Adam's Family Tree
An earlier article showed a time line laying out Adam’s family tree from Seth down to Moses, but that was only part of the story. It left out the other branch. After Cain murdered Abel, the second half of the fourth chapter of Genesis is the story of Cain’s descendants. There isn’t a lot of information on that side of the family, but it does offer a little insight into what was going on in the rest of the world while Adam, Seth, Enoch, and Methuselah were growing up and growing old.
Before I get to the main chart, I should mention a few assumptions.
First, I said it in an earlier article,1 but to be clear, we don’t know when Adam started counting his age. He could have counted day one when he was created, but considering he would have lived forever if he hadn’t eaten from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that doesn’t make much sense. Instead, this chart assumes he started numbering his days when his days were numbered. Given that assumption, he lived 930 years after leaving Eden and an unknown amount of time in Eden before that point.
Second, we don’t know when Cain and Abel were born. Their birth is the first thing mentioned after Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden, but we don’t know whether that happened after a year or a century. The only details we know are that Cain and Abel were old enough to be responsible for their own offerings before Abel was murdered, Abel was murdered before Seth was born, and Adam was 130 years old at Seth’s birth.2 Cain and Abel had to be at least teenagers when Abel was murdered, but that only narrows down their birth date to some time between a year after Adam and Eve left Eden and when Adam was about 110. For the chart, I assumed they were born soon after Adam and Eve left the Garden and Abel was murdered shortly before Seth was born. If that’s true, Abel lived for around 120 years, though it could’ve been a century shorter. Cain’s family tree depends on the same assumption.
For Cain’s family, there are other ambiguities besides his birth date. Genesis tells the lifespans and ages of Adam, Seth, and the line of patriarchs descended from Seth. It doesn’t record any ages for Cain’s family, but other than violence or bad lifestyle choices, there’s no reason to assume they didn’t have the same general lifespan.3 This chart assumes all the members of Cain’s family (as well as Eve) lived for the same length of time as the average lifespan of the ages given for Seth’s descendants, or about 929 years.4 In addition, Genesis mentions the age of the father when the son was born for Seth and the generations after him, but doesn’t give those family details for Cain. Instead, I assumed the generation gap in Cain’s family was the same as the average gap among Seth’s descendants, or about 117 years.5
With those caveats in mind, here’s the chart:
Looking at the two branches of the family tree side-by-side, it’s interesting to think about the things Adam lived through. He was alive for the birth of every son except Noah. He probably knew of the city Cain founded and perhaps even heard about Lamech and his polygamy and murder. He could’ve watched the world change with the first musical instruments of Jubal and perhaps seen some of Tubal-Cain’s early metal-smithing.6
Sometimes genealogies are dry, but if you look a little closer, you might see connections in the background that we would otherwise miss.
1. For the footnote in an earlier article making the point about Adam’s unkown birthday, see footnote 6 at the bottom of the article here.
2. For the Cain’s murder of Abel, see Genesis 4:8. For Seth’s birth occurring after Abel was murdered, see Genesis 4:25. For Adam being 130 years old when Seth was born, see Genesis 5:3.
3. For a commentary confirming the idea the Cainites probably lived for the same general lifespan as Seth’s descendants, see here.
4. The 929 year average lifespan of Seth’s branch of the family tree includes the ages of Adam (930), Seth (912), Enosh (905), Kenan (910), Mahalalel (895), Jared (962), Methuselah (969), and Noah (950). Enoch (365) was excluded from the average since he didn’t die but walked with God and was taken to heaven. Lamech (777) was excluded because his age is considered an outlier from the rest of the dataset because it is more than one-and-a-half times the interquartile range below the first quartile of the dataset. For more on how this was calculated, see here.
5. Calculating 117 years as the average age of the father when the son was born includes Adam when Seth was born (130), Seth (105), Enosh (90), Kenan (70), Mahalalel (65), Jared (162), Enoch (65) Methuselah (187), and Lamech (182). The sons of Noah were excluded from the calculation since the first wasn’t born until Noah was 500 years old. Given the dataset, the median age of children at birth was 117.5, and since 500 is more than one-and-a-half times the interquartile range of 112 above the third quartile of 182, as mentioned earlier with the lifespans, any children born when the father was over 350 years old would be considered an outlier, thus excluding Noah’s sons from the average.
6. What Adam knew of the innovations Jubal made in musical instruments and Tubal-Cain made in metal-smithing depends on whether they made those discoveries early or late in life. They were only an estimated 227 years old when Adam died. Whether Adam knew of the murder committed by Lamech also depends on when it happened in Lamech’s life.