Genesis 5:5
And all the time that Adam lived came to nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.
Open Genesis 5:5 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Et factum est omne tempus quod vixit Adam, anni nongenti triginta, et mortuus est.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ ἐγένοντο πᾶσαι αἱ ἡμέραι Ἀδὰμ ἃς ἔζησεν ἐννακόσια καὶ τριάκοντα ἔτη, καὶ ἀπέθανεν.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיִּֽהְי֞וּ כָּל יְמֵ֤י אָדָם֙ אֲשֶׁר חַ֔י תְּשַׁ֤ע מֵאוֹת֙ שָׁנָ֔ה וּשְׁלֹשִׁ֖ים שָׁנָ֑ה וַיָּמֹֽת
Haydock's commentary
He died. Ecclesiasticus xiv. 12, says very justly, the covenant of this world is, he shall surely die. God prolonged the lives of the patriarchs to a more advanced age, that the world might be sooner filled. Their constitution was then more excellent, the fruits of the earth more nourishing, &c. But the sole satisfactory reason for their living almost a thousand years, while we can hardly arrive at 70, is, because so it pleased God, in whose hands are all our lots. There is a great difference in the number of years assigned by the Hebrew and Vulgate, from that which the Samaritan copy mentions; and the Septuagint differs from both. Whether the difference be real, or only apparent, we shall not pretend to determine. The Church has not decided which system of chronology is the most accurate. In the Martyrology, she adopts that of the Septuagint and places the birth of Christ in [the year of the world] 5199, after Eusebius and Ven. Bede, though Riccioli calculates the Septuagint at 5634 years. (Haydock)
Adam died penitent, as we are assured by the Holy Ghost, Wisdom x. 2.; and tradition affirms the same of Eve, insomuch, that the heresy of the Encratites, who condemned our first parents to hell, was exploded with horror. (St. Epiphanius; St. Augustine, in hæres.; Tirinus)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Theodoret Dialogues. The “Eranistes” or “Polymorphus” of the Blessed Theodoretus, Bishop of Cyrus, The Unconfounded
Orth. The holy Moses when writing the ancient genealogy tells us how Adam being so many years old begat Seth, and when he had lived so many years he ended his life. So too he writes of Seth, of Enoch, and of the rest, but of Melchisedec he mentions neither beginning of existence nor end of life. Thus as far as the story goes he has neither beginning of days nor end of life, but in truth and reality the only begotten Son of God never began to exist and shall never have an end.
St John Cassian The Conferences of John Cassian. Part I. Containing Conferences I-X, Chapter XXI. The answer to the question raised
Serenus : You have propounded two not unimportant questions, to which I will reply, to the best of my ability, in the order in which you have raised them. We cannot possibly believe that spiritual existences can have carnal intercourse with women. But if this could ever have literally happened how is it that it does not now also sometimes take place, and that we do not see some in the same way born of women by the agency of demons without intercourse with men? especially when it is clear that they delight in the pollution of lust, which they would certainly prefer to bring about through their own agency rather than through that of men, if they could possibly manage it, as Ecclesiastes declares: “What is it that hath been? The same that is. And what is it that hath been done? The same that is done. …