On the Day You Eat from It
The Genealogy of Adam
New to the column? We’re doing a close reading of Genesis, which started in September 2022. Visit the Archive and plunge in, or look here to get oriented.
3 Adam lived 130 years and he fathered in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. 4 The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years, and he fathered sons and daughters.5 All the days of Adam that he lived were 900 years and 30 years. Then he died.
We’ve just finished reading the first paragraph of The Genealogy of Adam, as integrated into Genesis 5 by the composer (as I like to call him) who created the text of Genesis that we read nowadays, or at least the Primordial History of Genesis 1–11. I’ll continue to say this or something similar as we read forward; the truth is, of course, that I don’t know how or when this process really took place. A different Sunday post than this one may explore that further some day.
Last time, as I often do, I mentioned the commentary to Genesis of David Kimhi (a/k/a Radak), a Provençal Jew of the 12th-13th centuries. Here is a slightly longer selection from his introduction to this commentary, given in my Commentators’ Bible translation:
So I, David Kimhi, the son of Joseph Kimhi, decided to write a book of commentary on the Bible in accordance with what I have learned, with what I have received via tradition, and with what my own thought (the Lord being with me) manages to achieve. I ask His help to begin and to conclude. I will comment on the verses and parse the words, making sense (when I can) of both the written tradition and the reading tradition … I will sometimes include the Aramaic translation of Jonathan b. Uzziel, and also the words of the Sages in such places as necessary. In any case, I will also include some midrashim, for those who like them.
I do not come from a family of scholars, but (like Kimhi) I am trying to understand the text of Genesis and to explain what I’ve found — and, occasionally, to include some midrashim for those who like them. Today I’m going to discuss the 930 years that Adam lived (according to v. 5).
Radak’s own comment is this:
Since we could have added it up for ourselves, the totals must be given so that scribes would have a way of checking to make sure they did not make an error in the numbers. The two calculations would have to match. The same thing happens with the Israelite census totals [in Numbers 2 and 26].
That is, the totals are a kind of “check digit” to make sure the scribes are copying these seemingly random totals accurately. Unlike the totals in the Sumerian King List, given in round centuries. some of these numbers are precise to the year (e.g., in v. 8 Seth lives to the age of 912). Is there any rhyme or reason to these precise numbers? After all, they are in the Bible.
That, of course, presumes that these numbers have significance for those of us who are reading in later ages. I’m not aware of interpreters who ascribe significance to all these numbers, but for Adam’s 930 years there most certainly are. The three key verses that contribute to this midrash are the following, all given in the very literal King James translation:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Gen 2:17)
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday [כְּי֣וֹם אֶ֭תְמוֹל] when it is past, and as a watch in the night. (Ps 90:4)
And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. (Gen 5:5)
It is a story problem. (Apologies to those of you who have math anxiety.) Adam was told he would die on the day he ate from the Tree of Knowledge. He did not die on that day in human terms because God meant his own kind of day, which is the equivalent of 1,000 years to a human. Adam should have lived at least to the end of the day.
But 1,000 – 930 = 70. Now read this:
The perfections of Adam’s soul showed themselves as soon as he received her, indeed, while he was still without life. In the hour that intervened between breathing a soul into the first man and his becoming alive, God revealed the whole history of mankind to him. He showed him each generation and its leaders; each generation and its prophets; each generation and its teachers; each generation and its scholars; each generation and its statesmen; each generation and its judges; each generation and its pious members; each generation and its average, commonplace members; and each generation and its impious members. The tale of their years, the number of their days, the reckoning of their hours, and the measure of their steps, all were made known unto him.
Of his own free will Adam relinquished seventy of his allotted years. His appointed span was to be a thousand years, one of the Lord’s days. But he saw that only a single minute of life was apportioned to the great soul of David, and he made a gift of seventy years to her, reducing his own years to nine hundred and thirty.
[Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg, translated by Henrietta Szold.]
We won’t be delving into this kind of biblical arithmetic very often. It seemed like the thing to do today because (as we’ve mentioned before) Adam, the character featured in this first paragraph of The Genealogy of Adam, will not appear in the Bible again — except for the briefest of mentions at the beginning of the book of Chronicles, which I can guarantee this column will never reach. So let me present it to you here:
1 Chr 1:1 Adam, Seth, Enosh.
We’ll meet both Seth and Enosh again next time.