What Does Genesis 5:7 Mean?
And Seth lived after he brought forth Enosh eight hundred and seven 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 Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters:THE KEY
The verse places a name meaning “appointed” beside one meaning “mortal human,” making a long life a passage carried through human generations.
THE MEANING
Your life reaches you through generations, and what continues remains mortal and human. Seth’s name means “appointed,” while Enos’s means “mortal human,” so the verse holds continuity and finitude in one line.
THE ROOT
וַיּוֹלֶד
wayyoled
GROWS FROM
ילד
yalad
to bear, beget, bring forth
“brought forth” in this verse is wayyoled. English makes “begat” sound like one isolated act; יָלַד (yalad, bring forth) also yields תּוֹלְדוֹת (toledot, generations or lineage), so the act is already the shape of an unfolding family history. Here Seth brings forth Enos, then sons and daughters: one birth opens into a branching line.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: child
יֶלֶד
The child is what the act of bringing forth produces; the verse names Enos and then a wider family.
toledot: generations, lineage
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This word grows from the same root and shows how an act of begetting becomes the continuing story of a family.
אֱנוֹשׁ
Enosh
GROWS FROM
אנש
anash
to be frail, weak, or mortal
Enos is not a generic label for humanity: אֱנוֹשׁ (Enosh, mortal human) carries the frailty of אנש (anash, be weak or frail). The name keeps the generational line concrete: life continues among mortal people, not outside mortality.
ALSO GROWS
Enosh: mortal human
אֱנוֹשׁ
The name of Seth’s son carries the root’s human frailty into the very next link of the family line.
anush: incurably ill, gravely sick
אָנֻשׁ
This related form reveals the root’s vulnerable edge, deepening the name’s sense of human mortality.
THE PATTERN
Life is carried forward as one generation gives living inheritance to the next.
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."We will not hide them from their children, recounting to the generation that follows the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonders that he has done.For though you have ten thousand child-leaders in the Anointed One, you do not have many fathers. For in the Anointed One Jesus, through the good message, I have brought you forth.THE THREAD
And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and called his name Seth, the placed one, for she said, God has placed for me another seed in place of Abel, whom Cain killed.Genesis 4:25 places Seth’s name, שֵׁת (Sheth, appointed), beside שָׁת (shath, appointed), from שִׁית (shith, set or place), making the name’s nature explicit. That link opens Genesis 5:7: Seth’s line is an appointed life continuing through Enos, אֱנוֹשׁ (Enosh, mortal human).
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