Before the Flood: Noah's Bloodline (Part 1 of 4)

Where Noah Came From

This is the first of a four-part series on Noah. Part 1 looks at his family line before the flood. Part 2 covers what happened after the flood, including the covenant and the troubling story of Noah's sons. Part 3 follows the nations that came from them, all the way to Abraham. Part 4 looks at the search for the ark itself.

Most people skip the genealogies. They feel like a phone book. But to the original readers, a family line was a story, and Genesis 5 is one of the most carefully built stories in the Bible. It traces ten generations from Adam to Noah, and it quietly answers a question that hangs over the first chapters of Scripture: after Adam's fall and Cain's murder, did God's promise survive?

Luke thought this line mattered enough to put it in the family tree of Jesus. His genealogy ends by walking back through these exact names: "the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God" (Luke 3:36–38).

So let's read the phone book. There's more in it than you'd think.

Two Family Lines

Genesis gives us two genealogies side by side, and they're meant to be compared.

The first is Cain's. After murdering his brother, "Cain went away from the presence of the LORD and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch" (Genesis 4:16–17). "Nod" is related to the Hebrew word for wandering. Cain, sentenced to wander, builds a city and names it after his own son.

Cain's family is talented. His descendants include Jabal, "the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock," Jubal, "the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe," and Tubal-cain, "the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron" (Genesis 4:20–22). Herding, music and metalwork: civilization begins in Cain's line. But so does escalating violence. Seven generations from Adam, a man named Lamech composes the first poem in the Bible, and it's a boast about murder:

"Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold." (Genesis 4:23–24)

Hold onto that number. Centuries later, when Peter asked Jesus how often he should forgive, Jesus answered, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times" (Matthew 18:22). Lamech's unlimited revenge is answered by Jesus' unlimited forgiveness.

Then the camera swings back to Adam and Eve:

"And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, 'God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.' To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD." (Genesis 4:25–26)

"Seth" (Shet) sounds like the Hebrew verb shit, "to appoint" or "to place." Eve sees him as God's replacement for murdered Abel, the line through which the promise of Genesis 3:15 would continue: the "offspring" of the woman who would crush the serpent's head. "Offspring" there is zera, literally "seed," a word that runs like a thread through the rest of Genesis. Seth's son is Enosh, a Hebrew word for "man" that carries the sense of weakness and mortality. And it's in Enosh's day, not Cain's city, that people begin to call on the LORD.

Genesis 5 then opens a fresh family record: "This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God" (Genesis 5:1). "Generations" is toledot, the word that divides Genesis into its major sections, roughly meaning "this is what became of." Notice what's passed down: "When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth" (Genesis 5:3). God's image, now marred, still passes from parent to child.

The two lines even share names. Each has an Enoch and a Lamech. But the men who carry those names could hardly be more different, as we're about to see. And Seth's line has a grim refrain Cain's doesn't: after each man's years, the text adds, "and he died." Genesis 3 said death would come. Genesis 5 shows it coming, generation after generation, until one man breaks the pattern.

Enoch, Who Walked With God

In the middle of all those funerals, one entry breaks the rhythm:

"When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him." (Genesis 5:21–24)

No "and he died." The Hebrew for "walked with God" uses a form of the verb halak that suggests walking around, going about life in someone's company. It's the same phrase Genesis will use for Noah. Notice, too, when Enoch's walk with God is first mentioned: after Methuselah was born. Some commentators suggest that becoming a father turned him toward God; the text doesn't say why, only that he kept walking for three centuries.

"God took him" uses laqach, the ordinary verb for taking. It's the word used centuries later when Elijah was carried up to heaven: "if you see me as I am being taken from you" (2 Kings 2:10). And it appears in one of the Old Testament's quiet hopes of life after death: "But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me" (Psalm 49:15). The New Testament spells out what Genesis implies: "By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God" (Hebrews 11:5). The Greek verb there, metatithemi, means to transfer or relocate. Enoch didn't die. He moved.

There's a deliberate contrast here with Cain's line. Cain's Lamech was the seventh generation from Adam, and he bragged about killing. Seth's Enoch was also the seventh from Adam, and he walked with God. Jude makes a point of the number:

"It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, 'Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.'" (Jude 14–15)

Jude is quoting from the Book of Enoch, also called 1 Enoch, a Jewish work assembled between roughly the third century BC and the first century AD. Fragments of it were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it's still part of the Bible of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Most other Christians and Jews don't treat it as Scripture. Quoting a book isn't the same as endorsing all of it, just as Paul quoted Greek poets in Athens (Acts 17:28). But Jude clearly considered this particular prophecy true.

One small curiosity: Enoch lived 365 years, the number of days in a solar year. Some readers see a symbol of a complete life; others see a coincidence. The text doesn't comment, so neither should we too strongly.

The Book of Enoch also contains a strange story about Noah's birth, which we'll come back to when we get to the question of Noah's "pure" bloodline.

Methuselah and the Long Lives

Enoch's son is the most famous name on the list:

"When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech 782 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died." (Genesis 5:25–27)

The flood-year math

Genesis never says when Methuselah died relative to the flood, but the numbers do. Methuselah was 187 when Lamech was born. "When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son" (Genesis 5:28), Noah. And "Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth" (Genesis 7:6). Add them up: 187 + 182 + 600 = 969. In the standard Hebrew text, Methuselah died in the very year the flood came. Jewish tradition noticed this long ago; one rabbinic reading even took the "seven days" before the rain in Genesis 7:10 as a week of mourning for him.

What does his name mean?

You may have heard that "Methuselah" means "when he dies, it shall be sent," as if his name were a prophecy of the flood. Here's where that comes from. The name has two parts. The second, from shalach, means "to send" or, as a noun, a weapon that is sent, like a spear or dart. The first part is either mat, "man," or mut, "death." Standard Hebrew lexicons such as Brown-Driver-Briggs read mat and translate the name "man of the dart" or "man of the javelin." Others read mut and get something like "his death sends," which has been expanded into "when he dies, it shall be sent." As one Hebrew-names reference puts it, the etymology remains debated. The prophetic reading is possible but not certain, and the standard lexicons prefer "man of the dart." Either way, the timing of his death is a fact of the text, not a theory about his name.

Why do the numbers differ in some Bibles?

Here's something most readers never hear. The ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, has different numbers in Genesis 5. In most of its manuscripts, Methuselah fathered Lamech at 167 instead of 187, and Lamech fathered Noah at 188. Do that math and Methuselah outlives the flood by fourteen years, which raised an obvious problem, since he wasn't on the ark. Augustine wrestled with this in The City of God (book 15) and concluded the Hebrew numbers were more reliable. Some later Greek manuscripts fixed the problem by changing 167 back to 187. English Bibles follow the Hebrew.

How could anyone live 900 years?

Christians have answered this in a few ways. Many take the numbers literally, as a world before the flood with conditions we no longer experience, and note that lifespans drop sharply afterward, a pattern we'll see in Part 3. Some have suggested the "years" were months, but that breaks down quickly: Enoch would have become a father at about five years old. Others think the numbers carry honor or symbolic meaning in ways ancient readers understood better than we do. It's worth noticing that the Sumerian King List, a Mesopotamian text, credits its kings before the flood with reigns of tens of thousands of years each; the first, Alulim, supposedly ruled 28,800 years. Next to that, Genesis is strikingly restrained. Whatever view you take, the point of the list is clear: life was long, but death still came. Even Methuselah, the oldest man who ever lived, ends with the same three words as everyone else: "and he died."

Lamech Names His Son

Methuselah's son Lamech is the only father in Genesis 5 whose words are recorded, and they're a prayer wrapped in a name:

"When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, 'Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.' Lamech lived after he fathered Noah 595 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died." (Genesis 5:28–31)

Lamech is looking back to Genesis 3, where God told Adam, "cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life" (Genesis 3:17). The word for "pain" there, itstsavon, is the same word as "painful toil" in Lamech's prayer. Ten generations of sweat and thorns, and Lamech hopes his son will be the one to bring relief.

The name itself is a wordplay. "Noah" (Noach) comes from the root nuach, "to rest." But the verb Lamech uses, "bring us relief," is nacham, "to comfort" or "to console." The two words sound alike without being the same root, the kind of sound-based naming Hebrew loves. And the word "rest" echoes through Noah's story: the ark "came to rest" on the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:4), and Noah's sacrifice afterward rose to God as a "pleasing aroma" (Genesis 8:21), literally an aroma of nichoach, "restfulness." Lamech's hope was partly fulfilled. Noah didn't remove the curse, but through him humanity survived judgment and received God's promise never to curse the ground that way again.

Notice one more contrast. Cain's Lamech boasted of vengeance "seventy-sevenfold." Seth's Lamech lived 777 years and spent his breath on hope. Genesis seems to be setting the two Lamechs side by side on purpose.

The line ends with Noah's own sons: "After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth" (Genesis 5:32).

Is there a "gospel in the genealogy"?

You may have seen a popular teaching, spread widely by the late Bible teacher Chuck Missler, that the meanings of the ten names in Genesis 5 spell out a sentence: "Man (is) appointed mortal sorrow; (but) the Blessed God shall come down teaching (that) His death shall bring (the) despairing rest." It's a beautiful summary of the gospel. Is it really in the names?

Here's a fair assessment. Some of the meanings are solid. Adam means "man" or "mankind." Seth is tied to "appointed." Enosh means "man" in the sense of frail, mortal humanity. Noah relates to "rest" and "comfort." Others are possible but debated. Mahalalel most likely means "praise of God," which is close to "the blessed God." Jared may come from yarad, "to descend." Methuselah, as we saw, may involve death and sending.

But several meanings are stretched. Kenan is usually connected to "possession" or to Cain's name rather than "sorrow." Enoch (Chanokh) means "dedicated" or "initiated," not exactly "teaching." And no one really knows what Lamech means; "despairing" isn't supported by the Hebrew. So the sentence works best as a devotional reflection, not a hidden code the author planted. The gospel is genuinely in Genesis, starting in 3:15, but this particular sentence relies on picking the most convenient meaning for several names.

Sons of God, Nephilim and 120 Years

Right after Noah's birth comes one of the strangest passages in the Bible:

"When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, 'My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.' The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown." (Genesis 6:1–4)

We looked at this passage in the divine council post, so here's a brief summary of the three main readings.

Angels. The "sons of God" (bene ha'elohim) are heavenly beings who crossed a forbidden line. This is the oldest view, held by 1 Enoch, the Jewish historian Josephus and most early church writers, and it seems to be assumed in 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6.

Seth's line. The "sons of God" are the godly descendants of Seth, marrying the ungodly "daughters of man" from Cain's line. This view was championed by Julius Africanus and Augustine and became common in the church from the fourth century on. It fits the two-family structure of Genesis 4–5.

Kings. The "sons of God" are powerful rulers who took whatever women they wanted, like Lamech with his two wives. Some ancient Jewish translations rendered the phrase "sons of the great ones" or "sons of the nobles."

A few words are worth defining. Nephilim probably comes from naphal, "to fall," so it might mean "fallen ones" or "those who fall upon others," meaning attackers. The Greek Septuagint translated it gigantes, which is how we got "giants" in older English Bibles. "Mighty men" is gibborim, warriors or heroes. And "men of renown" is literally anshe hashem, "men of the name." Keep that phrase in mind; in Part 3, the builders of Babel will try to "make a name" for themselves, and the line of blessing will run through a man named Shem, which means "name."

The phrase "and also afterward" is a puzzle. Nephilim appear again after the flood, when Israel's spies reported, "there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them" (Numbers 13:33). Some think a second incursion happened. Others think "Nephilim" became a general word for terrifying giants. Still others note that these spies are the ones the text says "brought to the people of Israel a bad report" (Numbers 13:32), so their description may be exaggerated.

The 120 years

"His days shall be 120 years" has two main readings. Some take it as a new limit on human lifespan, and lifespans do eventually fall to about that range; Moses died at 120 (Deuteronomy 34:7). Others take it as a countdown to the flood, a 120-year grace period during which Noah built and warned. Peter seems to point that way: "God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared" (1 Peter 3:20). The Hebrew word translated "abide," yadon, is itself uncertain, possibly "strive with" or "remain in."

God's grief

Then comes the reason for the flood:

"The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart." (Genesis 6:5–6)

"Regretted" is nacham, the very word Lamech used when he named Noah. Lamech hoped Noah would bring nacham, comfort. Now God feels nacham, sorrow. The same Hebrew word means both to be comforted and to be grieved, depending on its form, and Genesis plays them against each other. "Grieved" is atsav, the root of the "painful toil" from the curse. Humanity's pain has become God's pain.

"Blameless in His Generation": Character or Bloodline?

After all that darkness, the turn comes in one short sentence:

"But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth." (Genesis 6:8–10)

"Favor" is chen, the word older English Bibles translated "grace." This is its first appearance in the Bible. And notice the order. Noah "found favor" before we're told he was righteous. Grace comes first in the text, just as it does in the gospel. There's even a wordplay: Noach and chen use the same two consonants reversed, N-Ch and Ch-N.

Then comes the description. "Righteous" is tsaddiq, someone in right relationship with God and others. "Walked with God" is the same phrase used of Enoch. And "blameless" is tamim, which means whole, complete, without defect. It's the word used for sacrificial animals: the Passover lamb had to be "without blemish" (Exodus 12:5), tamim.

The bloodline reading

Some teachers, especially those who hold the angelic view of Genesis 6, read "blameless in his generation" as a statement about Noah's genetics. If fallen angels had corrupted the human line with Nephilim offspring, then tamim could mean that Noah's family tree was untouched, a pure human line through which the promised "offspring" of Genesis 3:15 could still come. On this reading, the flood wasn't only judgment on sin but a rescue of the human race from corruption, and "generations" (dorot, plural in Hebrew) refers to Noah's ancestry.

The character reading

Most commentators read it as moral and spiritual wholeness, for a few reasons. First, tamim elsewhere describes character, not ancestry. God tells Abraham, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless" (Genesis 17:1), using the same word. Job was described as "blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil" (Job 1:1), using a closely related word. Second, the sentence pairs "blameless" with "righteous" and "walked with God," all moral descriptions. Third, Scripture later remembers Noah for his righteousness, not his genes. God names "Noah, Daniel, and Job" as models of righteousness (Ezekiel 14:14), and Peter calls Noah "a herald of righteousness" (2 Peter 2:5). "His generation" most naturally means "among the people of his time."

These two readings aren't entirely exclusive. Someone can hold that Noah's character was the main point while still thinking the Genesis 6 corruption was literal. But the text's emphasis is clearly on how Noah lived.

A strange ancient story

Ancient Jewish readers wrestled with the bloodline question too. Both 1 Enoch (chapters 106–107) and a Dead Sea Scroll known as the Genesis Apocryphon tell a story about Noah's birth. The baby is so unusual, with skin white as snow and eyes that light up the house, that Lamech fears he was fathered by one of the fallen "Watchers." In the scroll, Lamech confronts his wife, who insists the child is his. Lamech sends his father Methuselah to ask Enoch, who reassures them: the child is Lamech's son, and God has a special purpose for him. These stories aren't Scripture, but they show that Jews before Jesus already connected Genesis 6 to the question of Noah's family line. Their answer, notably, was that Noah was fully human and fully Lamech's son.

The Thread That Held

Step back and look at what Genesis 4–6 has done. Two family lines grow up side by side. One builds cities, invents music and metalwork, and boasts of revenge. The other calls on the name of the LORD, produces a man who walks with God and never dies, and ends with a father praying that his son will bring comfort. Then the world collapses into violence so complete that God grieves He made it.

And yet the thread holds. The promise of Genesis 3:15, that the woman's offspring would one day crush the serpent, runs through Seth, through Enoch and Methuselah and Lamech, to Noah. When everything else is swept away, that line is still standing, because "Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD."

Luke's genealogy shows where the thread was headed. It runs from Noah's son Shem, down through Abraham and David, to "Jesus, when he began his ministry, being about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph" (Luke 3:23). The comfort Lamech hoped for finally came through a descendant he never could have imagined.

Next in the series: In Part 2, Noah steps off the ark into an empty world. We'll look at the covenant God makes with him, the rainbow, the laws that Judaism later built on this chapter, and the troubling night in Noah's tent that led to a curse on Canaan, a curse that would be twisted for centuries to justify slavery.

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References and Further Reading

Scripture. Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Key passages: Genesis 3:15–17, 4:16–26, 5:1–32, 6:1–10, 7:6, 7:10, 8:4, 8:21, 17:1; Exodus 12:5; Numbers 13:32–33; Deuteronomy 34:7; 2 Kings 2:10; Job 1:1, 6:6; Psalm 49:15; Ezekiel 14:14; Matthew 18:22; Luke 3:23–38; Acts 17:28; Hebrews 11:5; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:4–5; Jude 6, 14–15.

Ancient sources

• 1 Enoch 1:9 (quoted in Jude) and chapters 106–107 (the birth of Noah).
• The Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen), Dead Sea Scrolls, columns 2–5.
• Augustine, The City of God, book 15 (the Septuagint numbers and the Sethite reading of Genesis 6).
• The Sumerian King List.

Reference works and web sources

• Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, entry for Methuselah.
• Methuselah: meaning and etymology, Abarim Publications.
• The Meaning of the Name Methuselah, Jeff A. Benner, Ancient Hebrew Research Center.
• Methuselah, WideBible.
• Gill's commentary on Genesis 5:27, for Jewish traditions about Methuselah's death.

For further reading

• Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary (Word, 1987).
• Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26, New American Commentary (Broadman & Holman, 1996).
• Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17, NICOT (Eerdmans, 1990).