers come out right because they wanted everything to be about sevens, they wanted to show that Jesus came at the perfect time. It may seem crazy to us, but they communicated the truth through numbers, and in the ancient world, the truth isn’t so much about being accurate and having all the facts just so—to them, the story was the most important thing. And if we don’t look at it their way, we can get upset but think about it. They came first, and not us. The Bible was written to them in a way they could understand. Our ancestors changed the way people think about things and it wouldn’t be right for us to say that our way is the way they should have done things. Our way would have made zero sense to them. Remember when I talked about theological history? And how they would think that a history book that doesn’t talk about God was nonsense? Well, how many history books have you read that talk about God? Probably not many or maybe even none. We live in a changed world and the Bible was written in their world. It isn’t right for us to change the rules and then say they broke those rules thousands of years ago. How would you like it if you played soccer last year and won the tournament and then this year, the leaders got together and decided that you can’t kick the ball anymore—and then they watched a video of you playing and kicking and took your trophy away because you broke the rules that they hadn’t made yet? That would be so wrong. But when we read the Bible and get angry that they didn’t write according to how we think they should have done it, because we don’t do things that way anymore, it’s just like taking away your soccer trophy.
Do you have any numbers that are important to you? That only mean something to you? When God wants to get my attention, He will use the number twenty-two. It wouldn’t mean anything to you but in my life, it is a very important number. My parents and my husband’s parents were both married on February 22, and our sons were born on March 22. We adopted them when they were born and guess what? Their birthmom, her birthday is also February 22. So, that’s a special number to me. It’s all about new things being started and new life. It’s my happy number because it links me to the people I love. But it wouldn’t mean anything to you, of course, why should it? God might use something entirely different with you.
The third cool thing about this genealogy is that in the ancient world, all these sorts of old genealogies are about lists of kings. Not this one, and the reason why is very important. The reason why there are no kings in this list is because…drum roll please…God didn’t make humans to rule over one another like that but only over Creation. And we were all equally made to rule over the earth. But over people? God will make it clear in the next book of the Bible, Exodus, that He is the only king they should ever want. So, the list does have ten kings, just not kings over humans. We were all supposed to be kings and queens over the earth, made in God’s image to rule wisely over the animals and over the land—just not over each other, even though, hundreds of years after Sinai, the people would demand a king and God gave them one and then they were sorry but it was too late.
What else do we see that is interesting here in chapter five? Well, like I mentioned two weeks ago, we see it repeated that men and women were originally created in God’s image and that they were both blessed and named man, or humans. That’s how it was at first, when things were perfect. But then, when Adam has a son, Seth, his third son because Cain and Abel were the first two, that Seth was in Adam’s image and not in God’s image. Why is that? Well, because now human beings knew how to sin and how to disobey God and once the cork is out of that bottle, you can’t smush it back in there again. So, we are all hopelessly born in the image of our human parents until we come to faith in God through Jesus, His Son, and then He begins to change us. I explain this all in my curriculum book Image-bearing, Idolatry and the New Creation because it is too big a subject to talk about here but I will say that the Bible promises in Jeremiah 31 that God would someday make a renewed and better covenant with us where He would fix our hearts and write His laws on our hearts so that we could keep them for real inside and out, and not just on the outside while remaining the same old rotten so and so’s on the inside. I know what it is like trying to be good on the outside while wanting to do bad on the inside and it sure doesn’t work for long. I get stressed out or angry enough and out all that anger flies onto someone who probably doesn’t even deserve it. But as God changes me on the inside, it happens less and less because I am being remade into God’s image so that I will be less and less in my human parents’ image. Because we want to look more like God and Jesus than our moms and dads, right? No mom or dad is perfect and it is unfair to expect them to be perfect! We sure don’t want them expecting us to be perfect.
And then we come to one of the great mysteries of the Bible. A guy named Enoch. A guy named Enoch who walked with the Lord. One of only two people in the whole Bible who that is said about (and the other is Noah). (Although, in Genesis 18:16 Abraham actually physically walked with the Lord.) And then, going back to Enoch, it says, “then he was not there because God took him.” What the good gravy is that supposed to mean, anyway??? What does it mean to walk with the Lord as opposed to before the Lord, like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel and David? It would be good to find out, because the prophet Micah says that we are commanded to walk with our God, even though the Bible says that only Enoch and Noah did. It can get super confusing. And even more than that, what does it mean that “then he was not there because God took him.”? Well, guys and gals, whenever you have something like this in the Bible where the answer isn’t spelled out in the story and it doesn’t happen enough times to get many clues, you get a whole bunch of theories. And what are theories? Theories are stories about what people think might have happened. Normally, I would call some of these stories more like a hypothesis, which is a story with zero evidence—really more like a hunch. But, because we have the stories of Noah, Abraham, and Elijah to compare Enoch to, we can make some guesses that aren’t so wild and have at least a little bit of evidence.
Enoch walked with God. So did Noah. Because Enoch walked with God, he received some kind of special treatment, just like Noah. Noah’s special treatment was that God had a special relationship with Noah, and God protected Noah and his entire family from the flood. In Genesis 3, it says that God walked in the Garden in the cool of the day—did He walk with Adam and Eve? Did they walk with God until they put their faith in the Serpent? Maybe. Let’s look at what Micah says about walking with God, because he’s the only one who actually gives us anything close to a description. Micah tells us that God has told us what is good, and what He expects from all of us, and those things are to be fair with one another, to be loving and kind, and to walk humbly with God. Wow, that sounds a lot like Jesus, right? And that must have been like what Enoch and Noah both did—they must have been very honest and fair to their neighbors, they must have been loving and kind as the people in the world got more and more violent and cruel, and I suppose they weren’t prideful. I mean, that’s what Micah said walking with God looks like. They were very special men.
And in Genesis 18:16, we see Abraham actually walking with the Lord and what is the Lord doing? He is telling Abraham his plans for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plains because they were oppressing people, which means they were mistreating the people who were poor and weak and powerless, that’s what the prophet Ezekiel tells us. They would even gang up on visitors to hurt them in terrible ways. And when Abraham walked with the Lord, the Lord told him all his plans. So, maybe that’s what the Lord did with Enoch too, and Noah. Well, we certainly know that God told Noah His plans because that’s written in Genesis chapter six. But what about Enoch? Well, like I said before, when we aren’t given any information, people like to make up stories to explain what they think happened and over the course of a few hundred years, a whole lot of stories got written up about Enoch. Fictional stories. Written by entirely different authors and we know that because the different sections really disagree with one another. If Enoch wrote it all, they wouldn’t be so wildly different. But, when we read those stories, we find out what people who lived before, during and after the time of Jesus thought happened, and we can learn a lot about the Jewish people and what they believed about the Bible. And as we can see from all the different stories about Enoch, they believed a lot of really different and funky types of things. But, when the Bible doesn’t give us much information, it is only natural that people will have their own personal ideas about what was going on with Enoch. And some of those people wrote those ideas down.
One thing about Enoch that we can make a pretty good guess about is when it says, “then he was not there because God took him.” because that also happened to the prophet Elijah. Let’s look at 2 Kings 2:
The time had come for the Lord to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elijah and Elisha were traveling from Gilgal, and Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; the Lord is sending me on to Bethel.”
But Elisha replied, “As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel.Then the sons of the prophets who were at Bethel came out to Elisha and said, “Do you know that the Lord will take your master away from you today?” He said, “Yes, I know. Be quiet.” (Seriously guys, that’s like walking up to someone and saying, “Did you know that your dad is going to die today?” There are things you just don’t say like that. Learn to have some tact, okay? No wonder Elisha told him to shut up.) Elijah said to him, “Elisha, stay here; the Lord is sending me to Jericho.” But Elisha said, “As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they went to Jericho.Then the sons of the prophets who were in Jericho came up to Elisha and said, “Do you know that the Lord will take your master away from you today?” He said, “Yes, I know. Be quiet.” (Dang, these guys need to all go to charm school. Just because you know something doesn’t mean you need to blab about it!) Elijah said to him, “Stay here; the Lord is sending me to the Jordan.” But Elisha said, “As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So the two of them went on. Fifty men from the sons of the prophets came and stood observing them at a distance while the two of them stood by the Jordan. Elijah took his mantle, rolled it up, and struck the water, which parted to the right and left. Then the two of them crossed over on dry ground. When they had crossed over, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I can do for you before I am taken from you.” So Elisha answered, “Please, let me inherit two shares of your spirit.” Elijah replied, “You have asked for something difficult. If you see me being taken from you, you will have it. If not, you won’t.” As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire with horses of fire suddenly appeared and separated the two of them. Then Elijah went up into heaven in the whirlwind. As Elisha watched, he kept crying out, “My father, my father, the chariots and horsemen of Israel!”
This is one of the most spectacular stories in the Bible. Can you even imagine? A chariot that looks like it is on fire (I hope it really wasn’t on fire, I would be too scared to get on board) and drawn by horses that looked like they were on fire, or maybe made of fire. Even if I knew God wanted me on that chariot, I would be so scared. Sometimes we read this stuff and we really don’t think of what it would be like to be in the story. I think it is very important to read things sometimes as though we are there in real life. I guess the chariot was just there to make sure Elisha didn’t get caught up in the whirlwind too, since it says it came between them.
So, is this what happened to Enoch? Maybe, but if no one was with him when it happened, like Elisha was with Elijah, then what Genesis five says, makes a lot of sense. “Then he was not there because God took him.” Maybe, like with Elijah, the Lord told a lot of people and so they knew—but no one was with him when it happened so all Moses could say was that he was gone because God took him. Maybe Moses didn’t have any more information than that BUT, I suppose if Moses doesn’t know then it doesn’t matter how. What matters is that God took him, and we can always trust God, so we don’t have to worry about Enoch. Enoch and Elijah are both in good hands, God’s hands.
I love you. I am praying for you, and I pray that you have a wonderful time this week studying the Bible with the people who love you.