GENESIS 5
In this chapter we get the line in which divine light and testimony were found; Cain’s line is not taken account of here at all. None of these men died until he had filled up his bit in the line of divine testimony. In the previous chapter we see Abel as a type of Christ, and a vessel of the Spirit of Christ, typically Christ as the Righteous One who maintained what was due to God, but brought upon Himself the enmity [p. 51] of man even to death. The enemy’s effort from the outset was to cut off the divine line, but at the end of chapter 4 we see how that line was continued; God would not have it cut off. A seed comes in instead of Abel whom Cain slew. Seth means ‘appointed’. When Christ was slain it might seem that all hope was cut off, but God appointed Him Lord and Christ in resurrection. One might say that Abel prolonged his days in Seth, and so Christ has prolonged His days in resurrection, and He has also got a seed to continue Him morally on the earth. We read in Isaiah 53: 8 - 10: “Who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living ... . He shall see a seed, he shall prolong his days”. God would see to it that the One who was cut off should have a seed to continue Him in testimony here. It is not only that Christ prolonged His days as risen before God, but He is perpetuated in a seed on earth. “A seed shall serve him, and it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation”, Psalm 22: 30. Jehovah gave Him a seed, and all saints are part of that appointed seed. The generation which God has given to Christ for a seed, is to continue His name in testimony in the place where He was slain.
The fact that it is mentioned that Seth was in the image of Adam suggests that what came in on the natural side was on the line of fallen man, and this brings out that it is through the activity of God’s electing mercy and love alone that a seed is found in which His testimony can be continued. The fact that Adam could only beget a son in his own likeness and image casts all on God. If God did not act in His own sovereignty there could be no seed for Himself. It emphasises the fact that God works according to His [p. 52] love, and His determinate purpose. The recognition of this marks God’s elect; Seth calls his son Enosh, which means mortal — subject to death. He owned that according to the flesh all had come under death; then men began to call upon the Name of the Lord. There was the owning of the complete ruin of man on the natural line; but in calling on the Name of Jehovah there was a looking for everything good to come in from God.
The interest in these men, and almost all we know of their exercises, lies in the names which they gave their sons. I do not know that we can trace them all out, but the fact that this chapter is the history of the line of God’s testimony for more than 1500 years gives it an importance not to be overlooked. I think an outline may be seen here in type of the divine testimony from the resurrection of Christ right on to the bringing in of the rest of God. The Spirit who led these men to give names to their sons, and who inspired Moses to place them on record, had before Him the whole scope of things which would come in consequent on Christ being slain, prefigured in the death of Abel. The chapter ends by the suggestion of the removal of the curse, and the bringing in of rest to the wide creation in connection with Noah. The typical bearing of this is clear.
In Enosh there is the recognition that man in the flesh is under death; therefore nothing of blessing depends, or could depend, on that man; the cross sets him aside forever; what is of God, and for man’s blessing, comes in in Another Man — even in Christ. When we see this clearly we are ready for Cainan, which is practically the same name as Cain; it means acquisition. Eve made a mistake in naming Cain; she [p. 53] connected the thought of acquisition with the wrong man, just as people are doing still all over the world. The things which can be connected with man after the flesh — money, pleasure, fame, benevolent and religious good works — all that can be acquired or added to man as such to give him place or glory, or to minister to his lusts or pride, is acquisition of the wrong kind. But when we see that death is on man after the flesh, and that all true good must come in from God through and in Christ, we get on to the line of divine acquisition. The soul turns in self-judgment to the blessed God, and it begins to acquire the true riches. Paul laboured at Corinth that the meaning of the cross should be known, and that self-judgment should make room for the Spirit of God to build up in the souls of saints all that was of God in Christ. Then there is divine acquisition — the building up in the knowledge of God so that He becomes the boast and glory of the soul. “That according as it is written, He that boasts, let him boast in the Lord”, 1 Corinthians 1: 31.
This is suggested in the next name — Mahalaleel — which means “God is splendour”. Think of the faith that led a man to give his son a name like that in the presence of Cain’s world! God was more glorious in his eyes than all the attractions of that world. All true acquisition is on this line; it is by the knowledge of God that saints are edified and grow (Colossians 1: 10); and it is in the knowledge of God that all things that pertain to life and godliness are given to us; 2 Peter 1: 3. The sense that God is splendour will produce worship; the soul makes its boast in God. It is God that is before us, not man. If God has become splendour to me I shall surely praise. We find the Psalmist speaking of “The +God of the gladness of my joy”, Psalm 43:4.
[p. 54] It is the spiritual elevation of this blessed knowledge of God that prepares us for the next step — Jared, which means ‘Descending’, This suggests to me the lowliness of the path of obedience here, of which the model and pattern is seen in the path of the Lord Jesus. Philippians 2 brings it before us in a very blessed way, and I trust a way that ever appeals to our hearts. The “life of Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4) is that life of meek and lowly obedience in which He was found here. He would descend to the lowest point in obedience, and that God might be known. He came down in all the blessedness of God to bring the knowledge of God into this world. The assembly will descend in a future day from heaven having the glory of God, to bring it all down in display. The heavenly city will be filled with the holy splendour of God, and will descend for the display of it. The great elevation which we obtain in the knowledge of God really prepares us to descend in the blessed testimony of grace to this world. The spirit and effort of the world is to get up as high as I can to make much of myself, but the divine line and the line of the Spirit of Christ is to descend in order to make much of God.
There is moral order in these things. We have to go along the line suggested by the names Seth, Enosh, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared. After learning the complete ruin of man in the flesh as under death, we get spiritual acquisitions as we find everything blessed and glorious for our hearts in the shining out of God in grace and love, and in the establishment of all His thoughts of blessing in Christ, and as this is made good to us by the Spirit we joy in God. That gives the descending spirit. One who is truly in the moral elevation of the knowledge of God can go down to any [p. 55] point to make God known. That is the spirit of the true evangelist. Paul said, “To all I have become all things, in order that at all events I might save some”. Think of a proud man like Saul of Tarsus becoming all things to all men! He learned to descend in order to bring the knowledge of God to men.
Then in Enoch — Tuition — we have one taught under God’s discipline to walk with Him, and be a partaker of His holiness. So that he comes in as the crown and culmination of the line of heavenly testimony. We see in him the life of a heavenly man, one completely outside the course of this world; one who in company with God became His confidant and received wondrous communications of divine secrets. What marvellous things he learned! He saw the true character of the world as under judgment, and knew that the Lord was coming to execute judgment. But what a comfort and joy it must have been to his heart to know that the Lord will have holy myriads with Him! Tens of thousands of holy ones! What a blessed sense he must have had of how much there was to be for God! Then he was taught how completely God could effect victory over death, and set it aside. We should not know it from Genesis 5, but we do know from Hebrews 11, that he had faith to be translated! God was pleased to act in this marvellous way; before two men had died He gave a man the faith that He could set death aside, Abel had been killed, but, so far as Scripture tells us, only Adam had died when Enoch was translated. He had faith to be translated, so one day “he was not”. He had gained in his walking with God the knowledge of the blessed secret that God was able to set death completely aside, so that he could go out of this world without death touching him. The course [p. 56] of the heavenly man, and of the assembly properly, does not terminate in death. If the Lord tarries, saints may pass off the scene by departing to be with Christ, but the proper departure of the heavenly company is translation; it is passing out of the sphere of death without a trace of its power touching them, just as the three Hebrew children came out of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace without the smell of fire passing on them.
Think of Enoch giving God his company! I often wonder how much do we give God our company? He delights in us and values our company. It might have to be said of many of us that we only lived. Enoch lived 65 years, and then he walked with God 300 years. And in the New Testament this is interpreted as meaning that he pleased God. I think we may connect in a special way with Enoch the verse which follows this in Hebrews 11: “But without faith it is impossible to please him. For he that draws near to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them who seek him out”. The place of the church as divinely taught, and as being spiritually outside the power of death in heavenly life, is strikingly set forth in Enoch — a man heavenly-minded, and entirely to God’s pleasure so that God translated him.
Then in Methuselah we get the thought of God’s long-suffering with the world; his life was the measure of it, for he died in the year that the flood came. This gives peculiar interest to the fact that he lived longer than any other man.
Then Lamech means ‘the overthrower’, ‘the wild man’, and I think he suggests the deep exercises and sorrows of the remnant who will have to suffer under the one who will seek to overthrow all that is of God,
[p. 57] and to break through every divine restraint — the man of sin, the lawless one. We have the prophetic history of those times in the Revelation, and we can understand how the nature of that time of tribulation will turn the hearts of the remnant to Christ as the true Noah — the One who will bring in repose, and set aside all the effect of the curse. Noah preparing an ark for the saving of his house is a figure of Christ who will carry His people in a coming day through the time of tribulation, and who will then set aside all the effects of the curse, and bring in repose for the wide creation.
The Spirit was conversant with all things from the beginning, and He has given us in this early chapter of Genesis a suggestive outline of what would transpire between the death of Christ and His coming again to put the wide creation on the footing of the burnt offering. We have seen a similar foreshadowing in the first chapter ending in the Sabbath — rest brought in for God: now in this chapter all leads to the bringing in of repose for man after all his toil in the scene of the curse. The true Noah will bring it about.