Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

When I realized what I’d be preaching on today, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t very excited about it.

These genealogies are scattered throughout Genesis at key intervals, something I hadn’t really accounted for when I decided to preach through Genesis for a year.

I seriously considered skipping Chapter five and moving on to Chapter 6.

You know, to Noah, a passage that won’t lull you to sleep while you read it.

Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit kept urging me to stick with ’m really glad he did, because I think this chapter is rich.

It has so much to tell us, if we are careful to listen.

Overview

The author of Genesis really loves punny word play, and it shows in in .

So let’s look at this passage in light of the Hebrew.

Each genealogy has some striking similarities.

Both mention a man named Enoch, to which attention is drawn, and a man named Lamech, to which attention is drawn.

Cain’s genealogy ends in a man bragging about the death he has caused, while Chapter 5 ends in hope for life and removal of the curse of the serpent.

What is somewhat different between these two genealogies, however, is the amount of puns in them.

The author of Genesis really loves punny word play, and it shows in in .

So let’s look at this passage in light of the Hebrew.

When Adam, i.e. “man”, was 130, he had a son named “foundation” (Seth).

Then “the foundation” was the father of “all humanity” (Enosh).

“Humanity” went on to father “Kenan”.

Now, the name “Kenan” has the same semitic root as “Cain”, which , if we remember, means “to create” or “to buy land”.

I think the pun isn’t on the meaning of the word, however, but on its relationship to Cain, because “Kenan/Cain” becomes the father of “Praising God” (Mahalalel).

This is a stark contrast between Kenan, who leads to “praising God”, and Cain, who murdered his brother and who’s genealogy ended in more murder.

Then “Praising God” had a son named Jared, whose name is “to bring down”, which doesn’t really seem to be a relevant name, unlike his ancestors.

So Jared has a son named “to dedicate” (Enoch), and Enoch is in fact very dedicated to God, as we’ll see in a minute.

Then “to dedicate” has a son, “Man of the Spear” (Methuselah), who has a son named Lamech.

Now, what’s interesting is that Lamech, in Hebrew, means… well nobody knows what Lamech means.

These two names, “Man of the Spear” and “Lamech” might be a way of building tension, however.

Lamech, at least, is certainly meant to make us remember Cain’s descendant of the same name.

This Lamech, however, does not go on a murderous rampage, and so we can breathe a sigh of relief, which, by the way, is the name of Lamech’s child.

“Noah” means “relief” or “rest” in Hebrew.

Then Noah has three sons, but we’ll talk about them next week.

If you hadn’t already guessed, some of these names are more than just puns.

For example, Seth actually becomes the “foundation” of humanity.

He’s the one who carries on life after Cain’s act of death.

Enoch provides an example of what it means to be “dedicated” to God, and Noah becomes a promise of “rest” and “relief” from the curse that has wreaked havoc on humanity.

It’s easy to get lost in a genealogy like this, especially since we can’t appreciate such great puns in our English translations.

If we are careful and look closely, however, the author has made some really important statements about God and humanity here.

Imago Dei

Of first importance is the introduction to the Genealogy:

When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God.

Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them “Humankind” when they were created.

When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.

3 When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.

Did you catch that?

God created Adam in his likeness, and Adam created Seth in his likeness.

This is the only time in the genealogy that this kind of language is used.

Why point this out?

Is Seth no longer “the image of God”?

Has that been lost?

Were humans in the image of God just a peculiar unique thing early in human history?

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version.

(1989).

().

Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

I don’t think so.

The introduction says God created “humankind”, all of them, in his image, both male and female.

This is not an undoing of .

Humans are still affirmed to be in the image of God.

Yet, now, Seth is also made “in the image of Adam”.

Seth, and all of his descendants, are in the image of Adam as much as in the image of God.

Humanity is now a mixture of the regal image of God and the flawed image of Adam.

To

The genealogy goes on from there, repeating the same pattern over and over again:

“When X lived A years, he became the father of Y. X lived after the birth of Y B years and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the years of X were C, and then he died.”

Over and over and over again, the genealogy really hammers it home: You’re born, you have children, and then you die.

What is especially odd about this is that no other genealogy in the Bible bothers to tell us “and then he died”.

Most just say, “this person lived 100 years”, and we get the point.

Genesis, however, does not let us assume, it makes sure we know that the life of these people ended in death.

The warning of God from the Garden becomes a reality.

Death has become a reality and an expectation of the sons of Adam.

This theme gets carried on throughout Genesis.

You may have noticed that some people in this genealogy lived really long lives.

Take, for instance, Methuselah, who lives to the ripe old age of 969!

Or Lamech, who oddly lives 777 years.

Many interpreters have studied to see whether there is any special significance to these numbers of years.

Maybe there is, but the meaning has long been lost to us.

There’s just no way to know what these numbers might have meant to the author, or if they really mean anything at all.

What we do know, however, is that long life spans were very commonly recorded for ancient people.

Ancient Sumerian kings, for instance, were said to have lived tens of thousands of years.

“Alulim became king and reigned for 28,000 years.... Alalgar reigned for 36,000 years, etc.” Lots of ANE cultures had flood stories, and almost all of them record people living a very long time before the flood.

Genesis does the same, but it seems a little more realistic about human life expectancy.

700 years is a long time, but it’s not as unbelievable as 30,000.

Whether we believe these numbers are accurate or some kind of symbolism, however, shouldn’t keep us from recognizing the pattern present in Genesis, and that is that these life spans, as humans get farther and farther from Eden, get shorter and shorter.

Abraham is only said to have lived 175 years, Jacob 147, 120, and by the time the Israelites are writing Psalms, we read:

The days of our life are seventy years,

or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;

even then their span is only toil and trouble;

they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Death has become a reality.

The beast lurking at the door has overcome us, the curse of sin is taking its toll on humanity.

That is, all except for the seventh son.

Enoch

Enoch is different.

After Enoch had his son, he walked with God for 300 years, then he was no more, because God took him.

What an odd thing to say.

The Hebrew literally says, “Enoch walked with God, then nothingness, because God grabbed him, or accepted him.”

It’s as if Enoch was walking around one day and then *poof*, he wasn’t there anymore.

There’s no “and then he died”.

He just was not, because God grabbed him off of the earth and said, “This one’s mine, I’ll take him.”

Here, in the midst of all this death, Genesis makes the radical proposal that there might be more to say about a man’s life than “he lived, he had children, he died.”

Enoch us toward the possibility of a consistent and steady relationship with God even in the midst of a cycle of sin and death.