People of the Bible
The son born after the murder, named as a replacement, and through whom the promise travels.
Also called In Hebrew, Shet, from the word for appointed or set in place
Seth is the third named son of Adam and Eve, born after Abel has been killed and Cain sent away. His mother names him, saying that God has appointed her another seed instead of Abel. The word she uses for seed is the word from the promise in the garden, and it is the first sign in Genesis that she has understood the promise as something that must be carried by a child. Adam is a hundred and thirty years old when Seth is born, and the text says Seth is begotten in Adam's own likeness, after his image.
Seth does almost nothing in the account, and that is his importance. He is the quiet line. His son is Enos, and it is in Enos's days that people begin to call on the name of the LORD. His descendants are Enoch, who walked with God, Methuselah, Lamech and Noah. The book of the generations of Adam in Genesis 5 runs through Seth and leaves Cain out entirely. Luke's genealogy of Jesus passes through him on its way back to Adam. He lives nine hundred and twelve years and dies.
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The movements, in the order the text gives them.
Genesis 4:25
After the murder and the exile, Adam and Eve have another son. Eve names him Seth and gives the reason: God has appointed her another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. The grief and the faith are in the same sentence.
Seth, Sheth, sounds like shath, appointed. The name is a confession that God, not Adam, provides the seed.
4:25And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.
Genesis 4:26
Seth has a son and calls him Enos. Then, the text says, men began to call upon the name of the LORD. Public worship of God by his covenant name is first recorded in Seth's household, not Cain's city.
Seth's son is named Enos, which simply means man, mortal, and the verse that records his birth records something larger: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD. The phrase means public worship, prayer and proclamation under God's covenant name, and it marks the line of Seth as the line of faith over against the line of Cain that built the city. The two families of Genesis 4 are now distinct: one calls its cities after its sons, the other calls on the name of the LORD. Everything in chapter 5 belongs to this second family.
Call upon the name of the LORD: the phrase used of Abraham's altars in 12:8 and 13:4, and of Elijah on Carmel. Enos means frail man.
4:26And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.
Genesis 5:3
Adam, at a hundred and thirty, begets a son in his own likeness, after his image, and names him Seth. The wording echoes the creation of Adam in God's image, and passes that image, and everything that has happened to it, down the line.
The genealogy of chapter 5 begins with Adam, and Seth is the only son named. Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image: the words are those of 1:26, where man is made in God's image, now applied to a father and son. The image is passed on, and so is the fallen nature that now goes with it. Cain and Abel are not mentioned in this chapter at all; as far as the book of the generations of Adam is concerned, Seth is the son through whom Adam continues. He is born when Adam is a hundred and thirty, so Adam is present for the first eight hundred years of his line.
His own likeness, after his image: Paul's contrast in 1 Corinthians 15:49, the image of the earthy and the image of the heavenly, begins here.
5:3And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:
Genesis 5:6-8
Seth lives a hundred and five years and begets Enos, lives eight hundred and seven more and has other sons and daughters, and dies at nine hundred and twelve. He would have been alive to see Enoch taken and to know Noah as a young man.
Seth's entry in the genealogy follows the pattern the chapter uses for everyone but Enoch: his age at the birth of the named son, his years after it, sons and daughters unnamed, a total, and the refrain. Nine hundred and twelve years, and he died. He outlives his father by a few years and is alive when Enoch is taken and when Noah is born. The chapter is a list of deaths, and Seth's is the second. The point of the list is not the long lives but the line: through these men the seed of the woman passes from Adam to Noah, and each one dies before the promise is kept.
Enos is born when Seth is a hundred and five. Ten generations from Adam to Noah are counted here.
And he died: the second time the refrain sounds. The sentence of 3:19 falls on the faithful line too.
5:6And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos:
5:7And Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters:
5:8And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died.
1 Chronicles 1:1
The Chronicler begins the history of Israel with a bare list: Adam, Seth, Enos. There is no Cain and no Abel. The line the nation descends from is the line through Seth.
The Chronicler opens Israel's record with three names and no verbs: Adam, Sheth, Enosh. Chronicles was written after the exile, for a people wondering whether they were still God's people, and its answer begins by tracing them back through Abraham and Noah to the first man. Seth's name stands second in that record. Cain and Abel are not in it. The line of promise is the only line the Chronicler cares to draw.
Sheth is the Hebrew spelling. The first nine chapters of Chronicles are genealogy, and this is their first line.
1:1Adam, Sheth, Enosh,
Luke 3:38
Luke traces the ancestry of Jesus back past Abraham and Noah to Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. The seed Eve hoped for in Genesis 4 is named at last at the end of the list.
Luke traces the genealogy of Jesus backwards, from Joseph to Adam, and the last three names are Enos, Seth, and Adam, which was the son of God. Matthew stopped at Abraham; Luke goes past him to the first man, so that Jesus is shown as the son not only of Israel but of humanity. Seth is in the chain because the seed of the woman came through him. The verse that ends Luke's list also ends Seth's account: the son appointed instead of Abel is an ancestor of the one whose blood speaks better things than Abel's.
Son of Adam, son of God: Luke's genealogy makes Jesus the second Adam by placing him at the far end of the first Adam's line.
3:38Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
The people, the places and the rest of Scripture.
Seth is defined by the brother he never met. Abel was dead before he was born, and his name is a memorial to him: God has set another in his place. He grows up as the only son at home, since Cain has gone east to Nod, and everything the reader is told about him is about what he continued rather than what he did.
His father Adam is the one person he certainly knew, and the text draws the line between them carefully. Adam was made in the likeness of God; Seth is begotten in the likeness of Adam. That is a way of saying that whatever Adam had become by then, in dignity and in damage, Seth inherited. His son Enos is the other named person in his account, and Enos's generation is the one in which calling on the name of the LORD begins. Seth is the hinge between a father who walked with God in the garden and a family that learned to pray outside it.
Before Seth comes the collapse of the first family. Genesis 4 is a chapter of loss: one son murdered, one son exiled, and a line of descent from the exile that ends in Lamech's song of vengeance. Seth's birth is placed right after that song, as the answer to it.
What follows is the whole of Genesis 5, ten generations from Adam to Noah, all of them through Seth. The chapter is built on a refrain, and he lived, and he begat, and he died, and it is deliberately monotonous, because the point is continuity. Two things break the pattern. Enoch, seventh from Adam, walks with God and is taken instead of dying. Lamech names his son Noah in hope of comfort from the cursed ground. Both men are Seth's descendants, and both point forward: one to life beyond death, the other to the flood and the new beginning after it.
Seth is named only in genealogies after Genesis 5, and that is what he is for. 1 Chronicles 1 begins the entire history of Israel with his name in second place. Luke 3 ends the genealogy of Jesus with him, one step before Adam. Neither list needs to say anything about him; his presence is the point. The promise made to Eve was carried by an ordinary man who lived, fathered a son, and died, and the Bible treats that as enough.
Older Jewish and Christian writers made more of him, calling his descendants the sons of God who kept faith while Cain's descendants fell away, and reading Genesis 6 in that light. Whatever is made of those readings, the plain text gives him one distinction that needs no elaboration: from Seth, and from no one else, the account continues.
Seth is the answer to the first great question of Genesis: after Abel is dead and Cain is gone, does the promise die with them? His birth says no, and his mother's naming of him says that God, not chance, arranged the answer. From this point the account follows a single line through a series of otherwise unremarkable men, each of whom lived, had a son, and died, until it reaches Noah. The genealogy is a way of saying that God kept his word one generation at a time.
He also marks the fork in the human family. Cain's line builds cities and forges weapons and ends in a boast about killing. Seth's line calls on the name of the LORD and produces the only two men before the flood who are said to have walked with God. When 1 Chronicles opens Israel's whole history with a list of names, Seth is the second, and when Luke closes the genealogy of Jesus, Seth is the son of Adam, who was the son of God.
2 songs
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
Seth is born into a family that has lost two sons, one to murder and one to exile, and his mother names him for what God has done rather than for what she feels. Appointed, or set in place: Seth is God's answer to Cain's knife. Eve's sentence is the first time a human being interprets a birth in the light of the promise of 3:15. Another seed instead of Abel means the line through which the woman's seed will come has been restored. The Book of Genesis sets this verse directly after Lamech's song of vengeance, so that the reader turns from a man boasting of a killing to a woman thanking God for a child.