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March 16, 2017

Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.

Reading along with us in Genesis? Here’s today’s reading:

Genesis 5 (ESV)

This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. 4 The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. 5 Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. 6 When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. 7 Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years and had other sons and daughters. 8 Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. 9 When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. 10 Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan 815 years and had other sons and daughters. 11Thus all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died… Continue Reading

*If you click “Continue Reading”, you will leave this page and navigate to “bible.com” where you can read the rest of the chapter. Be sure to come back to this page to share what God has revealed to you by commenting below. 

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This Post Has 6 Comments
  1. I’m intrigued at how long people lived in the generations right after the fall. It’s as if they were still “riding the wave” of what life would have been like had Adam and Eve not eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:9). Each generation listed in Genesis 5 lived shorter lives than the previous which might highlight this effect on creation.

    Because Adam had lived 930 years, he would have lived through six successive ages. I found an interesting narrative in John Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis:

    “When the family of Seth had grown into a great people, the voice of Adam might daily resound, in order to renew the memory of the creation, the fall, and the punishment of man; to testify of the hope of salvation which remained after chastisement, and to recite the judgments of God, by which all might be instructed. After his death his sons might indeed deliver, as from hand to hand, what they had learned, to their descendants; but far more efficacious would be the instruction from the mouth of him, who had been himself the eye-witness of all these things.”

    Calvin, J., & King, J. (2010). Commentary on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis (Vol. 1, p. 229). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software

    In reading through the genealogies, Enoch is the first to be described as one that “walked with God” (Genesis 5:22, Genesis 5:24). This phrase “walked with God” is the same expression to describe Noah as “a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time” in Genesis 6:9, and Abraham and Isaac as faithful servants of God (Genesis 17:1; Genesis 24:40; Genesis 48:15).

    Is the reason Enoch did not die (Genesis 5:24) because he “walked with God?”

    Noah, who is one of the most recognized names of the entire Bible makes his first appearance in Genesis 5:30-32.

    As I consider daily resounding who the Lord is, what He has done in my life and how others can have peace with God through faith in Christ, I am left with a heightened sense of urgency. Unlike Adam and his descendants, my time on earth is much shorter. I want to make every moment count.

  2. I read John 3 today (started over a few days ago), and left an insight there. We’re teaching the teens at FoY about what it means to follow Jesus, and had a heady discussion last night about the difference between “following Jesus” in the flesh vs. following Him in the Spirit, Many were left scratching their heads! But so was Nicodemus — and we told them so. 🙂 Very cool to have this same passage as my morning reading today! https://lhcc.info/john-chapter-03/#comment-134

  3. I’ve always have mentally staggered when considering the amount of time that passes in the lives of the first of God’s creation. It’s part of the Bible that I can only accept through faith.

    I do consider that perhaps we were never meant to die. We were God’s perfect creation, until we chose to not obey. Has the average life span just slowly degraded in parallel to the average separation that we collectively have from God?

  4. It is amazing to think of living this long. what I think of is what it would be like to be part of 900 years of human history. Imagine living from 1117 to 2017: all the things you would observe or be a part of. Things were certainly simpler at the beginning of human history when basic needs of survival occupied so much time and attention. We are far removed from that, but how much of what we have is true progress?

    Another interesting point, based on calculations I have done in the past (no time to confirm them now) but Methusaleh died in the year of the flood. Just how did the oldest human die…it wouldn’t have to be in the flood, certainly he was old enough to go on his own……… 🙂

  5. The length of years that God gave the earliest humans is amazing. It makes me wonder whether it was for the purposes of populating the earth with people who had ever growing maturity or life experience so that acquired knowledge or wisdom could be passed on? If you consider from a human perspective how long it takes us to learn some things about daily living, imagine if the earliest humans had life spans like ours. Our progeny can certainly learn from our experience if we take the time to teach, but when we die they do not just “take up” where we left off in our learning, they must now continue in their learning from where they are at, not where we were. Certainly God grants wisdom to those who ask and I would assume that He watched carefully over His disobedient creatures, but that very issue of disobedience would have made “learning the hard way” a fact of life.
    Perhaps the learning curve was a reason that as Gen 4:26 says, “then men began to call on the name of the Lord.” How often do we go on ahead and remember God’s promises of guidance and wisdom after we are knee (or neck) deep in a mess of our own design?
    In Gen 5:22-24 we have Enoch being taken by God. Is this a first manifestation of the truth, that when we walk with God and not after our own fleshly desires that we can only then return to HIm? And is it a sign of God’s ultimate desire for us? The reestablishment of a personal relationship?

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