By Stan Goodenough
Just ten generations spanned the 1656 years between the day God made Adam and the day Noah entered the ark to ride out the great flood.
Because of their longevity – excluding Enoch, the pre-flood members in the Adam to Noah line lived an average of 912 years each – the careless observer might imagine that many thousands of years passed from the creation to the deluge. The first biblical genealogy, recorded in Genesis 5, gives us a clear timeline:
| Generation | Name | Lived | Age |
| 1 | Adam | 0 – 930 | 930 |
| 2 | Seth | 130 – 1042 | 912 |
| 3 | Enosh | 235 – 1140 | 905 |
| 4 | Cainan | 325 – 1242 | 910 |
| 5 | Mahalalel | 395 – 1290 | 895 |
| 6 | Jared | 460 – 1422 | 962 |
| 7 | Enoch | 622 – 987 | 365 |
| 8 | Methuselah | 687 – 1656 | 969 |
| 9 | Lamech | 847 – 1651 | 777 |
| 10 | Noah | 1056 – 2006 | 950 |
The table reveals some interesting facts:
- Adam and Eve did not live in the Garden of Eden for more than 129 years (unless their ages were only tabulated from the day they were banned from Paradise).
- Adam lived to see the birth of all his descendants except Noah.
- Adam thus saw the terrible fruits of his sinfulness, as mankind was just a generation away from destruction when he died.
- All the pre-Noah generations in Adam’s bloodline died out before the Flood.
- Methuselah witnessed his grandson building the ark.
- Methuselah, the last survivor of the pre-Noah generations (he outlived his son, Lamech) died the very year in which God sent the Flood.
- Noah’s father, Lamech, died just four years before the Flood. Noah, having been told by the Lord that only he, his wife, his sons and their wives, were to be going into the ark, was probably not terribly distressed at having to bid his father and grandfather farewell before the deluge struck.
Can you glean any other nuggets of information from this “boring” genealogy?
© Israel My Beloved
