Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he became the father of other sons and daughters. All the days that Adam lived were nine hundred thirty years, then he died.“
(Genesis 5:4-5)

For eight hundred years Adam was able to talk with his descendants and tell them of the Lord. I’m sure some of them weren’t happy with Adam and Eve’s choices, but imagine the revelations about who God is and how He talks with us and deals with us that Adam could have shared. The spiritual leadership and guidance that Adam could have provided is significant. We’re not told the role he played, but he must have passed SOMETHING down because there are some very righteous people among his direct descendants – descendants he would have had access to (Adam died only 126 years before Noah was born and when Lamech was 56 years old. He saw eight generations of his offspring.).

We’re not sure how long Eve lived, but we can assume it was similar to Adam because we’re not told of any tragedy that cut her life short. But there is nothing in scripture to indicate that Adam ever put her aside or took another wife. These two humans may have made a terrible choice, but they truly loved each other and stuck with each other through THE most horrific circumstances ANYONE has ever gone through. In their dedication to each other, they are to be admired. In putting themselves before God that time in the garden, not so much.

As we go through the rest of the chapter, we see long lives. We don’t know HOW many children these people had. We are only told of the firstborn male line. As with Adam, we see he had other sons and daughters. Who knows how many? Some people have dozens of children with much shorter lifespans. These longer lived people presumably increased the population significantly during their lives.

The sage Chizkuni writes: ‘וימת, “he died;” this is the standard formula used by the Torah for the death of anyone who died before Noach. It is to tell us that this death occurred not due to sickness, etc., but due to the curse of mortality that man became subject to after having been seduced by the serpent. From Noach’s time onward, the Torah did not always add the fact that a person died, once it had informed us about how many years they lived.’