The Long Defeat and the Unrelenting Refrain Text: Genesis 5:12-14
Introduction: A Graveyard with a Signpost
We come this morning to a passage that many modern readers, and I daresay many Christians, are tempted to skim. It is a genealogy. It is a list of names and numbers. It seems to be the biblical equivalent of a telephone book for a city that was washed away by a flood four thousand years ago. Our pragmatic and "relevant" age looks at a text like this and asks, "What can this possibly have to do with me?" And the answer is, "Everything."
You must understand that these genealogies are not dusty records for the sake of historical trivia. They are the backbone of redemptive history. They are God's inspired, inerrant, and infallible record of His faithfulness to His promise in the garden. When God told the serpent that the seed of the woman would crush his head, He was not speaking in generalities. He was speaking of a specific lineage, a particular bloodline that would run like a scarlet thread from Eve to Mary. This chapter, Genesis 5, is the first great accounting of that line. It is the line of Seth, the appointed replacement for righteous Abel, and it stands in stark contrast to the line of Cain, the city-builder and murderer.
But this chapter is more than just a family tree. It is a graveyard. It is a solemn procession of patriarchs who lived astonishingly long lives, but who all, with one notable exception, ended up in the same place. The chapter is punctuated by a grim and unrelenting refrain, a tolling bell that sounds at the end of each generation: "and he died." This is the great theme of the chapter. It is a nine-hundred-year-long sermon on the text from Genesis 2: "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
So when we read about Kenan and Mahalalel, we are not just reading about ancient men. We are reading about the human condition. We are reading about the long defeat of Adam's race under the curse of sin. And we are being taught to long for the one who would finally break that cadence, the one who would swallow up death in victory. This is not a boring list; it is the foundation for the gospel.
The Text
And Kenan lived 70 years and became the father of Mahalalel.
Then Kenan lived 840 years after he became the father of Mahalalel, and he became the father of other sons and daughters.
So all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.
(Genesis 5:12-14 LSB)
The Covenant Continues (v. 12)
We begin with the simple fact of paternity and lineage.
"And Kenan lived 70 years and became the father of Mahalalel." (Genesis 5:12)
In our culture, which has all but destroyed fatherhood, this is a revolutionary statement. Kenan lived, and he begat. This is the fundamental duty of man in covenant with God. He is to be fruitful and multiply. He is to pass on the knowledge of the true God to the next generation. This is not just a biological event; it is a covenantal act. Each birth in this line is another link in the chain God is forging, the chain that will ultimately bring forth the Messiah.
This is the line of Seth, the line of those who "began to call upon the name of the LORD" (Gen. 4:26). While the line of Cain was building cities, inventing musical instruments, and forging weapons of bronze and iron, all in defiance of God, the line of Seth was doing something far more important. They were having children and teaching them to pray. They were preserving the promise. Kenan's fathering of Mahalalel is a quiet act of war against the kingdom of the serpent. It is an act of faith, a declaration that God's promise of a coming seed is true, and that this family is where that promise resides.
We should also note the age. Kenan was 70. In our day, that is the age of a grandfather, not a new father. This points to the different reality of the antediluvian world. Life was lived on an entirely different scale. The long years before fathering a child in the covenant line were not wasted. They were part of a world still vibrant with the power of God's original creation, a world where the effects of the curse were accumulating slowly, like a poison with a long half-life.
The Long Obedience (v. 13)
Next, we see the scope of a single, faithful life before the flood.
"Then Kenan lived 840 years after he became the father of Mahalalel, and he became the father of other sons and daughters." (Genesis 5:13 LSB)
After the birth of the covenant heir, Kenan's life did not stop. For another 840 years, he continued his calling. He lived. And in the course of that living, "he became the father of other sons and daughters." This is the cultural mandate in action. God's command to Adam to fill the earth was not rescinded after the fall. It was to be carried out now in a world groaning under the curse, a world full of thorns and thistles, pain and death.
Imagine it. Eight centuries of life after the birth of your heir. Eight centuries of farming, teaching, leading a family, and worshipping God. These were not mythical figures. They were men. They lived real lives, raised real families, and faced real challenges. The secularist scoffs at these ages, of course. He has been taught that man is a recent accident, crawling out of the slime, and that ancient man was brutish and short-lived. But the Bible presents the opposite picture. Man was created perfect, and the initial trajectory was downward. These long lives are the afterglow of Eden. They are a testimony to the sheer biological power of a creation that God had declared "very good," a power so profound that it took centuries for the curse of death to fully take root and drag the lifespan down to our paltry three-score and ten.
These "other sons and daughters" are not incidental. They were the church and the society of that age. They were the community within which the knowledge of God was preserved. This was a long obedience in the same direction, a marathon of faithfulness that we can scarcely comprehend.
The Inevitable End (v. 14)
But for all the grandeur of his years, Kenan's story ends with the same two words as his father's and his grandfather's.
"So all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died." (Genesis 5:14 LSB)
Here is the hammer blow of the text. Nine hundred and ten years. A lifespan that stretches from the fall of the Roman Empire to our present day. A life that saw generations of his own descendants come and go. And what is the final summary? "And he died."
This is the wages of sin. This is the outworking of God's terrible promise to Adam. No matter how long you live, no matter how many children you have, no matter how faithful you are in your generation, the curse is relentless. Death comes for everyone. This chapter is a mighty sermon against all forms of humanism. It is a refutation of any gospel that promises a paradise on this side of the grave. You can live for nearly a millennium, but you cannot outrun the consequences of Adam's sin. The grave awaits.
This refrain, "and he died," is meant to create in the reader a holy desperation. It is meant to make us feel the weight of the curse. The world is broken. We are broken. We live, we beget, we work, and we die. This is the rhythm of a fallen world. This is the problem. And if this is all there is, then all is vanity. This drumbeat of death is designed to make us cry out for a savior. It is meant to make us look for the one man in the list who broke the pattern, Enoch, who "was not, for God took him," and to see in his translation a glimmer of hope. But more than that, it is meant to prepare us for the one who would not just escape death, but defeat it.
The Death of Death
The story of Kenan, and of all the patriarchs in this chapter, is our story apart from Christ. It is a story of life that is inexorably heading toward death. The genealogy of Genesis 5 is the long, slow march to the tomb.
But God gave us another genealogy. The Gospel of Matthew begins with one. "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." This genealogy also has a rhythm. So-and-so begat so-and-so. It marches through the centuries, through kings and commoners, through the righteous and the wicked. And it, too, ends in a death. It ends with the death of the one man who did not deserve to die. It ends with Jesus on a cross.
But that is not where the story ends. The refrain of Genesis 5 is "and he died." The refrain of the gospel is "He is risen." Jesus Christ entered into the long defeat of Adam's race. He took the curse upon Himself. He lived, and He died. But on the third day, He broke the pattern. He walked out of the tomb, having disarmed death, having paid the wages of sin in full.
Because of His resurrection, the grim refrain of Genesis 5 is not the last word for us. For those who are in Christ, the story does not end with "and he died." It ends with "and he lives forever." Paul tells us that "as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22). The 910 years of Kenan are as nothing compared to the eternity that Christ has purchased for His people.
So we look at this ancient list not as a dusty record of the dead, but as a profound explanation of our need for a savior. It shows us the problem in all its stark, century-spanning reality. Every name that ends with "and he died" is another reason to thank God for the one name, the name of Jesus, whose story ends with "death has been swallowed up in victory."