What Does Genesis 5:1 Mean?
This is the book of the births of Adam. In the day that God created the ground-being, in the likeness of God he made him.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;THE KEY
The human story opens with God’s likeness already present in it, before any generation can add or earn it.
THE MEANING
You belong to the human story the verse names as God’s making, and that story begins in God’s likeness. The verse holds your earthiness and divine resemblance together as the starting condition of being human.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
God’s likeness is reserved for a spiritually exceptional few; here it belongs to humanity at the beginning of the human line.
THE ROOT
דְּמוּת
demut
GROWS FROM
דמה
To be like, resemble, or compare.
English “likeness” can sound like an outward copy, but demut belongs to a word-family about being like or comparable. The verse places the human in a relation of resemblance to God, and the generations that follow carry that likeness forward.
ALSO GROWS
damah: To be like or resemble.
דָּמָה
This verb makes the shared root visible: the likeness in the verse is a relationship of resemblance.
dimyon: Resemblance or comparison.
דִּמְיוֹן
This related form keeps the idea of likeness tied to correspondence, not merely appearance.
תּוֹלְדֹת
toledot
GROWS FROM
ילד
To bear or bring forth.
“births” in this verse is toledot. Toledot comes from the word-family of bearing and bringing forth. The “book” is more than a list: it traces lives brought forth, with the likeness named at the line’s beginning.
ALSO GROWS
yalad: To bear or bring forth.
יָלַד
This verb shows the generative motion contained in “generations.”
yeled: Child.
יֶלֶד
The child is one brought forth, making each generation a living continuation of the line.
אָדָם
adam
GROWS FROM
אדם
The Adam word-family connects the human with the ground, adamah.
“the ground-being” in this verse is adam. Adam is linked with adamah, ground or soil: the human is a ground-being. Beside God’s likeness, that name holds earthly life and divine resemblance within one human identity.
ALSO GROWS
adamah: Ground, soil.
אֲדָמָה
This branch links the human named here to the earth from which human life is formed.
adom: Red.
אָדֹם
This related form shares the consonants and is traditionally associated with the reddish color of soil.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents God’s likeness in humanity as a created condition that remains present across human generations.
And God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."Whoever pours out the blood of man, by man his blood shall be poured out, for in the shape of God he made man.With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who have been made according to the likeness of God.THE THREAD
And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and brought forth a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.The same דמה (damah, “be like”) word-family appears when Adam begets Seth in his likeness. The generations echo the opening claim: human likeness continues through the line, just as the verse names God’s likeness at its beginning.
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