The Genesis Genealogies

Do the genealogies of Genesis 5 and Genesis 11:10–32 contain chronological gaps? That is, for example, Genesis 5:18 states, “When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch.” Could those three verses be translated, “When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of a man whose family line led to Enoch”?

In this paper, I will address primarily the meaning of the Hebrew verb yalad, “to bear, to give birth,” especially as it is used in the Hiphil, or causative, stem, in Genesis 5 and 11. So, when I say Hiphil, think causation. The Hebrew verb means “to bear” in the Qal, or basic, stem, and it means “to cause to bear, to beget” in the Hiphil stem. Can that Hebrew verb be understood to allow for chronological gaps between generations of men who are named in those two chapters? And does the text of Genesis 5 and 11 give us hints in and of itself that those gaps should be read into the text, or perhaps hints that gaps should not be read into the text? Does the text tell us the reason for including the age of the patriarch at the birth of a son?

But first, a preliminary matter from the history of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). This is what the Brief Statement expressed in 1932:

5. We teach that God has created heaven and earth, and that in the manner and in the space of time recorded in the Holy Scriptures, especially Gen. 1 and 2, namely, by His almighty creative word, and in six days. We reject every doctrine which denies or limits the work of creation as taught in Scripture. In our days it is denied or limited by those who assert, ostensibly in deference to science, that the world came into existence through a process of evolution; that is, that it has, in immense periods of time [a rejection of billions of years], developed more or less of itself. Since no man was present when it pleased God to create the world, we must look for a reliable account of creation to God’s own record, found in God’s own book, the Bible. We accept God’s own record with full confidence and confess with Luther’s Catechism: “I believe that God has made me and all creatures.”1

The Brief Statement rejects the “immense periods of time,” affirming a young earth position for the LCMS. That statement was adopted in 1932. The LCMS has not repudiated any portion of the Brief Statement since 1932, nor has the LCMS in convention or in a CTCR document offered a resolution or a position that allows for many thousands or millions of years to be added to a biblical chronology. It’s also true, however, to the best of my knowledge, that no convention resolution or other statement from the LCMS has been issued since, affirming this young earth position, which is why some of us are asking the LCMS to adopt a position that clarifies our historical position, which is clearly a young earth position. A position that allows for gaps between the generations of Genesis 5 and 11 opens the door to an older earth, perhaps a little older or perhaps a lot older. But neither of the two scholars I am looking at closely hold to the view that the earth is a lot older.

The Hebrew Verb Yalad

First, a brief lesson in the Hebrew verb for those who haven’t studied Hebrew. Hebrew has seven verbal stems. The Qal is the basic stem; the Niphal is the passive of the Qal; the Piel is often described as the intensive stem, but it can convey intensive, causative, or other kinds of verbal action depending on the context and the specific verb; the Pual is the passive of the Piel; the Hiphil is the causative stem; the Hophal is the passive of the Hiphil; and the Hithpael is the reflexive stem. Our subject is yalad in the Qal and the Hiphil, that is, in the basic stem and the causative stem. It’s the Hiphil of yalad that is so common in Genesis 5 and 11.

What does yalad mean in its basic stem? According to William Holladay’s lexicon, it means “to bear, to bring forth, to become the father of.” According to the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, it means “to bear, beget, bring forth, gender, travail.”2 According to TWOT, both the Qal and the Hiphil can be used to describe the man’s part in the production of a child.3 Brown-Driver-Briggs defines the verb as “bear, bring forth, beget,”4 and Holladay defines it “bear, bring forth, become the father of.”5

How often is the verb used in the Old Testament? One website says 404.6 The Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon says 497.7 Holladay’s lexicon says that the verb appears about six hundred times in the Old Testament.8 By my count the verb yalad appears 480 times in the Old Testament. So, what is it? 404 or 480 or 497 or about 600? I’m working with Gerhard Lisowsky’s Hebrew concordance, which I consider the Gold Standard, so we’ll settle on 480.9

In Genesis, there are eighty-eight occurrences of the Qal of yalad, that is, the basic stem. All of them refer to the next generation. The two verb forms in the Pual in Genesis are also referring to the next generation.

P.S. We also must take the word “generations” seriously in Genesis 5:1 and in Genesis 11:10 and 27. I know that the word is often translated “account,” as in the NIV, or “descendants,” “story,” “history,” as in the NICOT commentary on Ruth,10 but the verbal root behind that plural noun is yalad. An account contains the people who lived, who were borne by their mother and begotten by their father, that is, who were generated by their parents.

A generation is 20–30 years today. Looking at a generation in Genesis, a generation seems to have been 60–100 years in Genesis 5, and in Genesis 11, it seems to have been 30–70 years. If each of these paragraphs in Genesis 5 and 11 does not mean one generation, then the author used the wrong word. Conversely, if each paragraph does in fact mean one generation, then no gaps exist.

Yalad in the Hiphil

As stated previously, the Hiphil is the causative stem, so that normally the Qal of yalad would mean “to bear,” while the Hiphil would mean “to beget,” or “to cause to give birth.”

How often does the Hiphil of yalad appear in the Old Testament? The answer is 176 times, fifty-nine of them (33.5%) in Genesis. Of the 59 instances of the Hiphil of yalad in Genesis, 55 of them appear in Genesis 5 and 11 (93% of the occurrences in Genesis).11 In fact, in Genesis 5 and 11, the verb only appears in the Hiphil. Outside of Genesis 5 and 11 there are no Hiphils in Genesis that skip a generation, so one should begin with the assumption that likely none of the Hiphils skip a generation in Genesis 5 and 11.

Among the 117 uses of the Hiphil outside of Genesis, only 2 Kings 20:18 and Isaiah 39:7, two parallel passages citing the same event, and Deuteronomy 4:25 refer to a distant generation of children. But not centuries distant, and in those three passages it’s quite clear that we are looking some distance ahead into the future. In 2 Kings, Hezekiah (715–686 BC) “will bring forth” “sons” who will be taken into exile, i.e., Jehoiachin (598–597 BC) and Zedekiah (597–586 BC), the great-great-great grandson and great-great-grandson, respectively, of Hezekiah (2 Kings 24 and 25). That’s 100–120 years later, which is even less than the time that passed between the birth of Jared and the birth of his son Enoch (Genesis 5:18). In Deuteronomy 4, Moses tells Israel they will have children and grandchildren. All other instances appear to refer to the immediate children of the named fathers. Many of them occur in 1 Chronicles, which contains extensive genealogies of the Hebrew people. Since we often don’t know with certainty the names of the next generation, we can’t be certain that no generations were skipped. However, in those instances where we know from other parts of the Old Testament—such as Ner, Kish, Saul, and Jonathan—no generations were skipped. And we should not argue from silence, as though generations were skipped even though we aren’t certain.

What percentage of the time in both Genesis and the Old Testament do we find a clear instance of distant descendants being named? If we exclude the 49 Hiphils (subtracting the six clear indications of a father-son relationship from the fifty-five) of Genesis 5 and 11, which some people suggest that they include gaps in the generations, we find that out of 127 uses of the Hiphil, three passages,12 two of which are parallel to one another, refer to distant descendants. That’s two-and-a-half percent. In other words, in any situation where we are not certain if the named people are father-child, we have a 97.6% likelihood that the named descendant is the next generation.

In other words, in any situation where we are not certain if the named people are father-child, we have a 97.6% likelihood that the named descendant is the next generation.

Richard Davidson writes, “The Hebrew grammatical form of the verb ‘begat’ (yalad in the Hifil) used throughout these chapters is the special causative form that always elsewhere in the OT refers to actual direct physical offspring, i.e., biological father-son relationship (Gen 6:10; Judg 11:1; 1 Chr 8:9; 14:3; 2 Chr 11:21; 13:21; 24:3). This is in contrast to the use of yalad in the simple Qal in many of the other biblical genealogies, in which cases it can refer to other than direct physical fathering of immediately succeeding offspring.”13 Jeremy Sexton agrees, writing of Genesis 5 and 11, “The chronology is gapless, even if some generations between A and B were omitted from the genealogy.”14 Notice that Sexton distinguishes between chronological gaps and generational gaps; he allows for the latter but not the former.

The Nature of the Causative Hiphil

The causative force of the Hiphil was the central focus of several articles, written by Jeremy Sexton and Andrew Steinmann, that appeared in the Journal of the Evangelical Theology Society in 2018. Both Andrew Steinmann and Jeremy Sexton are young earth people, so the difference between the two is far less than that between young earth and old earth adherents. But let’s turn first to the matter of causation.

People, weather, circumstances, viruses, coincidences, and many more items cause other things to happen. That’s the way the world runs. Most of the time the cause and effect are quite close to one another. Causation, by nature, occurs within a short period of time, usually very short. But there is always a gap between cause and effect, the length of which varies—from seconds to years. Rarely if ever is a cause described as one that causes an event centuries later. I doubt that anyone can point to a causation that has many centuries between the cause and the effect, simply because there are too many other factors in the intervening centuries that influence the effect so that it’s difficult to ascribe an event as causing another event centuries later. You slap me, and I say “ouch.” That’s immediate. It rains, and the grass turns green. That’s often within a day.

This being the case, there must be clear reasons in the context of a passage—one of them being the parallel passages in 2 Kings 20:18 and Isaiah 39:7—to make us think that the gap between cause and effect is lengthy. In Isaiah’s case, it was about 120 years. And if we were, like the meteorologist, to estimate the likelihood of a remote fulfillment of this causation, we would have to say the chances are five percent or less. If you think there are gaps in the genealogies of Genesis, you have to assume that there are unnamed people that should be inserted without any indication from the text or the context that this is happening. Some have deduced reasons from outside the text—Egyptian and Sumerian history, the alleged evidence for millions of years for the age of the earth, and the fact that an unrelated passage in Isaiah, written centuries after the events in Genesis, might determine the meaning of the causative in Genesis 5 and 11. I submit that that is reading into the text rather than leading out of the text its meaning, eisegesis rather than exegesis.

The Oxford atheist Richard Dawkins has written that we must remind ourselves that what appears to be intelligent design is not intelligent design. He writes, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”15 Of course, he doesn’t believe in design. For him, the evidence does not mean what it appears to mean. In other words, the evidence does not say what it says.

Some, such as William Henry Green, tell us that the words of Genesis may not mean what they appear to mean, which is another way of saying that the words do not say what they say. Other than as stated in Genesis 5 and 11, how could an author have stated more clearly that the direct descendant in the next generation was born when the father was X number of years old? If the author intended to say that the father begat a distant descendant, he could have made that point much more clearly. “In fact, no better wording for this purpose16 was available to the author than what appears in the text.”17

Jeremy Sexton’s Position

Let’s look first at Jeremy Sexton’s position. He has read William Henry Green’s seminal article on these genealogies, an article published in 1890 and entitled “Primeval Chronology.” Sexton states that Green “showed that the hiphil verb wayyoled18 in the chronogenealogical formula can take a remote descendant as its object (cf. Deut 4:25 and 2 Kgs 20:18). All of this is true.”19 Sexton wrote an email to me on February 9, 2023, stating, “The grammar allows for missing generations (genealogical gaps) but not missing time (chronological gaps).” I don’t think that either of the two happens, nor does Sexton, but I will explain that later.

In one of his articles, Sexton states it this way, “Missing time does not follow from missing generations. In fact, chronological gaps are semantically impossible, because the text specifies the year in which A ‘brought forth [wayyoled]’ B. Whether B was an immediate son of A or a grandson or a more distant descendant makes no difference to the chronology. Genesis 5:9 says, ‘When Enosh had lived 90 years, he brought forth [wayyoled] Kenan.’ This means that Kenan (the object of wayyoled) was born when Enoch was 90. The chronogenealogies indicate the age (X) of each patriarch (A) when the successive patriarch (B) was born, even if some names were skipped between A and B. Therefore, the text accounts for every year (though perhaps not every generation) between the creation of Adam and the birth of Abraham.”20

Genealogical gaps do not imply chronological gaps.21 That is, a generation might have been skipped, but the age of the father at the birth of the named descendant would remain as stated. Sexton states that the phrase “‘When A had lived X years’ that modifies wayyoled still indicates how old ancestor A was when descendant B was born.”22 He writes, “Furthermore, both the qal and the hiphil of yalad can be used of a father’s non-immediate descendant. Deuteronomy 4:2523 and 2 Kgs 20:18//Isa 39:7 (the same texts that Steinmann cites) use the hiphil of yalad to describe the births of remote sons while Gen 10:8 uses the qal of this verb to describe the birth of Cush’s remote son Nimrod.”24

Sexton also cites some grammarians. For example, he quotes Waltke and O’Connor, who state that “the direct-object accusative is the recipient of a transitive verb’s action.”25 That is to say, when the text says that a father begat his child, that event is completed only “on the day in which his child is ‘brought to birth.’”26 Again, Waltke and O’Connor say that “with the Hiphil … the object participates in the event expressed by the verbal root.”27 Sexton also cites Leonard Talmy, who “confirms that a causative refers to the caused event (what he calls the ‘final resulting event’) and only implies a causing action (‘causing event’).”28 Sexton states that wayyoled, which means “and he begat,” “incontestably refers to a birth event.”29 He also writes, “A verb, whether a causative or not, always expresses an event that corresponds to the meaning of its root. . . . “Neither verb contains in its semantic content any reference30 to the causing action. Only the caused event is described. Therefore, a time indicator associated with a causative verb (as in the chronogenealogical formula) specifies the time of the caused event, not the time of the causing action” (italics are Sexton’s).31

The main question is this—does the Hiphil refer to the inseminating or the birth or both? Sexton says the birth. I agree. The text of the genealogies is concerned about the child who is born, not when his existence began, and who later becomes the father of the next generation.. Linguist Robert Dixon agrees, stating that the causative nature of the Hiphil is a secondary concept,32 while Steinmann appears to see it as a primary concept.

Hebrew grammar says it this way—it often designates the object of the verb “beget” with the sign of the definite object. In Hebrew, the particle ’eth often precedes the word that receives the action of the main verb. In Genesis 5 and 11, that particle precedes the named son in each case, confirming the fact that the named father begat the named son with no intervening generation(s). In a response to Green’s article, Smith Bartlett Goodenow argued that “the ‘begat’ indicates the birth of the person named after it.”33

Old Testament scholar Victor P. Hamilton wrote to Sexton, stating, “I have recently read your paper on ‘Evangelicalisms’ Search for Chronological Gaps,’ including your interaction with Steinmann throughout your article. It seems to me that you have an irrefutable case against his understanding of the Hiphil. I fail to see how he can sustain his argument that the Hiphil of yalad. . . . refers to the ancestor’s causing action. It refers to the caused event, B’s birth. I agree with you that the temporal qualifier ‘when A had lived X years’ indicates the time of the caused event.”34

Unfortunately, in his commentary on Genesis Hamilton had previously written, “When Gen. 5 says that ‘X fathered Y’ it may mean that ‘X fathered the line culminating in Y.’”35 But since this commentary was published in 1990 (and the previous note to Sexton in 2018), Hamilton may well have changed his mind. And, like Green and Steinmann, Hamilton produces no evidence from the text of Genesis, but only from other parts of Scripture such as the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1, which he cites as evidence for how Genesis 5 could be taken.

The German scholar Gerhard Hasel has written similarly,

“The repeated phrase ‘and he fathered PN36’ (wayyôled et-PN) appears fifteen times in the OT all of them in Genesis 5 and 11. In two additional instances the names of three sons are provided (Genesis 5:32; 11:26). The same verbal form as in this phrase (i.e. wayyôled) is employed another sixteen times in the phrase ‘and he fathered (other) sons and daughters’ (Genesis 5:4, 7, 10, etc.; 11:11, 13, 17, etc.). Remaining usages of this verbal form in the Hiphil in the book of Genesis reveal that the expression ‘and he fathered’ (wayyôled) is used in the sense of a direct physical offspring (Genesis 5:3; 6:10). A direct physical offspring is evident in each of the remaining usages of the Hiphil of wayyôled, ‘and he fathered’, in the OT (Judges 11:1; 1 Chronicles 8:9; 14:3; 2 Chronicles 11:21; 13:21; 24:3). The same expression reappears twice in the genealogies in 1 Chronicles where the wording ‘and Abraham fathered Isaac’ (1 Chronicles 1:34; cf. 5:37 [6:11]) rules out that the named son is but a distant descendant of the patriarch instead of a direct physical offspring. Thus the phrase ‘and he fathered PN’ in Genesis 5 and 11 cannot mean Adam ‘begat an ancestor of Seth.’”37

Andrew Steinmann’s Position

As already suggested, one major difference between Sexton and Steinmann is whether the focus of the text is on the causing action or the caused event. Steinmann sees the focus on the causing action (“the triggering action”),38 while Sexton sees the focus on the caused event. And for Steinmann, the seventieth year of Kenan (Genesis 5:12) was the year that Kenan inseminated someone rather than the year that Mahalalel was born: “Thus, all we know is that the trigger action took place when Kenan was 70 years old. We have no information to tell us when the result—the birth of Mahalalel—took place.”39 In an email response to Jeremy Sexton, Steinmann wrote, “The H stem of this verb [yalad] denotes the initiating of a process that brings forth something sometime in the future. It does not denote the begetting [i.e., the birth/bringing forth] itself but the initiating of the process that leads to the birth/bringing forth.”40 According to Sexton, Steinmann later affirmed that the verb describes both.41

Not all of Steinmann’s examples bear out what he claims. For example, he cites Malachi 2:8, “‘You have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have violated the covenant of Levi,’ says the Lord of Armies.” The Hiphil verb “cause to stumble,” Steinmann suggests, “does not here mean that the priests caused the people to stumble immediately over the requirements of the Law.”42 Certainly there could have been hours or days between the priests’ instruction and the straying of the people. There is always a gap, even if only seconds or minutes between the causation and the effect. It seems likely to me that the very people whom the priests instructed incorrectly are the people who went astray. There was no gap in the generations, causing only the grandchildren or the great-grandchildren of the people to go astray. The very people instructed by the priests are the ones who went astray, regardless of the length of time between the instruction and the straying.

Likewise, Ezekiel 31:4 does not bear the weight Steinmann places on it. The passage states of a cedar tree, “The waters caused it to grow; the underground springs made it tall.” Such growth takes time, states Steinmann, which is true. However, growth visible to the naked eye is one thing, but small growth happens almost immediately and throughout the time that water is nourishing the cedar tree. This example does not help Steinmann either, but he has other passages, such as the 2 Kings and Isaiah passage, that make his point.

Andrew Steinmann states that the causing action is an act of the ancestor himself during his lifetime.43 I agree. He also writes, “The explicit presence of a trigger action is absolutely required to form a causative construction—it cannot be ‘merely implied’ as Sexton would have it.”44 However, Sexton would also agree, as do I. Sexton simply means that the precise causing action may not always be stated.

One wonders if a cause can produce the result “decades, or even centuries”45 later. In a general sense, my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather caused my birth, but we simply don’t talk that way. The further back you go, the more causes you have. It would be rare and outside the norm to say that my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather caused my birth when other descendants were also involved, as were physicians, grandmothers, and the hand of God. George Washington’s influence is still felt today, but it would be difficult to describe that influence as the cause of some of today’s events. Not impossible, but difficult.

Steinmann writes, “Causal constructions do not indicate what the temporal nexus between the trigger action and the result is.”46 This is also true, but in Genesis 5 and 11 we find that the temporal nexus is provided. And we find that this temporal nexus is not very long.

There are no intervening generations, or the author would likely have provided them.

Steinmann writes that in Genesis 5:12, “Kenan is the main subject and only cause. Mahalalel is the direct object of the resulting action (both), but that result is not necessarily chronologically contemporaneous to Kenan’s seventieth year.”47 What is the evidence for “not necessarily chronologically contemporaneous”? He asserts this without textual evidence, based on the rare instance when the descendant is more than one generation removed. We see no evidence here, as we do in Deuteronomy 4 and 2 Kings 20, that Mahalalel was a descendant and not a son. Furthermore, Steinmann writes, “There could be no intervening generations or there could be two, five, ten or more intervening generations. We cannot know.”48 That, of course, opens the door to hundreds of years that could be missing. And yes, we can know. There are no intervening generations, or the author would likely have provided them.

Agreements Between Sexton and Steinmann

When you read both Sexton and Steinmann in isolation, each case sounds convincing. Putting the positions of the two men together, one learns both Steinmann and Sexton allow for genealogical gaps. They also agree that “without both a trigger action and a resulting action or state there is no causation.”49 And they agree that in the case of causation, there is “‘both cause and resulting situation.’”50 However, they disagree on the length of time between the cause and the result. Sexton put it this way:

Steinmann dedicates section III (nearly 80% of his reply) to proving two points denied by no one: (a) that the scope of a causative necessarily includes both a causing action and a caused event and (b) that the causing action and the caused event are often separated in time.51

By focusing on the causing action, I believe that Steinmann feels he is providing more room for an extended length of time between the cause and the result. Sexton suggests that this is Steinmann’s hidden assumption: “When the trigger (causing) action and the resulting (caused) event are separated in time, the temporal qualifier refers to the time of the trigger action rather than the time of the resulting event.” By focusing on the result, Sexton provides a tighter connection, and therefore a shorter connection, between cause and result. He also expects there to be evidence in the text if the resulting birth is a later descendant, or an earlier descendant, rather than a son.

They agree in at least one other place. Sexton affirms Steinmann’s comment, “When Talmy says that the causing action is implied, he means that a specific cause is not identified in the causative.” Sexton then states, “Yet that also is precisely what I mean.”52

Revelation Through the Centuries

One of my teachers in graduate school, the renowned Old Testament scholar and prolific author Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., taught me a valuable hermeneutical perspective, namely that a historical approach to the Scriptures is important. We must do our theology, especially our exegesis, in the light of what had been revealed up to the point in history when any given passage was written. We ought not to read later theology back into the earlier passages. For an obvious example, the New Testament concept of a Redeemer is not what Job had in mind when he said, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” Job was expecting a kinsman to vindicate his reputation. God has always been a Trinity, but the knowledge of God as Trinity, or Jesus as Redeemer, grew over time.

The Scriptures are complete. No more books will ever be added to the sixty-six canonical books of the Bible, no matter what the Latter-day Saints say. However, it was not always so. Upon the death of Moses, there were only five books. The prophecy of the Virgin Birth was not yet known. Upon the death of Malachi, there were only thirty-nine books. And between the deaths of Moses and Malachi, the number varied, gradually increasing over the centuries.

This means, therefore, that one must interpret the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 according to what had been revealed and recorded up to the time of Abraham, whose story begins in Genesis 11. If all the Old Testament were revealed at the same time or within a century or so, then the usage of words in any historical context would be relevant. But the literature of the Old Testament was revealed over the course of many centuries, even several thousand years. How a word was used in 500 BC does not determine its usage and meaning in 4000 BC. What we might learn by comparing the early genealogies to other genealogies that appear later in the Old Testament is only marginally helpful. We can see this in English, as when the King James Version in 1 Thessalonians 4:15 uses the word “prevent,” which at that time meant to “precede.”

The fact that later genealogies, such as the one at the end of Ruth (4:18–22) or in Ezra 7:1–5,53 skip generations does not mean that the first two genealogies also skip generations, especially when the genealogies in Genesis are unique. Had genealogies appeared with gaps before Genesis 5 and 11, then that would be compelling evidence for gaps in Genesis 5 and 11. We should not read later Old Testament theology back into earlier Old Testament theology. The book of Ruth was written around 1000 BC, while the genealogies of Genesis must have originated at least three thousand years earlier. Would not writing styles and conventions change over the course of three millennia? In fact, the skipping of some generation or generations, so as to place Boaz in the honored seventh position, is a likely later development of an earlier practice of listing every generation.

What I am saying, therefore, is that we must be careful about using any insights from any portion of the Old Testament that was written later than Genesis 1–11. And I take those eleven chapters to be the oldest chapters in the Bible and in all of world literature, written not by Moses but by the people whose names appear in the various toledoth sections of Genesis.54 A proper view of history in the centuries before Christ, such as that of Josephus (AD 37–100) and Thucydides (460–395 BC), was that history can only be written while events are still within living memory. Richard Bauckham wrote, “The Gospels were written within living memory of the events they recount.”55 This was true in the New Testament era, but also in the centuries before that.

As stated earlier, the word toledoth, often translated “generations,” comes from the same Hebrew root as the word yalad, “to bear, give birth.” The toledoth structure of Genesis binds the entire book together—if any of it is historical then all of it is historical, if any of it is mythology or parable then all of it is mythology or parable. Therefore, if all of Genesis 1–11 is straightforward history, as I read it, it must be interpreted on its own without the evidence of later texts. By the way, here are the eleven toledoth statements of Genesis:

2:4, “This is the account of the heavens and the earth.”
5:1, “This is the written account of Adam’s line.” (Adam authored the first list with help from Noah.)
6:9, “This is the account of Noah.”
10:1, “This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s sons.”
11:10, “This is the account of Shem.” (Shem authored the second list.)
11:27, “This is the account of Terah.”
25:12, “This is the account of Abraham’s son Ishmael.”
25:19, “This is the account of Abraham’s son Isaac.”
36:1, “This is the account of Esau (that is, Edom).”
36:9, “This is the account of Esau the father of the Edomites in the hill country of Seir.”
37:2, “This is the account of Jacob.”

A minor but confirming fact is the simplicity of the Hebrew of Genesis. The language of Genesis is some of the easiest Hebrew in the Old Testament to translate. It seems to me to be the kind of Hebrew that was written in the early history of the language, lacking some of the complexities of later developments in the language.

The Exegesis of Genesis 5 and 11

Now let’s look at the exegesis of the two chapters in Genesis. The question is not whether the Hiphil can refer to a caused event that is far removed from the cause, but whether in this instance, in this context in the early chapters of Genesis, it does. In other words, we should not ask, “Can the text bear the possibility of gaps?” We should ask, “What is the most likely exegesis of these chapters?” The Lutheran commentator H. C. Leupold didn’t think gaps existed. He wrote, “Equally abortive is the attempt to claim that numerous links in the chain may have been omitted.”56 One of my graduate professors used to say, “Keep your finger on the text.”57 He meant that we need to see what the words say, every word, every combination of words, in the context. And we need to avoid adding concepts that do not appear in the text. All of that is primary.

What happened in ancient Near Eastern literature or later in history is far less important, though sometimes relevant. That means that it’s only somewhat relevant as a testimony from history what scholars have said through the centuries and how they interpreted Genesis 5 and 11 for centuries. Andrew Steinmann relies more on the extra-biblical literature than does Sexton. Sexton writes, “Despite downplaying the importance of extrabiblical data to his argument, Steinmann applies the words ‘suspect,’ ‘tendentious,’ ‘incorrect,’ and ‘obscurantist’ to the chronological interpretation on the basis of our ‘greater knowledge of [extrabiblical] ancient near Eastern chronology.”58

Steinmann says that the “straightforward reading” of the Genesis genealogies, as advocated by Jonathan Sarfati and others “does not mean that the author also intended readers to calculate the age of the earth.”59 Then he cites as an example the “straightforward reading” of Genesis 5:32 and 11:26 as suggesting that “both Noah and Terah fathered triplets.”60 I disagree. An exegete will look not only at a given text, but also at other relevant passages under the assumption that Scripture interprets Scripture and does not contradict itself. Genesis 12:4 and Acts 7:4 show that Abraham was born when Terah was 130 and that the listing of sons is not intended to indicate triplets. The same is true of the sons of Noah, who were not triplets. Both Shem and Abram are listed first in Genesis 5 and 11 because of their importance, not because of their place in the birth order. Steinmann writes, “A straightforward reading might also suggest that Shem was the oldest brother, since he is listed first. However, he clearly is not the oldest of Noah’s three children.”61 H. C. Leupold writes, “Were these three triplets? (most likely not; for begat here has the looser meaning, ‘began to beget,’ as in 11:26).”62

We still must ask, “What is the most likely interpretation of these genealogies, based on what we know from Scripture?” The default interpretation of most passages is the natural, the straightforward, the literal. There must be a significant reason from the text and its context to opt for another interpretation. It’s like instant replay during an NFL game. The call on the field stands unless there is clear evidence from various camera angles, in combination with the clock and slow motion reviews, to overturn the call. In Genesis, the default interpretation must stand unless there is clear evidence from the context to take the language in a different way. There is no clue from the book of Genesis that gaps can exist, nothing in Genesis 5 and 11, nothing in the surrounding chapters, and nothing in the entire book of Genesis. Words have to be invented and inserted, and they are usually invented and inserted because of evidence far removed from the context of the passage.

The default interpretation of most passages is the natural, the straightforward, the literal.

Let’s use an example: “He needed some bread.” The natural meaning of that sentence is that this person needed to go to the refrigerator to find, or the grocery store to purchase, a loaf of bread or two or just a piece of bread. Try asking Google what is meant by bread, and you’ll discover the same thing. However, in the 1960s, “bread” was slang for money. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, that sense of the word first arose in the mid-1800s. In the early 1700s the word came to mean subsistence or livelihood.63 One would have to know something about the historical context to determine whether the writer is writing about food or money or one’s livelihood, but your normal assumption would be what we typically call bread. The same is true of the verb yalad in the Hiphil in Genesis 5 and 11.

Part of exegesis is to determine, if possible, the purpose for which the author wrote a given text. Steinmann correctly writes about the author of Genesis 5 and 11, “While it is tempting to say he did it for a chronological purpose, that is not necessarily correct.”64 True, but it’s the most likely purpose. The author is writing about time and numbers, so a chronological purpose is very likely.

How many father-son combinations can we be certain of in Genesis 5 and 11? The answer is six. Six of the eighteen father-descendant combinations clearly refer to the next generation—Adam and Seth (5:3), Seth and Enosh (4:26, 5:6, 5:7), Lamech and Noah (5:28), Noah and Shem (6:10, 7:13, 8:15, 9:18, 10:1, and 11:10), Eber and Peleg (10:25), and Terah and Abraham (11:27–32). This means that where we know unambiguously whether there was a gap, all six contain no gap, and the remaining twelve (nine in Genesis 5 and nine in Genesis 11) are somewhat uncertain. We ought to interpret the unclear passages in Scripture by the clear passages, as we do in many other instances.65 In these cases, if six of the eighteen father-descendants are father-son, the most likely interpretation of the other father-descendant relationships is also father-son. The only reason one would assume gaps is that the interpreter wants them to be there and is elevating some pieces of data to a more significant role than what the text actually states.

The Relevance of the Two Ages

By the two ages, I mean the age at which the father begat his son and the age of that same person at his death. To use my very first example, Genesis 5:18 says, “When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch.” William Henry Green once wrote, “the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 were not intended to be used, and cannot properly be used, for the construction of a chronology.”66 But he gives no reason for this statement. According to William Henry Green, the author really means “When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of a man whose family line led to Enoch.” Then, if Green is correct, why do we have mention of an unnamed person who was born when Jared was 162? Or, in the case of Enosh and Kenan, as Jeremy Sexton puts it, “Why would God specify the age of Enosh (the father) when he performed the triggering act that eventually culminated in Kenan’s (the son’s) birth?”67 Why is Enoch’s name more important than the unnamed person? And why do we need to know how old Jared was when he begat that unnamed person, especially if there are hundreds or thousands of years now inserted between various patriarchs? Nor is it relevant. We don’t need to know how old he was when he begat someone whose name has been lost to history. Then the age at which Jared became a father is irrelevant, and his age at death provides no helpful information about the early history of the earth. Furthermore, there is no interconnection between the various generations.

Sexton puts it this way, “Even if Green were correct that the genealogies technically allow for chronological gaps, we would need to ask why the author provided nineteen begetting ages, one for each patriarch, if not for the purpose of indicating when the named descendants were born.”68 Green cannot explain why the author included the date of birth of some unnamed descendants. Sexton can explain that date—it’s a chronological purpose.

Sons and Daughters

Have you noticed something else in the text of Genesis that has received very little attention? Have you ever wondered why we read in numerous places in Genesis 5 and 11 that the named patriarch not only had a named son, but also had “other sons and daughters”? The word “other” does not appear in the Masoretic Text, but it is implied. Why would the author mention “other sons and daughters” if the issue is the named descendant, Enoch or Mahalalel or Methuselah? Furthermore, Enosh, Kenan, and Jared were sons, so to mention “sons” after mentioning a “son” is to mean “other sons.”

In those places (5:4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 26, 30; 11:11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25) where the text states that the individual “had other sons and daughters,” I believe the author intends to assert that all the offspring of the individual are now included. Seventeen times the phrase appears in chapters 5 and 11, nine times in chapter 5, and eight times in chapter 11. The text doesn’t read “some other sons and daughters,” but “other sons and daughters.” Why did the author include those words? Certainly, the author doesn’t want us to think that the named person was an only child. Perhaps the author wants us to see that families were large in those days. Probably the author wants us to see that these genealogies are historical and therefore reliable. But I also contend—and this is an interpretation—that this phrase is intended to include all the children of the father. The phrase is omitted for Noah and Terah, probably because all their children or at least all the sons in this patriarchal society are listed by name.

Let’s look once again at the formula that William H. Green, the first person to make a case for gaps in the Genesis genealogies, proposed. Sexton calls this assumption “the linchpin of Green’s case.”69 That formula is “When A had lived X years, he brought forth [the son from whom sprang] B.”70 So, for example, when Genesis 5:18 says, “When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch,” Green says it really means, “When Jared had lived 162 years, he brought forth the son from whom sprang Enoch.” What is the point of saying he had other sons and daughters if the text is really intending to say that he had a son from whom sprang Enoch? Those other sons and daughters would be irrelevant and unnecessary. The additional sons and daughters appear in the text as brothers and sisters of Enoch, which is not the case if we are talking about someone who led to the birth of Enoch. We could paraphrase it more simply this way, “Jared had a lot of children, one of whom was Enoch.”

What is Green’s justification for inserting additional wording? He doesn’t give any. He offers no explanation from the text itself, which means that he probably wanted to reconcile Genesis with the new theory of millions of years for the age of the earth and the willingness to place the authority of Scripture beneath that of Charles Darwin.

The Uniqueness of These Genealogies in Genesis

When we look at other genealogies in the Old Testament, we learn the uniqueness of these genealogies. Jeremy Sexton has written, “This construction is unique, appearing nowhere else in Scripture.”71 And outside the Old Testament, Richard Hess once stated, “None of the comparative Ancient Near Eastern examples proposed by scholars actually have a precise parallel with any of the genealogical forms found in Genesis 1–11.”72

Richard Davidson has written, “These genealogies are unique, with no parallel among the other genealogies of the Bible or other ancient Near Eastern literature. Unlike the other genealogies, which may (and in fact often do) contain gaps, the ‘chronogenealogies’ of Gen 5 and 11 have indicators that they are to be taken as complete genealogies without gaps. These unique interlocking features indicate a specific focus on chronological time. . . . These tight interlocking features make it virtually impossible to argue that there are significant generational gaps.”73 This is also a reason not to argue from the genealogies of other nations, because those genealogies also lack the interlocking feature.

Because of the uniqueness of these genealogies, the references to genealogies in Ruth and 1 Chronicles are not nearly as helpful.

Because of the uniqueness of these genealogies, the references to genealogies in Ruth and 1 Chronicles are not nearly as helpful. They were written much later in history, and none of them provide the age of the father at the birth of his son along with his total age.

The Contemporary History and Chronology of Egypt

One common argument against the straightforward reading of the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 is the chronology of contemporary civilizations, particularly Egypt and Sumer. Andrew Steinmann writes that the no-gap position “requires the destruction of thriving societies and their nearly instantaneous revival after the flood.”74 He claims that “one must offer a convincing alternate interpretation of the Egyptian and Sumerian evidence. As far as I know, none is forthcoming.”75

That would truly be a problem if the ancient chronology of Egypt and Sumer were fixed and certain. They are not. The biblical chronology is much clearer than the evidence from ancient Egypt and Sumer, and most Egyptologists operate from the assumption of an old earth. Sumer’s chronology is dependent on Egyptian chronology, so I will largely confine my remarks to the ancient chronology of Egypt.

But before we go there, I want to mention the King List from ancient Sumer.76 There is no doubt that the King List has a problem with dates, because the list contains the names of eight kings who ruled over five cities for a combined 241,200 years. There is no doubt that these years are inflated but note what is stated after those kings: “These are five cities, eight kings ruled them for 241,000 years. (Then) the Flood swept over (the earth).”77 Then follows a list of thirty-nine postdiluvian kings, a list that is dated to approximately 2000 BC. The date of the Flood has been placed between 2300 and 2500 BC, which seems to fit well with a list that was composed around 2000 BC.78

Egyptologist David Rohl has convincingly shown that the conventional chronology for ancient Egypt, which underlies all the archaeological and chronological work done by scholars for the Mediterranean world, has contracted the Egyptian chronology by about two hundred years up to the time of the Exodus. I won’t attempt to deal with Egyptian chronology in its entirety, but the errors of this late second millennium BC period indicate the assumptions of most Egyptologists and have caused many to date the Exodus in the thirteenth century rather than the fifteenth century.

In his excellent book, Exodus: Myth or History?79 Rohl argues that Egyptian chronology is almost entirely dependent on a biblical synchronism that identifies the Egyptian ruler Shoshenk I with the biblical Shishak (1 Kings 14:25f., 2 Chron. 12:2–12). But Shoshenk I was not the biblical Shishak, who sacked Solomon’s temple. He tells us further that Ramesses II, or Ramesses the Great, the most famous of the Egyptian pharaohs, was a contemporary of Solomon and not the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Rohl thinks Amenemhatt III was Pharaoh during the famine that Joseph solved, that Dudimose was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and that Ramesses was the biblical Shishak.

Furthermore, to alleviate the famine caused by the flooding of the Nile, the Egyptians built a water diversion system that emptied into Lake Moeris in the Fayum basin. Tradition has named that canal Bahr Yussef, the “Waterway of Joseph.” Some say that the man who oversaw its construction was the “Overseer of Fields,” an official named Ankhu who went on to become vizier, or a high official, of Egypt. Rohl thinks this official was Joseph.

According to David Rohl, the Pharaoh of the Exodus was Djedhetepre Dudimose I, who became pharaoh around 1523 BC in the New Chronology. Rohl describes a period in Egyptian history that is shrouded in mystery and concludes that Egyptian chronology needs to shorten its reading of the second millennium by about two hundred years. The story is told in the film and DVD Patterns of Evidence: Exodus.80

In that film, Timothy Mahoney states, “I was moved as I looked through his [Sir Alan Gardiner (1879–1963), perhaps the greatest specialist in reading hieroglyphs in the twentieth century] personal notes. . . . After a lifetime of searching, Gardiner wrote something that directly impacted the question I was dealing with. ‘It must never be forgotten that we are dealing with a civilization thousands of years old and one of which only tiny remnants have survived. What is proudly advertised as Egyptian history is merely a collection of rags and tatters.’ If all we have are rags and tatters, how sure can we be about the dates?”

If Egyptian chronologies are off by two hundred years in the second millennium BC, the chronology of ancient Egypt needs far more data than is currently available and apparently needs to be reworked. If the established history of Egypt goes back to about 3000 BC, as is asserted by Jeremy Sexton, and if the flood took place between 2300 and 2500 BC81 and if we have already demonstrated the possibility that Egyptian chronology is contracted by at least 200 years, it is reasonable to assume that more contraction could occur with additional study. Other events no doubt need to be dated earlier, but I’m no Egyptologist. In summary, let me state that if I must choose between the “rags and tatters” of Egyptian chronology and the inspired and inerrant Scripture, I will choose the latter.

Conclusion

As much as I like Andrew Steinmann, respect his scholarly work, and consider him a friend, I cast my lot with Jeremy Sexton. I do so for the following reasons. First, because of the nature of the Hiphil in usually not having a lengthy period of time between the cause and the caused event. Second, because of the grammar of the Hiphil in light of the comments from both Sexton and Steinmann. Third, because revelation over the course of centuries means that you ought not to read the content of later portions of the Old Testament back into earlier portions. Language changes and develops through time. Fourth, because drawing out the meaning of the text means that we take it as it reads unless there are significant reasons from the context to conclude otherwise. There are no contextual reasons to take the text otherwise. Fifth, because of the reference to “sons and daughters” and the implications of that repeated phrase. Sixth, because of the uniqueness of these two genealogies. And seventh, because Egyptian history and chronology cannot be demonstrated to be established with certainty, nor should evidence from outside the text determine the meaning inside the text.