What Does Genesis 5:10 Mean?
And Enosh lived after he brought forth Kenan eight hundred and fifteen years, and brought forth sons and daughters.
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
And Enos lived after he begat Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters:THE KEY
The same root joins being alive to the life that continues through children.
THE MEANING
Here, life continues beyond the birth of one generation: it stretches on and opens into more sons and daughters. The verse holds long life and growing family together, showing one life as a line that keeps widening.
THE ROOT
וַיְחִי
wayyiḥî
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, to be alive.
The root חיה (chayah, to live or be alive) also gives words for “alive” and “living creature.” English can make “lived” sound like a closed biographical fact; the Hebrew root places Enos’s years and the life around him in the same word-family.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Alive; living.
חַי
This form makes the root’s sense of being alive explicit beside the verse’s “lived.”
chayyah: A living creature.
חַיָּה
The same root names living beings, linking a life’s duration with the lives that continue around it.
וַיּוֹלֶד
wayyōled
GROWS FROM
ילד
To beget, bear, or bring forth.
The Hebrew word for begetting shares its root with the ordinary word for “child.” The verse’s long span of living and its sons and daughters belong to one family of words: bringing forth and the life brought forth are connected.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: Child.
יֶלֶד
The root names both the act of begetting and the child who comes from it.
yaladah: She gave birth.
יָלְדָה
This related form shows the root’s broader sense of bearing or bringing forth life.
THE PATTERN
Life carries forward by continuing to generate more life, so one generation becomes a widening line.
And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the earth, and tread it under your foot, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the winged of the heavens, and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth."And you, bear fruit and multiply; swarm in the earth, and multiply in it.Truly, truly, I say to you. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.THE THREAD
And Adam called his wife's name, the living one, Eve; because she was the mother of all living.“Living” here is chai (חַי, alive), from the same root חיה (chayah, to live or be alive) as “lived” in this verse. The shared root joins Enos’s years to the phrase “mother of all living,” holding continued life and life carried through generations together.
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