Even the most casual of Bible students are aware of the fact that the first son of Adam and Eve mentioned in the Bible is Cain. After noting that God banished the first couple from the garden of Eden following their sin, Genesis 4:1 indicates, \u201cNow Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, \u2018I have acquired a man from the Lord.\u2019\u201d The births of Abel and Seth are also mentioned in Genesis 4 (though the amount of time that lapses is unknown). One thing that Genesis 4 clearly teaches: Seth was born sometime after Cain and Abel. After Seth\u2019s birth, Adam stated: \u201cGod has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed\u201d (4:25). Clearly, Cain had already murdered Abel by the time Seth was born.
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\nIn Genesis 5, however, in \u201cthe book of the genealogy of Adam\u201d (from Adam to the patriarch Noah), Seth, not Cain, is listed as Adam\u2019s son. According to University of Houston Bible Professor Steven DiMattei, Genesis 5:3-4 \u201cclearly implies that Seth was the first born\u201d (2013). Allegedly, in Genesis 5, \u201cthe genealogical list is enumerated from father to son; there is no mention of the female, and each son is depicted as the first son, who then further fathers a son\u2026. [I]n this author\u2019s genealogy there is no mention of Cain and Abel,\u201d rather \u201cSeth, like Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, etc., is presented as the first son\u201d (DiMattei, 2013).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As with so many \u201cBible discrepancies,\u201d Dr. DiMattei\u2019s assertion that there is \u201ctension\u201d between the fourth and fifth chapters of Genesis is based solely on the assumption that the sons listed in Genesis 5 were all firstborn sons. The fact is, however, the text never explicitly states, nor does it imply, that the sons listed were the \u201cfirstborn\u201d of their fathers. One would think the first obvious clue that Genesis 5 is not implying the births of firstborn sons would be that only four verses before noting \u201cAdam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son\u2026and named him Seth\u201d (5:3), the text mentions two of Seth\u2019s older brothers (Genesis 4:25). What\u2019s more, when Genesis 5 indicates that \u201cSeth lived one hundred and five years, and begot Enosh\u201d (vs. 6), or that \u201cEnosh lived ninety years, and begot Cainan\u201d (vs. 9), etc., there is nothing in the text that proves these were firstborn sons. They may have been, but they may not have been. Interestingly, not only is the first son mentioned in Genesis 5 clearly not a firstborn son (5:3), the chapter concludes by mentioning that \u201cNoah was five hundred years old, and Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth\u201d (5:32), yet Shem apparently was not Noah\u2019s firstborn, though he is listed first (cf. Genesis 7:6; 8:13; 11:10). Nor is the text implying that Noah\u2019s sons were triplets, any more than Genesis 11:26 implies that Abraham was a triplet (cf. Genesis 11:32; 12:4; Acts 7:4; see Lyons 2004).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact of the matter is, the emphasis in Genesis 5 is on those who would \u201ccall on the name of the Lord\u201d (4:26), including Enoch, who \u201cwalked with God\u201d (5:22,24), and Noah, who was a \u201cpreacher of righteousness\u201d (2 Peter 2:5) during a time when \u201cthe wickedness of man was great in the earth\u201d (Genesis 6:5). Concurrently, Genesis 5 also emphasizes the Messianic lineage from Adam through Shem. [NOTE: Interestingly, many prominent sons in the genealogy of Jesus were not firstborn sons (e.g., Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, etc.).]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While some may see \u201ctension\u201d between Genesis 4 and 5, and while others may see a \u201cclear contradiction\u201d between the two chapters, when we carefully consider the biblical text, its truthfulness is clearly seen: (1) Cain and Abel were older brothers of Seth, and (2) the sons listed in Genesis 5 were not necessarily firstborn sons. Bible students must be careful making assumptions about the text.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even the most casual of Bible students are aware of the fact that the first son of Adam and Eve mentioned in the Bible is Cain. After noting that God banished the first couple from the garden of Eden following their sin, Genesis 4:1 indicates, \u201cNow Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived andContinue reading →<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22,8,27],"tags":[747,748],"class_list":["post-27914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-errors","category-bible-study","category-bible-teaching","tag-cain","tag-seth","has-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27914"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27917,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27914\/revisions\/27917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}