After the Bible’s profound first four chapters, whatever can we learn from something like the genealogy in Genesis 5?
Well, actually there’s a crucial lesson, and it’s this:
When the genealogy starts, it’s Seth’s line, and they seem to be the godly line (4:26);compared to Cain’s line going increasingly astray in chapter 4. But although they didn’t sin like Cain or Lamech, all God found to say about most of them is they `had sons and daughters, and died.` And meanwhile the culture headed for hell; but it seems that apart from Enoch, no one did anything worth recording about it; they were absorbed into the surrounding culture, and shared its fate. Staggeringly, by chapter 6, no one’s left from Seth’s line who is godly, barring Noah and his family; all the rest of Seth’s descendants perish in the flood. Jesus had an important comment to make: by the time of Noah, all that generation were so absorbed with everyday `eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage` that they missed their culture’s spiritual crisis, and were completely taken by surprise when catastrophe swept down on them (Matt 24:37-39).
So here’s the lesson: all this chapter can find to say about most of them is they `got born, had kids, and died’; and the result of that was in the end their kids lost their godly distinctiveness, and all but eight were finally swallowed up in the disaster of their culture.
So what do I want on my tombstone? That I was born, had kids and died? Or that I was serious about being distinctive, radical, doing something about it, sharing Jesus and His Word and His love?
Radical holiness: it’s the only safe path as our culture heads into the dark. It must have been very hard to be uniquely, obviously distinctive like Noah; but it was Noah and his family who ended up safe! Lord, please help us feed on your strength!
(PS By the way: if we look at other biblical genealogies, it’s obvious they don’t set out to give complete father/son lists; someone included in one genealogy gets missed out in another. As the NIV says, `became father of` (5:6 etc) could be translated `became ancestor of`; as they recorded this, Noah’s family just looked back to their most significant ancestors. So we certainly can’t add up the lifetimes here and prove that the earth is 6000 years old. Also, let’s not be bothered by the length of these lifetimes – these people lived much closer to unfallenness than we do, which may have had all sorts of physical implications. Actually the Greek old testament recalls even longer ages; and for what it’s worth the Babylonian list of kings before the flood has average ages of about 30,000 – and some Hindus even say that people lived to 60,000 in the age before this one!)
