God Questions His Creation: Genesis 5:28-32

See: God Questions His Creation: Genesis 5:21-27 (b)

Genesis 5:28 When Lamech had lived a hundred and eighty-two years, he became the father of a son, 29 and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground which the LORD has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands.” 30 Lamech lived after the birth of Noah five hundred and ninety-five years, and had other sons and daughters. 31 Thus all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years; and he died. 32 After Noah was five hundred years old, Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

According to the chronology of this genealogy, Adam dies in the year 930, Seth dies in 1042, and Noah is born in 1056. Noah is the first birth recorded after the death of Adam. This may be intentional to show that he represents a new beginning for humankind. Noah will become the father of all humankind after the flood. Noah is also the first human born who did not know Adam and thus is the first man born without direct roots to the Garden of Eden. This fact may help explain Lamech’s comment that Noah is taken from the cursed ground rather than from the purer dust from which Adam was created.

“called his name Noah, saying, ‘Out of the ground which the LORD has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands.’” Lamech makes an unusual prophecy about his son Noah. In words very reminiscent of Genesis 3:18 where God tells Adam that the ground is cursed because of him and only through the pain of hard work will the soil yield crops, Lamech believes Noah is going to provide them some relief from the pain, the labor, and the curse. Noah indeed will rescue the human race but not quite as Lamech probably envisioned it. Noah’s role in the salvation of humanity from the curse comes only with the destruction of the rest of humanity. Noah will in fact be involved in saving humanity from its own wickedness, but the toil of labor will continue beyond the flood.

Besides Lamech being a name both in the descendents of Cain and of Seth, another interesting parallel is both Lamechs have a connection to the number 77. In Genesis 4:24 Lamech’s 77 fold vengeance is paralleled by Lamech father of Noah’s age of 777.

The genealogy of Chapter 5 will be interrupted by the telling of the Noah stories in Genesis 6-9. The genealogy resumes in 10:1. The interruption in the flow of the genealogy gives modern scholars a clue that several different traditions (sources) have been woven together by whoever was the final editor of Genesis. Source Theory is an attempt by modern biblical scholars to account for the “inconsistencies” and variations which are found scattered throughout the Genesis text. The fact that different “hands” may have had a role in writing and editing the text does not in any way deny the inspiration of the text. Whether one or several authors and editors had their hand in assembling the text it all has been received by the Church as inspired and it is assumed the various authors and editors were inspired by God themselves. In ancient days, when communities relied on oral tradition to preserve their significant stories, the community shared in the remembering of the story. It was not just one person’s responsibility to remember and tell the story; the entire community shared this task and responsibility. A good example of this communal responsibility is conveyed in Psalm 78, part of which reads, “He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children; that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God” (78:5-8). Every family had the responsibility to tell the story of the community. Thus having more than one person/source being responsible for telling the community’s story is normal to Israel.

Despite the incredible life spans of the men in the genealogy, humans are denied immortality. Humans are mortal beings bounded by their own limitations including their mortality. Whereas the threat of death to Adam may have been an abstraction he could not imagine, now the humans are beginning to learn what it means to be mortal. And the story suggests humans readily embrace the unrepentant sinner’s philosophy, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (Isaiah 22:13). The Orthodox response to the unbeliever’s indulgence is our liturgical prayer, “that we may spend the remaining time of our life in peace and in repentance.” The unbeliever’s philosophy makes the present world to be all there is and denies the afterlife; the Orthodox view on the other hand lives for that life in the world to come. Or as a modern adage has it, the first “lives to eat” while the second “eats to live.”

According to the Chronology of this genealogy of Noah’s ancestors only Adam (930) and Seth (1042) were dead when Noah was born (1056). Enoch had been taken by God in 987. When Noah was born 7 generations were alive at the same time! All of Noah’s ancestors die before the flood and so are considered to be antediluvians. Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives are the only antediluvians who survive the flood and thus preserve the human race, carrying the human seed over the flood into the new creation. None of Noah’s ancestors are destroyed among the wicked by God in the great cataclysmic flood as they are all dead before God visits His judgment on the world. Their apparent natural deaths at great old ages were therefore also a blessing in that all of them are spared the wrath of God. When Noah’s children are born there are only 4 generations in the lineage alive. Methuselah, the oldest man in Genesis is the last recorded death before the flood destroys the world. At the time of the flood only Noah and his sons (2 generations are alive). Noah’s father, Lamech, would have lived to see Noah begin building the ark, but he dies 5 years before the flood begins.

Next: The Story of the Flood (a)

You can see the entire commentary on Genesis 5 as one document at https://frted.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/gqhc_gen5.pdf