This chapter is the only authentic history extant of the first age of the world from the creation to the flood, containing (according to the verity of the Hebrew text) 1656 years, as may easily be computed by the ages of the patriarchs, before they begat that son through whom the line went down to…

The first words of the chapter are the title or argument of the whole chapter: it is the book of the generations of Adam; it is the list or catalogue of the posterity of Adam, not of all, but only of the holy seed who were the substance thereof , and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came ,…

We have here all that the Holy Ghost thought fit to leave upon record concerning five of the patriarchs before the flood, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, and Jared.

The accounts here run on for several generations without any thing remarkable, or any variation but of the names and numbers; but at length there comes in one that must not be passed over so, of whom special notice must be taken, and that is Enoch, the seventh from Adam: the rest, we may suppose,…

Concerning Methuselah observe, 1. The signification of his name, which some think was prophetical, his father Enoch being a prophet. Methuselah signifies, he dies, or there is a dart, or, a sending forth, namely, of the deluge, which came the very year that Methuselah died.

Here we have the first mention of Noah, of whom we shall read much in the following chapters. Observe, I. His name, with the reason of it: Noah signifies rest; his parents gave him that name, with a prospect of his being a more than ordinary blessing to his generation: This same shall comfort us…