What Does Genesis 5:20 Mean?
And all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years, and he died.
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 all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died.THE KEY
Nine hundred and sixty-two years enlarge the count of Jared’s life, but the line still ends with the plain words, “and he died.”
THE MEANING
The verse holds a remarkably long life and its ending in the same breathless record. A number can measure days, but it cannot make a life limitless.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that living long enough can place a person beyond mortality.
THE ROOT
וַיָּמָת
wayyāmoṯ
GROWS FROM
מות
to die
“died” in this verse is wayyāmoṯ. The Hebrew wording gives no separate explanation for Jared’s death; it states the ending directly. The long count does not alter the meaning of the final verb.
ALSO GROWS
māweṯ: death
מָוֶת
The same root names both the act of dying and death itself.
mēṯ: dead
מֵת
This form describes the state reached by the action named in the verse.
יֶרֶד
Yered
GROWS FROM
ירד
to descend, go down
Jared’s name is commonly connected with the root ירד, “to descend.” The verse does not say that his name causes or predicts his death, but the name’s nature sits beside the genealogy’s recurring descent from one generation to the next.
ALSO GROWS
yāraḏ: to descend or go down
יָרַד
This is the verb commonly connected with Jared’s name.
yeridah: descent
יְרִידָה
This noun makes the name’s association with downward movement visible.
THE PATTERN
A life may be measured in years, yet its length does not remove the boundary of death.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you turn back to the ground, for from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall turn back.The days of our years, in them, are seventy years, or with strength eighty years; yet their span is toil and emptiness, for it is sheared away swiftly, and we take wing.And as it is laid up for people to die once, and after this, judgment.THE THREAD
A time to bear, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.The Hebrew verb for “to die” here is מוּת (mūṯ), from the same root מות as “and he died” in Genesis. Ecclesiastes sets dying alongside birth as part of life’s stated boundaries, while Genesis lets that boundary close Jared’s long count.
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