The Long Defeat and the Sudden Light Text: Genesis 5:18-20
Introduction: The Drumbeat of Death
When we come to a passage like the genealogies in Genesis 5, the modern mind, which is a very flighty and unserious thing, tends to skim. We see a list of names and numbers, and our eyes glaze over. We think it is just a dry, dusty record of ancient men who lived an impossibly long time. But this is a profound mistake. This is not a phone book. This is the inspired Word of God, and it is freighted with a theology that undergirds everything else in the Bible. It is the metronome of redemptive history.
Chapter 5 is the genealogy of the line of Seth, the promised line. It stands in stark contrast to the line of Cain in chapter 4, which is a line of worldly accomplishment, arrogance, and violence. The line of Cain builds cities, invents instruments, and boasts in its murderous vengeance. The line of Seth, on the other hand, is marked by a different refrain. It is a somber, liturgical drumbeat. So-and-so lived, he begat a son, he lived some more, and then the hammer falls: "and he died." Over and over, nine times in this chapter, we hear that final, grim chord. This is the outworking of the curse of Genesis 3. "For dust you are, and to dust you shall return."
These genealogies are, first, a stark reminder of the reign of death. Sin entered the world, and death by sin. No one, no matter how long they lived, could outrun it. Adam lived 930 years, and he died. Seth lived 912 years, and he died. Jared, the subject of our text, lived 962 years, and he died. Even Methuselah, the oldest man who ever lived, could not outlast the sentence. He lived 969 years, and he died. This chapter is a graveyard. But it is a graveyard with a signpost pointing toward a resurrection.
Second, these genealogies are a testament to the faithfulness of God. In the midst of the long defeat of death, God is preserving a seed. He is patiently, meticulously, generation by generation, carrying His promise forward. The promise of the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15) is not forgotten. It is being passed down, father to son, in this very list. This is the covenant line, the fragile thread from which the Messiah will one day come. So this is not just a record of death; it is a record of God's patient, stubborn grace.
The Text
And Jared lived 162 years and became the father of Enoch.
Then Jared lived 800 years after he became the father of Enoch, and he became the father of other sons and daughters.
So all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died.
(Genesis 5:18-20 LSB)
A Link in the Chain (v. 18)
We begin with the simple, declarative statement of verse 18.
"And Jared lived 162 years and became the father of Enoch." (Genesis 5:18)
The first thing to do with a text like this is to believe it. The modern evangelical, with his sweaty palms and his desperate desire to be respectable in the eyes of the world, wants to allegorize these numbers or explain them away as symbolic. But the text gives us no warrant for such cleverness. These are presented as straightforward historical facts. Jared lived 162 years, and he had a son. The long lifespans of the patriarchs are not an embarrassment to be explained away; they are a feature of the world before the Flood. The environment was different, the genetic code was purer, and the full effects of the curse had not yet compressed our lives into the brief seventy or eighty years we have now. God's common grace was still thick on the world, even as His judgment was gathering.
Jared's name means "descent," and it is fitting. He lived in a descending world, a world sliding further into the darkness that would culminate in the judgment of the Flood. He is the sixth generation from Adam. He is a link, a crucial link, in the covenant chain. His task, like his father Mahalalel before him, was to receive the promise passed down from Adam and to hand it off to the next generation. This is the fundamental duty of every covenant father: to ensure the line continues, to teach his children the ways of the Lord, and to pass on the inheritance of faith.
But the most significant thing the Bible tells us about Jared is not the length of his life, but the identity of his son. He became the father of Enoch. This is his chief claim to fame. He is the father of a spiritual giant. We must not underestimate the importance of this. In a world spiraling into wickedness, a world where the line of Cain was flourishing and the sons of God were beginning to look at the daughters of men, Jared raises a son who would walk with God. This is no small feat. It tells us that despite the drumbeat of death and the rising tide of sin, faithfulness was still possible. Godly households were still being maintained.
The Long Obedience (v. 19)
Verse 19 gives us the remainder of Jared's long life.
"Then Jared lived 800 years after he became the father of Enoch, and he became the father of other sons and daughters." (Genesis 5:19 LSB)
For eight centuries after Enoch was born, Jared continued his life. Eight hundred years. Think of the history he would have seen. He was a contemporary of Adam for the first 366 years of his life. He could have sat at the feet of the first man and heard firsthand the story of the Garden, the goodness of God, the tragedy of the fall, and the glory of the promise. He lived through the entire life of his son Enoch, and he outlived him by 435 years. He saw the birth of his grandson Methuselah and his great-grandson Lamech. He died only 134 years before his great-great-grandson Noah was born.
This vast expanse of time was filled with the ordinary business of life: "he became the father of other sons and daughters." He was a patriarch, the head of a growing clan. He was fulfilling the cultural mandate to be fruitful and multiply. This is not incidental. In the great war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, demographics are a key weapon. The godly line had to grow. They had to have children, raise them in the fear of the Lord, and fill the earth with worshipers of the true God.
Jared's life is a picture of plodding faithfulness. We are told nothing spectacular about him. He didn't walk with God in the same exceptional way his son did. He wasn't raptured. He simply lived, worked, raised a family, and passed on the faith for century after century. And this is a tremendous encouragement. Not everyone is an Enoch. Most of us are Jareds. Our calling is not to some spectacular, headline-grabbing ministry, but to a long obedience in the same direction. It is the faithfulness of getting up every day, loving your wife, catechizing your children, doing your work diligently, and worshiping God, decade after decade, until you are old and gray. This is the stuff of which covenant history is made.
The Inevitable End (v. 20)
And then, after all those centuries, the final verse brings the hammer down.
"So all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died." (Genesis 5:20 LSB)
Nine hundred and sixty-two years. He was the second oldest man in the Bible, surpassed only by his grandson Methuselah. He lived for nearly a millennium. And yet, the sentence pronounced in the Garden held true. He died. This is the great leveler. Death comes for the patriarch, just as it comes for the infant. It comes for the righteous, just as it comes for the wicked. The wages of sin is death, and all have sinned.
This refrain, "and he died," is the central problem that Genesis 5 presents. It is the question for which the rest of the Bible is the answer. How can this sentence be reversed? How can death be defeated? This chapter shows us the futility of human effort. You cannot outlive the curse. You cannot be good enough to evade the grave. A solution must come from outside the system, from God Himself.
And right in the middle of this chapter of death, God gives us a flash of brilliant hope. Jared's son, Enoch, walked with God, "and he was not, for God took him" (Gen. 5:24). Enoch is the exception that proves the rule, but he is also the exception that points to the future. He is a type, a foreshadowing, of the one who would not only escape death but conquer it. Enoch was taken so that he would not see death. But Jesus Christ would enter into death, grapple with it in its own domain, and shatter its power from the inside out. He would die the death we all deserved to die, and rise again to a life that we could all receive by faith.
Conclusion: Your Link in the Chain
The story of Jared is the story of a man who played his part. He was a link in a chain that stretched from Adam to Christ. He lived faithfully in a dark time. He raised a son who shone like a star. He lived a long life, and then he died, awaiting the promise of a redeemer who would swallow up death forever.
What does this mean for us? It means, first, that we must take our place in the chain. God's covenant purposes did not end with the patriarchs. We who are in Christ have been grafted into this same line, the line of faith. We have received a glorious inheritance, and we have a solemn duty to pass it on. You are a link. To your children, to your neighbors, to the next generation. You are called to the same long obedience that Jared lived.
Second, it means we must recognize the reality of death. Our culture is terrified of death and does everything it can to ignore it or pretend it does not exist. The Bible is brutally realistic. You are going to die. But for the Christian, that grim refrain, "and he died," is not the end of the story. Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can face the grave with a sure and certain hope. For us, to die is gain. Death is but a doorway into the presence of the one who is the resurrection and the life.
Jared's chief accomplishment was being the father of Enoch. His long life created the space for a man who would walk with God to appear on the scene. In the same way, our lives of quiet, plodding faithfulness create the context for moments of brilliant, God-glorifying grace. We do the mundane work of discipleship, and God brings forth the miraculous fruit. Jared lived, and he died. But because of the work of the one to whom Jared's line was pointing, we can say something far greater. We live, and we will die, and we will live again.