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gan to build temples unto the stars, and to offer sacrifices unto them, and to laud and glorify them with words, and to worship before them, that they might, | in their evil opinion, obtain favour of the Creator. And this was the root of idolatry.'-Lightfoot supposes that Noah is called in 2 Pet. 2. 5, 'the eighth person' in reference to these times, viz. the eighth in succession from Enos, in whose days the world began to be profane. Otherwise it may be rendered the 'eighth preacher.'

CHAPTER V.

1. This is the book of the generations of Adam. In other words, this is the narrative or rehearsal of the remarkable events pertaining to the creation and the life of Adam (see Gen. 2. 4, on the word 'generations'); and not only so, but also the list or catalogue of the names of his more immediate posterity. Both senses are undoubtedly included in the expression, as the two first verses imply the first, and the remaining part of the chapter the second. The phrase is at once retrospective and anticipative in its import. It is not the writer's object, however, to give a complete genealogy embracing all Adam's descendants to Noah, but only those through whom the line of the promises ran.- -T In the day that God created man. Heb. created Adam.' The historian prefaces the ensuing genealogy with a brief recapitulation of the leading events which he had before de

3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and d called his name Seth:

4 And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: f and he begat sons and daughters:

d ch. 4. 25. e 1 Chron. 1. 1, &c. f ch. 1. 28.

tailed, and which we have already sufficiently explained. Perhaps he designed also to hint at the different mode of production in regard to Adam and his posterity. He came into being from the immediate hand of his Creator; they by generation from him.

2. Called their name Adam. As be fore remarked, ch. 1. 26, Adam is in truth the name of the species, of the whole human race in general, though frequently employed as the appellation of the first man exclusively. It is, however, a striking fact that the Holy Spirit should have adopted a phraseology which teaches us that it was not merely an individual, but the human race, whose history is given in the pre ceding chapters; that it was the hu man race which was put upon probation, was tempted, overcome, and ruined by the fall. It is not easy to conceive of any theological view which shall weaken the force of this solemn consideration.

3. Adam lived an hundred and thirty years. During which time he begat many other sons and daughters not enumerated in this catalogue. v. 4.

- Begat a son in his own likeness. The word 'son' does not occur in the original, but from what follows it is plain that the sense requires its insertion. Similar omissions are not infrequent in Hebrew. Thus 1 Chron. 18. 6,

Then David put in Syria;' i. e. as we learn from 2 Sam. 8. 6, put garrisons in Syria.-¶ In his own like

5 And all the days that Adam | were nine hundred and twelve lived were nine hundred and thir-years; and he died.

ty years; and he died.

h

6 And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos: 7 And Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daugh

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ness.

g ch. 3. 19. Heb. 9. 27. h ch. 4. 26.

9 And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan :

10 And Enos lived after he begat Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters:

11 And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years; and he died.

Not only like him in the struc-in his family ending in the unnatural ture of his body and the faculties of murder of his second son by a brother's his mind, but like him also in the cor- hand. He was witness also to the ruption of his nature as a sinner. If beginnings of that universal corruption the former only had been intended, it which at last brought on the deluge; might have been said of Cain or Abel, and when he beheld himself the source as well as of Seth. But here the im- of these growing evils, he could not fail, plication is, that Seth, though a good with every succeeding year of his life, man and worthy of being substituted to entertain deeper and more appalling in the place of Abel as the progenitor views of the enormity of his transgresof the promised seed, yet even he was sion and the justice of his sentence. begotten and born in sin, and indebted This would naturally tend in his case, to the sovereign grace of God alone for as in every other, to heighten his estiall the moral excellence which he posmate at once of the goodness and the sessed. The evident drift of the sacred severity of God, and endear to him that writer is to hint at the contrast between promise which was the hope of a lost the image in which Adam himself was world. made, and that in which his children were begotten. Adam was created in the image of God, pure, upright, and holy; but after his fall he begat a son like himself sinful, defiled, frail, mortal, and miserable. Grace does not run in the blood, but corruption does. A sin-self according to the flesh; and to show ner begets a sinner, but a saint does not beget a saint.' Henry.

5. All the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. Thus our great progenitor, having reached the fifty-sixth year of Lamech's life, and seen his issue in the ninth generation, left the world on which his apostacy had drawn down such dire effects. Besides the griefs which he experienced on account of his personal transgression, he had the mortification to see an early rupture

3-28. Of the genealogy contained in these verses we may remark, (1.) That it is a very honourable one. Not only did the patriarchs and prophets, and the church of God for many ages, descend from it, but the Son of God him

the fulfilment of the promises and prophecies concerning him is the principal reason of the genealogy having been recorded. (2.) Neither Cain nor Abel has any place in it. Abel was slain before he had any children, and therefore could not; and Cain by his sin had covered his name with infamy, and therefore should not. Adam's posterity, consequently, after the lapse of an hundred and thirty years must begin anew. (3.) The extraordinary length of human life at that period was wisely

12 And Cainan lived seventy years, and begat Mahalaleel:

13 And Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years, and begat sons and daughters:

14 And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years; and he died.

15 And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years, and begat Jared :

16 And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters:

17 And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred ninety and five years; and he died.

society, and thus the phenomenon is traced back to the goodness and wisdom of the Creator. For it is obvious to the least reflecting, not only that the process of peopling the earth required at first a greater longevity in the

ordered, not only for peopling the world, but for supplying the defect of a written revelation. From the death of Adam to the call of Abraham, a period of about eleven hundred years, there was living either Enoch, Lamech, Noah, or Shem, besides other cotemporary god-human race, than would be necessary ly persons, who would feelingly relate to those about them the great events of the creation, the fall, and the recovery of man. (4.) Notwithstanding the longevity of the antediluvians, it is recorded of them all in their turn, that they died. Though the stroke of death was slow in its approach, yet it was sure. If man could live a thousand years, yet he must die; and if he die in sin, he will be accursed. (5.) Though many of the names in this genealogy are passed over without any thing being said of their piety, yet we are not hence to infer that they were not so distinguished. Many might be included among them who 'called upon the name of the Lord,' and who are denominated 'the sons of God,' though nothing is personally related of them.As to the extreme longevity that characterized this period, it was probably owing in part to physical and in part to moral causes. While the influences of climate and diet are to be recognized as contributing to it, yet we may admit that there were various other causes in operation which tended to the same result. There is in fact something in the intellectual nature of man which seems to require that the period of life granted to individuals, should be more extended in the infancy, than in the maturity of

after it became adequately colonised, but that the advancement of the race itself into high civilization and refine ment could not have taken place, had not each person been permitted to live during a much longer space of time than is found to be the case at present in every portion of the globe. The first generations having no past experience to look back upon, must have owed all their knowledge to their own individual exertions; and how far these would have carried them in the short space of seventy or eighty years, we need only examine the condition of the wandering tribes in America to discover. It was not, however, in accordance with God's gracious design in creating, that man, whom he had appointed the head of this lower world, should live and die in a state of intellectual childhood. And hence he appointed to the antediluvians many centuries of exist ence, that they might discover, follow up, and lay the foundations of knowl edge for all future ages, in every useful and ornamental art. But the necessity for so very protracted an existence being of a temporary nature, God wisely withdrew it, as soon as it had attained its purposes; and he did so, not more in wisdom, than in mercy, to the creature whose mortal life he curtailed. As we

18 And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two years, and he begat 1 Enoch:

19 And Jared lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:

20 And all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty and two years; and he died.

i Jude 14, 15.

have already seen, though their prodigious age doubtless contributed greatly to the advancement of the antediluvians in knowledge and refinement, it is beyond a question that the same circumstances tended, more perhaps than any thing besides, to introduce moral corruption into the world, which corruption became, in all probability, more and more flagrant as the increased ingenuity of mankind enabled them to devise new methods of gratifying the senses. Thus God permitted the first races to live long upon the earth, that they might themselves attain to perfection in the cultivation of the sciences, and leave them to their posterity, even though the boon of longevity proved mischievous to their own moral purity, whilst the groundwork of knowledge being laid, he took away the stumbling-block in the way of man's obedience, by decreeing that 'the time of man's life should be four score years.'

21. And begat Methuselah. The import of this name in the original is, 'He dieth, and the sending forth;' as if it were an intimation of the sending forth of the waters of the deluge about the time of his death. Whether this conjecture be well founded or not, it is certain that in the very year in which he died the earth was overwhelmed by that dread catastrophe.-The age of Methuselah transcended that of any of the rest of the patriarchs here mentioned, but it is not absolutely certain that he

21 And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:

22 And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:

k ch. 6. 9. & 17. 1. & 24. 40. 2 Kings 20. 3. Ps. 16. 8. & 116. 9. & 128. 1. Mic. 6. 8. Mal. 2. 6.

was the longest liver of the children of Adam. Among the multitudes of whom no information is given some might have exceeded him in this respect.

22. Enoch walked with God. A brief but expressive character of a good man. To walk with God is in the first place to be agreed with him, to become reconciled to him in the way of his appointment-'for how can two walk together except they be agreed?'-and then to set God always before us, to act as being under the continual inspection of his all-seeing eye. It is to live a life of communion with him and of obedience to him, making his word our rule and his glory our end, in all actions. It is to make it our constant endeavour in every thing to please him and in nothing to offend him. This it is to walk with God like Enoch, who in the midst of the men of a wicked generation walked not as they walked, but set his face as a flint against the abounding ungodliness. In consequence of this he obtained the honourable and precious testimony' that he pleased God,' and as a reward for his preeminent piety was spared the pains of death.From the import of the phrase 'to walk with God' as used 1 Sam. 2. 30, 35, and from his being said by Jude, v. 14, to be a prophet, it is probably to be inferred that Enoch acted also in a public and official capacity as a preacher of righteousness, reproving and denouncing the growing impiety of the times, and exhorting to repentance. A

23 And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:

24 And Enoch walked with God, and he was not: for God took him.

25 And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech:

1 2 Kings 2. 11. Heb. 11. 5.

26 And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters:

27 And all the days of Methu selah were nine hundred sixty and nine years; and he died.

28 And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son:

300 years-with Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, and Jared during his whole life-and that he was translated 57 years after the death of Adam, 69 years before the birth of Noah, and in the year of the world 987. It has been suggested as highly probable that some visible demonstration of his translation was given to his cotemporaries in order to confirm their faith in the pros

as well perhaps as to intimate to them the manner in which sinless man would in process of time have been disposed of under the first covenant, had it not been for the effects of the fall. But from the peculiar phraseology in which his removal is described, v. 24, we incline to the opinion that it was not visible.

brief but impressive specimen of his preaching is preserved by the apostle Jude, from which it appears that the doctrine of the second advent of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and a judgment to come, were taught, though somewhat obscurely, in the very earliest ages of the world.-Wonderful as was the event of the translation of a living man to the world of glory, we know of nothing in the revealed pur-pect of another and an immortal life, poses of God to forbid the occurrence of other instances of the like kind even in this or any other age of the world, provided there were instances of equal eminence in piety. The same distinction was subsequently conferred upon Elijah, and probably from the same reasons, and the words of the apostle 1 Cor. 15. 51, make it certain that the whole human race shall not fall asleep in death, but that a portion of mankind shall be transferred to the abodes of bliss without undergoing dissolution. This is to take place under the seventh apocalyptic trumpet, and if there be any certainty in prophetic chronology we are now living under that trumpet, or close upon its borders. If then such an event is to be anticipated hereafter, and that without contravening the general law, that 'it is appointed for all men once to die,' we know no reason why it may not take place even now, though we have no positive evidence that it will. It may be remarked that Enoch was cotemporary with Adam 308 years with his son Methuselah

-¶ Begat sons and daughters. From which it plainly appears that a state of celibacy is not essential to a life of the most devoted and preeminent piety.

24. And he was not, for God took him. Was not found; was missing; had disappeared from human view. The expression implies something very peculiar in the manner of his removal. In some mysterious way he had become no longer an inhabitant of this world, and as he is not said like the rest of the patriarchs to have died, the inference is plain, though the text itself does not clearly assert it, that he must have been exempted from the common lot of humanity in making his exit from the earth. This is made absolutely cer

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