20 The Seed Line of Seth to Christ

The first aspect of this Toldot that stands out is the length of the patriarch’s lives. We must realize that prior to the decay (Entropy) that came into the earth at the Fall mankind was made to live forever. Decay began and man’s life span began a steady decline to be less than a hundred years. This chronology is repeated in I Chronicles 1:1-14 and Luke 3: 3-38. There are no gaps in these accounts. One person is the father to the next. Further the years are normal years not some exaggerated unreal time frame. The Hebrew text does not accommodate a grandfather-grandson depiction in this account. These long life spans are validated in secular data as well as the biblical account. Two examples are, The Sumerian King List written between 2000 - 3,000 B.C. and Babylonian history by Berossus (Cir. 300 B.C.). The Sumerian King List records in succession the names of most of the kings of Sumer and the lengths of their reigns. One obvious aspect of the Seed Line is the truncated life of Enoch. In comparison to the others his life was relatively short at 365 years. The Bible says that God took him. God gave immortality to him. The Hebrew word for took is lackach. It means that the Lord captured him. We can translate this as rapture. The New Testament affirms this in Hebrews 11: 5 and says Enoch pleased God. This is a model or type of the Rapture of the Church which is yet future to us and clearly explained in I Thessalonians 4: 16-17.