Genesis 5:4 Commentary and Bible Study

The length of Adam’s life is not presented as anything other than literal history. Adam lived another 800 years after the birth of Seth and then died. The lifespan of those who lived before the flood contrasts strongly with those who lived after it. God, as will be seen in Genesis 6:3, sets a new limit on the length of man’s life after the flood. It is suggested that the change in the duration of human life had something to do with the changes in the earth that took place at the time of the flood. It is suggested that perhaps the water vapour canopy that covered the earth before the flood may acted as a protective layer to screen out radiation which affected the rate of ageing in man. Regardless of the explanation, Adam and his descendants up to the time of Noah lived significantly longer. Why should any complain at the Bible’s insistence on these long ages, when we do not the state of the pre-flood world or fully understand the cause of aging even now. These long lives meant that the truth was taught and preserved being passed from one generation to the next; they did not have the written word in those days. Due to those very long lives, the generations overlapped very largely, since the oldest son was born quite early in the father’s life, and then he would live on for another seven, eight centuries after that. If you added all the years of the lives of the pre-flood patriarchs in Genesis 5, you would cover over 4,000 years almost. But of course, the time, the number of centuries that elapsed between Adam and Noah was far fewer than that, really – though there is debate about it, something between six and ten centuries. Adam begat sons and daughters: he had other children whose names and details are not given. They do not feature significantly in the Bible record and if any were alive at the time of the flood they also perished along with Cain’s descendants. This verse however explains where Cain and Seth must have found wives from, for this first generation of sons marry their sisters. This verse does not rule out the fact that some of the sons and daughters were born before Seth, for the arrangement of material in these chapters is not chronological but according to themes.