What Does Genesis 5:5 Mean in the King James?
And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Adam’s 930 years still end in death: even his name, the ground-being, holds him close to the earth.
THE MEANING
Your life is real and counted in days, however far those days stretch; the count still reaches death. The verse holds life and mortality in one plain sentence and leaves the boundary visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that extraordinary longevity places a human being beyond death dissolves here: even 930 years reach “and he died.”
THE ROOT
אָדָם
ʾādām
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
Human; in Genesis wordplay, Adam is tied to adamah, the ground.
English presents Adam as a proper name, while Hebrew lets the human and the ground answer each other. His long life remains earthbound, and the closing death reaches back toward the ground held in his name.
ALSO GROWS
ʾădāmâ: Ground, soil
אֲדָמָה
Genesis 2:7 says Adam is formed from the ground, keeping his earthly origin audible in this verse.
ʾādōm: Red
אָדֹם
The shared consonants carry an earth-colored echo in the Hebrew word family, giving the human name a material, earthly resonance.
חַי
ḥay
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
To live, be alive; here, the days Adam lived.
“lived” in this verse is ḥay. The Hebrew form describes Adam as living, while the sentence ends with his death. The same life-family echoes in Chavah’s name, which Genesis connects to “all living.”
ALSO GROWS
ḥay: Alive, living
חַי
This is the life-word heard in the verse’s “lived”; English changes its form without showing the shared Hebrew root.
Ḥawwāh: Eve, the life-linked name
חַוָּה
Genesis 3:20 links her name to “the mother of all living,” placing the language of life beside this chapter’s repeated death.
THE PATTERN
A lifespan can stretch across many years and still remains bounded by death.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.THE THREAD
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.Genesis 3:19 names the ground or soil as אֲדָמָה (ʾădāmâ, adamah) and the human as אָדָם (ʾādām, adam), tying origin to return. That shared word family lets Genesis 5:5’s “and he died” land inside the name itself.
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