Genesis5chapter 5

This chapter is heard inside the opening portion of the annual cycle, which is read in one sitting and carries the reader from creation into the days of Noah (src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts). The list of ten generations is chanted as part of that reading. The card above carries the portion and the prophetic reading set beside it.

The chapter is a genealogy, and the classical comment on it turns on two questions: why the years are so long, and what the record leaves out. Four voices stand in the corpus with their English text kept. Rashi is quoted from the public domain Rosenbaum and Silbermann edition. Radak is quoted from the CC-BY translation of Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash, and Ramban from the CC-BY translation of Charles B. Chavel, 1971 to 1976.

Radak reads the line of Seth as the line of those born in the likeness of their father. He holds that the sons and daughters left unnamed were of another kind, and that this is why the descendants of Cain are not counted in this chapter (Radak on Genesis 5:2:2 and 5:4:1). Rashi reads the hundred and thirty years before Seth as years Adam lived apart from his wife (Rashi on Genesis 5:3:1, citing Genesis Rabbah 24:6). Radak gives a practical reason for the summing of the years at the end of each life. The total is written out "in order that the scribe should not make a mistake" (Radak on Genesis 5:5:1).

The long lives are the contested point, and the corpus carries the argument itself. Radak reports the ruling of Maimonides in the Guide for the Perplexed 2:47, that only the men named in this chapter lived so long (Radak on Genesis 5:4:1). Ramban sets himself against that ruling in plain words, calling it "words without substance" (Ramban on Genesis 5:4:1). His own account is physical. The first man was made in full strength, and the air was tainted by the flood, so the years fell away by degrees from Shem to Peleg to Abraham.

Ibn Ezra, Malbim and Sforno carry eight comments on this chapter that the corpus holds by reference alone, because the licence Sefaria reports for the English versions keeps the text out. They are Ibn Ezra on Genesis 5:1:1, 5:3:1, 5:22:1, 5:24:1 and 5:29:1, Malbim on Genesis 5:5:1 and 5:22:1, and Sforno on Genesis 5:22:1.

The walking of Enoch with God is where the Jewish reading of this chapter parts from the Christian one most sharply. Rashi reports that Enoch was righteous and easily turned, so God took him before his time and before he could go wrong (Rashi on Genesis 5:24:1 and 5:24:2). A Christian reader takes the same verse as a man carried to God without dying, which is the reading at Hebrews 11:5. This site sets the two readings side by side and names the holder of each.

Rashi carries three more sayings of the rabbis here. The son born to Lamech was named for building, and Rashi reports that the world was built up from him (Rashi on Genesis 5:28:1, citing Tanchuma 1:1:11). The comfort his father spoke of he reads as the plough. Until Noah came, people worked the ground with no tools, and he made them (Rashi on Genesis 5:29:1, same locator).

The third is the question of Rabbi Judan on why Noah fathered his sons at five hundred years, when the generations before him fathered sons at a hundred. Rashi reports the answer given: wicked sons would have perished in the flood and grieved their father, and righteous sons would have meant building more arks (Rashi on Genesis 5:32:1, citing Genesis Rabbah 26:2). On the order of the three names he reports that Japheth was the eldest. Shem is named first because he was righteous, was born circumcised, and was the father of the line of Abraham (Rashi on Genesis 5:32:2, citing Genesis Rabbah 26:3).

The corpus records forty places where the Midrash and the Talmud cite this chapter, thirty one under Midrash and nine under Talmud, with the locator for each one and no text. Bereshit Rabbati reads the line verse by verse, all of it in Parashat Bereshit. It reads the third verse at 88, the fifth at 23, the sixth at 27 and 82, and the seventh at 29 and 83. It reads the sixteenth at 71, the twenty fifth at 90 and the twenty seventh at 91. Bereshit Rabbah reads the second verse at 17:2, the fifth at 19:8, the eighteenth at 69:7 and the twenty fourth at 25:1. It reads the twenty ninth at 25:2 and 25:3, and the thirty second at 26:1.

Seder Olam Rabbah reads the death of Methuselah at 1:2, and Seder Olam Zutta the years of Enosh at 2:1. Sefer HaYashar reads the walking of Enoch at Bereshit 10, and Pesikta DeRav Kahana at 23:10. Midrash Tehillim reads the same verse at 9:8 and Midrash Tanchuma at Bamidbar 26:1.

The Talmud is cited at Avodah Zarah 5a:9 on the first verse, Berakhot 61a:14 on the second and Eruvin 18b and 18b:10 on the third. It is cited at Jerusalem Talmud Nazir 7:2:6 on the fifth verse and Sotah 11b:20 on the seventeenth. Avot DeRabbi Natan is cited at 31:3 and 2:5, and in its second recension at 8:6.