Gen. 5 The manner of man’s creation repeated, Gen. 5:1–2. The genealogy, age, and death of the fathers from Adam to Noah, in the line of Seth. Seth begotten of Adam after his image, Gen. 5:3. The piety and translation of Enoch, Gen. 5:24. Lamech’s prophecy of his son Noah, Gen. 5:29.

This is the book, i.e. the list or catalogue, as this word is taken, Neh. 7:5, Matt. 1:1, as it is also put for any short writing, as for a bill of divorce, as Deut. 24:1–2. The generations of Adam, i.e. his posterity begotten by him; the word being passively used.

See Gen. 1:26, Matt. 19:4, Mark 10:6. He blessed them with power to propagate their kind, and with other blessings. See Gen. 1:28. Called their name Adam; which name is given both to every man, as Gen. 9:6, Ps. 49:20, and to the first man, as Gen.

Adam lived an hundred and thirty years after he was created, in which time he begat other sons and daughters, as appears from what was said before. After his image; either, 1.

Whose names and numbers are here passed over in silence, as not belonging to the genealogy of Christ, nor to the following history.

The long lives of men in ancient times, here noted, are also mentioned by heathen authors; and it was wisely so ordered by God, both for the more plentiful increase of mankind in the first age of the world, and for the more effectual propagation of true religion and other useful knowledge to the…

Whose name is thought by some learned men to contain a prophecy of the flood, which was to come a thousand years after; for it signifies: He dies, and the dart or arrow of God’s vengeance comes; or, He dies, and the sending forth of the waters comes.

i.e. He lived as one whose eye was continually upon God; whose care and constant course and business it was to please God, and to imitate him, and to maintain acquaintance and communion with him; as one devoted to God’s service, and wholly governed by his will.

i.e. He appeared not any longer upon earth, or amongst mortal men. The same phrase is in Gen. 42:36, Jer. 31:15. For God took him out of this sinful and miserable world unto himself, and to his heavenly habitation: see Luke 23:43.

This was the longest time that any man lived. But it is observable that neither his nor any of the patriarch’s lives reached to a thousand years, which number hath some shadow of perfection. He died but a little before the flood came, being taken away from the evil to come.

Not that wicked Lamech mentioned Gen. 4:18–24, for he was of the family of Cain, but this was descended from Seth.

And he called his name Noah, which signifies rest, saying, by the Spirit of prophecy: This same shall comfort us, concerning the hard labour and manifold troubles to which we are sentenced, Gen. 3:19. And this he did either, 1.

i.e. He began to beget; God in mercy denying him children till that time, that he might not beget them to the destroyer, that he might have no more than should be saved in the ark; or, having before that time begotten others who were now dead, and having the approaching flood in his view, he began…