Messiah In The Old Testament Episode 18
The Antediluvian World Part 2
Seth’s Righteous Line
Welcome to Messiah In The Old Testament. In our last episode we covered what happened in the time period after Cain was kicked out of Adam and Eve's encampment. Remember he was banished.
He would never be able to live in the LORD's presence like Adam and Eve were living. The crops would never produce for him and he would be a restless wanderer. He said my punishment is too much. So, Elohim backed up a bit and gave him a mark of protection. So, then he said that anybody who comes upon Cain will see that he is marked, he is protected by Elohim’s mark.
And then he went off to build a city and we talked about all the generations from Cain, Enoch, Irad, etc. all way down to Lamech, his evil progeny that bragged that I murdered a man because he injured me and if Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech is avenged 77 times. Now we’re picking up the story here now with Seth. We’re going to talk about Seth’s line.
So, remember I brought you the chart that has the chronology of Adam all the way down if you go to the end to Abraham. But Adam specifically, we’re looking at Adam down through Noah and then to Shem. So, let's look at everybody's name and what it means.
Remember, in the beginning Adam was created from the afar min ha adamah and his name was Adam because he was made from ha adamah, from the earth, from the dirt that was in the earth. He was made from the earth. Now adom also means red and there are some who say well it was obviously red dirt, like in Georgia, the red dirt of Georgia. And adam it certainly means red.
If you live in Israel you know on the side of every ambulance you’ve got Magen David Adom. And it’s the Red Star of David. And adom you know means red. Now, Adam then gave birth to Seth through his wife Eve.
And Seth's name in Hebrew is shayt and that means to be settled or to put into place. It comes from the root sheet. Which literally means to set down or to put in place. So, Seth was put into place in the place of his brother. In fact, when Eve had him, she said thank the good Lord I have given birth to another boy. One who will take the place of Abel who was murdered by his brother. So, he was basically the replacement of his brother. He was the one that was set down and put into place. Now, when Adam was 130 years old, he gave birth to Seth. And then Seth when he was 105 years old, he gave birth to, his wife I should say, gave birth. He became the father of Enosh.
Now Enosh is the Hebrew word, is enosh and that comes from the word anash which means to be ill or sickly. It’s widely considered that his name is referred to that of the frailty of mankind. That no longer would man live forever, but man was destined to live and then die. And then when he was 90, he gave birth to a son, or his wife gave birth to a son. His name was Kenan.
Kenan obviously comes from the same root, as we said, you know the whole spear, spearhead. It is considered that his name means like one who works with metal or one who forges metal. And then when he was 70, he became the father of Mahalalel. Now Mahalalel comes from, it's a compound word, it comes from mahalal and it comes from the name of God El. Mahalal means to give praise or to give glory. And El is the name of God. So literally his name means to give praise or give glory to God. Obviously, a name that fits with this whole concept of the righteous line, the Messianic line that’s coming down through Seth.
Now when he was 65, he became the father of Jared. And the Hebrew name is yared. And everybody lives in Israel understands this name because it's where we get the name for the river Jordan. It comes from the root which is yarad. Yarad means to go down or to descend. And the name of the Jordan River derives from this root.
Think about it, the Jordan River starts on the slopes of Mount Hermon and there are three tributaries, the Hasbani, the Dan and the Banias. And these three tributaries come together and they form the Jordan River. The Jordan River flows down you into the Hula Plain and it winds its way down, goes past the Hula reserve.
And then it goes down the slopes at the end of that plateau down into the Sea of Galilee or Kinneret. And then it leaves Kinneret on the south end, goes down the Jordan River Valley continuing to descend.
And finally ends up in the Dead Sea. So, the termination of the Jordan River is at -1300 and some feet below sea level obviously, and the heights of Hermon where it starts in the springs are actually like 9,200 and some feet. So, you can see we’ve got a considerable drop from top to bottom. So, his name literally means to descend or go down. And we think forever of the Jordan River starting high and ending low coming down. And the reason, I think, he got his name it is revealed in the writings of which are going to go through here in a little bit. It is considered that it is during the time of Jared that the angels or the sons of God came down and intermarried with the daughters of men creating the Nephilim or the giants in the land. It is considered as during that time. So that would fit with his name descend or come down.
Now when he was 162 years old, he gave birth to or his wife gave birth to a child whose name was Enoch or Chanok. Chanok comes from the root chanak. And everybody knows chanak it means to dedicate or consecrate. It’s where we get the term Chanukah which comes from that name. So Chanok or Enoch was dedicated or consecrated to the LORD. He lived a righteous and blessed life. So, let's stop and talk a little bit
about Enoch. Enoch, there are several sources for information about Enoch.
In in the Tanakh there’s only like a couple references to Enoch. It's in the genealogy that occurs in Genesis. It's in the genealogy later on. But there's not really much information about Enoch other than what's listed. So, let’s go over what is actually listed.
Enoch was 65 years old when he gave birth to his son Methuselah. Now in Hebrew his name was metushelach. Metushelach and that comes from the root, it is actually a compound, it's from mat which is the word for man or male pronoun kind of thing. And then shelach, we already know the word shelach. It's the word that meant divorced or banished. When Adam was banished from the Garden of Eden it was shelach. So literally Methuselah, his name means the man that was sent away. Which makes a lot of sense when you look into what happens during Methuselah’s lifetime. So, he is 65 and he is wife gave birth to Methuselah and then he lived another 300 years beyond that. And at that time, it says that he walked with Elohim and he was no more because Elohim took him. That's the information we have in the Tanakh about Enoch. And if you look at the word took where it says Elohim took him.
That word took comes from the Hebrew word laqach. And laqach means to carry something with you. Like if you're carrying a briefcase, you’re carrying a purse, you’re carrying your staff, you're carrying an umbrella. It means to carry something with you. So literally Elohim grabbed Enoch and he took him with him. And the whole concept is that Enoch left without dying. A he went straight up to be with Elohim. Now this concept of being carried away is not a completely foreign concept.
We see this happen, and we will get to it in one of our future prophecies, where we look at the prophet Elijah, who was taken up in the fiery chariot to heaven, similar to Enoch. He was raptured, he was taken away, he was caught away, he left the earth, he left the presence of all those living on earth and was taken away by Elohim.
So, the taking of Enoch we know has Messianic significance. Now obviously Enoch's entire life has Messianic significance. His name, dedicated, consecrated. We know that Messiah is going to bear those same characteristics. He’s going to be dedicated. He's going to be set apart for his ministry on the earth.
We know that Enoch was a righteous man and lived a blessed life. We know that Messiah is also going to do the same. He's going to live a righteous life on the earth and then at the end [of his ministry] he's going to be taken away. He’s going to be caught away to heaven in similar fashion to Elijah and to Enoch. Now because there's such limited information about Enoch, we decided we would look into some extra biblical sources. Specifically, rabbinical sources, but also there's another source that is part of the canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. So, let’s start out with Maimonides. He writes in the Halakah, Mishneh Torah, Sefer Maddah. He's writing about discussing the foreign worship and customs.
That’s the name of the Sefer Maddah, Foreign Worship and Customs. He starts out, he says:
“In the days of Enoch, the sons of man erred exceedingly.”
He then went on to describe what was going on in the days of Enoch.
He says that men began worshiping the starry hosts, began worshiping the stars, the planets. They set up altars. They set up idols to the heavenly hosts. And they began to bow down and worship them. And it got so bad, that their altars and idols became such an abomination and got so bad, that really nobody was left in the world to recognize Elohim anymore. And here's a quote, Maimonides concluded:
Not a man was there to recognize him (talking about Elohim) or know him save some individuals in the whole world. For example,
Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Shem and Eber. And on this path the world continued its course and circuity until the birth of the firmest pillar of all in the world, Abraham our father.
Now, let's move over to the Ethiopian Church. It’s actually the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
They have a Bible, the Ethiopic Bible, that includes some books that are not included in other Bibles. Specifically, the book of Enoch. There’s actually four books of Enoch and they’re referred to in the pseudographia as Enoch one or Book one, two, First Enoch, second Enoch, third Enoch, fourth Enoch. Now the other books of Enoch are pretty much proven that they come from a non-authentic source. In other words, it was not Enoch that wrote any of those. But the scholars in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition believe that the book of Enoch came from Enoch, that Enoch wrote the book, that Enoch had visions, that Enoch was a prophet, that Enoch had all this information imparted to him by the Almighty and Enoch wrote it down. They believe that Enoch handed this down to Methuselah, who then handed it down to Lamech, more specifically, to Noah. And then Noah carried it through the flood. And then over the millennia it was handed down in written form, oral form and finally ended up in the hands of the Ethiopian church. The only copies that are available are in the Ethiopian tongue.
Now, they did find fragments of the book of Enoch amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, which I find quite fascinating. So obviously, first century, second century Essenes, they had access to the book of Enoch. So, something that was available at that time period. Now in the book of Enoch there is a reference to the visions, there are actually a couple of major visions that that Enoch had. And in his writing, the visions really bring kind of memories of Daniel or Ezekiel, it’s in that style of prophecy or a vision. It's like these majestic visions where he sees the throne of God. Majestic visions where he sees thousands and millions of angels. It’s very reminiscent of these other visions that we have in the Tanakh. Now he described that the earth was filling up with violence
during his days. Obviously, the whole concept that this started during the life of Jared, which of course is Enoch's daddy, right? So, intermarriage, Sons of God, the angels with the daughters of men. That intermarriage took place and they gave birth to these giants. And the Giants, or the Nephilim, filled the land. The angels are called the watchers and the Nephillim are the Giants and then of course the daughters of men. So, it was in the middle of all this violence and just sin and destruction, the earth was filling up with violence. Enoch had this vision or this command from God. In Enoch 10:2, Enoch was shown the destruction of the coming flood. Here's a quote, this is God talking to Enoch:
Go to Noah and tell him in my name, hide yourself. And reveal to him the end that is approaching that the whole earth will be destroyed, and a deluge is about to come upon the whole earth, and will destroy all that is on it.
So, Enoch was given the information about the coming deluge, about the destruction of the earth. And it was his job then to impart that information to his son and his son’s son, and his son's son’s son.
In Enoch 10:9, Enoch sees a vision:
And behold he cometh with 10,000s of his holy ones.
Now pay attention to the language here, he comes with tens of thousands of his holy ones, talking about angels.
To execute judgment upon all. And to destroy all the ungodly: and to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed. And of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
So, Enoch was given this vision of coming judgment. Now it's interesting, remember we said there were fragments amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, so this book obviously was available up to the time of the
first century. And in fact, there is a letter that was written by a man named Jude, who was the brother of James. He writes a letter to his friends in the mid-first century, probably in the decade before the destruction of the temple. So, 60s CE, right? He says,
“Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men. See the LORD is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone. And to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way. And all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
If you want to read that. It’s in Jude 14 and 15. So obviously this direct quote from the book of Enoch indicates that those living in the first century CE had access to this book. This book was available to them and whether they thought it was Canon or not, we don't know. But we do know that the Ethiopian Tewahedo Church accepts, the Orthodox Church accepts this as Canon and believes that this is inspired word that comes from the Almighty through the prophet Enoch. Obviously this first century writer Jude, wrote about it in his letter. I have some feelings that maybe the Orthodox Church is on to something. But if you reject it as canon like the Catholic Church and like most Protestant churches. They consider this as pseudographia, which means books that are written in somebody else's name by somebody else. They all consider this was probably written during the Hellenistic period. Somewhere between 500 to 300 BCE. So, who knows? So, whether you believe it or not, it's very interesting the things that are said in the book of Enoch.
Enoch's life is an expression of dedication to Elohim. We see from this example alone of Enoch and of the name above, Mahalalel, to give praise glory to God, that this is a righteous line. This is obviously where the genealogy is going through from Adam all the way down to Messiah. He is coming through this line.
Now we talked about Methuselah's name, and we said that Methuselah's name was a compound that came from man that was to be divorced or
sent away or separated or banished. And if you look at our chart. Let's pull it out again and put it out for you. This is the chronology chart. You’ll remember, the chronology says specifically that Adam started 0 and went to 930. Let's go down and see where Enoch's life is. Enoch starts at 622 and ended 987. So, Enoch overlaps Adam’s life, a considerable length of time. Several hundred years, like 250 years. And then Methuselah, we can see Methuselah overlapped Enoch’s life but also overlapped Adam's life. So, Methuselah had a huge more with Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared. So, Methuselah basically was alive during the time where all of those people were available to him. He could've sat down and talked to Adam for hundreds of years. Learning everything that Adam knew and taking that knowledge with him. And then Methuselah, when he was let’s see now, when Methuselah was 187 years, he gave birth or his wife gave birth to Lamech.
Now Lamech is a name that has no roots. There is no other words in the Tanakh other than the proper name Lamech. So Lamech has no roots, so we could assign some random meaning to his name. We could say he was, his name means, bridge because he was a bridge between the ancestors before the ancestors after. We could call him sort of the tipping point [fulcrum], the point of the wedge where he is tipping, going from righteousness to evil. So Lamech was 182 and he gave birth to or his wife gave birth to Noah.
Now Noah’s name noach, it comes from the root nuach which means to rest or be quiet. So that makes sense that is during the life of Noah, where we had the flood. Everything was destroyed and then there was the rest and the quiet in the ark. Now Lamech, when he named Noah, he said,
“He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands because by the ground the LORD has cursed.”
Now if you look at the word which is translated comfort. He will comfort us. It's the word yanacham. Yanacham means relent or comfort.
It comes from the root nacham which means to have sorrow, pity or compassion. So, obviously Noah, which we’re going to see in future episodes, he has Messianic significance. He was a type of Messiah, for sure. He is going to save humanity in the ark. But that’s another story. We’re not accept that as a Messianic Prophecy right now. But let's talk about the meaning of his name. The meaning of his name and his naming by Lamech, says that he's going to be a man of sorrow, pity and compassion. And we know that Elohim was bound and determined to destroy the world. He had made up his mind. He was going to destroy the world in the great deluge. But he did relent and show pity by calling Noah to rescue a righteous remnant on the ark. Noah was the instrument that Elohim used to bring about the deliverance of the human race. So, Messiah is going to have that same nature, that same, basically, same assignment. He’s to rescue humanity.
He’s going to rescue a remnant of humanity, just like Noah. And he is going to be a man of sorrow, a man of pity and a man of compassion. So, in the midst of all this violence and decadence and mayhem and murder, Noah rises as a man of quietness. He’s a man symbolic of Elohim relenting on his vow to destroy all mankind.
A man of sorrow. A man of pity. A man of compassion. This is a picture of Messiah who will come and do the same. Now I’m going to read from my book Messiah the Old Testament.
The earth was filling up with violence. What started as a single act of murder performed in a jealous rage, multiplied many times over. Cain’s line was not righteous.
And we saw that with great certainty through the life of Lamech.
They even bragged about their murders. The curse of Cain hung heavy on his offspring. Elohim's unending patience with man was wearing thin.
And we saw that. We’re going to read it in our next our next episode. He was bound and determined to just trash the whole thing, destroy mankind and be done with his experiment of creation.
Yet, in the midst of all this mayhem and murder, a righteous thread persisted.
Remember, we talked about that righteous thread coming down through all of those ancestors. Through the line of Seth, down through Enoch, the righteous man. Down through Noah, the man of sorrow and pity and compassion.
Adam and Eve had another child to replace Abel. They named him Seth. It was through his line that we find the thread of righteousness leading to Messiah, not through his cursed brother Cain's line. After five generations Cain’s line produced Lamech.
And what a glorious guy he was (sarcastically).
He was born into a violent world. He killed a man for just wounding him. On the other hand, after five generations, Seth’s line produced Enoch. (This righteous man.) Enoch was born into a world
Yeah, there was all that violence going on. But Enoch was born into a world of righteousness. He was born into the thread of righteousness. His ancestors who were righteous and his offspring who were righteous. He was born into this righteous world.
Surrounded by his righteous ancestors including Adam. Enoch was righteous and upright. He walked with Elohim throughout his entire life. After 365 years Elohim carried him away.
Remember just like carrying your purse.
This was the first example of a person being raptured or taken away without dying to be with Elohim. Enoch is a type of Messiah. Just like Enoch, Messiah will be righteous and lead a blameless life. He will walk with God each day and he will then be carried away just like Enoch. The righteous thread which was exemplified so well in the life of Enoch within continued through Methuselah, Lamech and finally, Noah. Lamech named his son with this blessing, “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed, Noah’s naming by Lamech is a picture of Messiah. We will see that Noah is a type of Messiah by his actions in building an ark and saving mankind from destruction, but this passage shows us
Not the actions, like Noah [building the ark], but instead the nature of Noah.
It shows us Messiah’s nature. The word translated comfort in Lamech's blessing comes from the root nacham which means to have sorrow, pity or compassion. Messiah will be a man of sorrow. He will be a man of pity. He will be a man of compassion (just like his ancestor Enoch.) We have now traced the righteous line that will produce Messiah, from Adam to Seth to Enoch all the way down to Noah. The Tanakh provides us with each link along the way as we seek the identity of our Messiah.
So, let's recap what we've learned in our episode today. We learned; the righteous line comes down through Noah. We saw evidence today of that very thing. In our previous episode we said that there is always going to be a righteous line, Messiah’s line, Messiah’s Genealogy that goes down through the generations. And this is clearly a prophetic thing. Number two, we learned that Messiah is going to be like Enoch.
Enoch was a type of Messiah. Enoch will be righteous. Enoch will live a holy, lived a holy and blessed life, so will Messiah. Enoch walked with God. So will Messiah. Enoch was then taken away or raptured, carried
away by Elohim and so will Messiah. And then in the naming of Lamech, the fact that inherent in Noah's name is the concept of sorrow, pity and compassion.
Noah is clearly a type of Messiah, but it’s not the actions were talking about, it's the nature. It's what's built into his name. He's going to be a man of compassion, a man of sorrow, a man of pity. So, in our next episode we've got a huge amount of stuff to go through. I haven't decided yet how are going to break that all down, because were now coming up against the flood. We’ll talk a little more about the Nephilim and that whole issue with the watchers. And there we’re going to talk about the evangelistic ministry that Noah had, preaching to all the people about the coming destruction. And the fact that the rabbinic tradition says Methuselah was right there at his side preaching along with him. And then Methuselah was taken up by death into heaven to be with Elohim the very year that the flood started. So, all these people have meaningful names. And we’re going to go through the beginnings of the flood. And we’ll see how far we get in the next episode. So, for me this is all like really, really exciting stuff. And I get sometimes really animated about it and I hope you share my passion for these Messianic Prophecies. So, join us next time as we continue to go through the prophecies that are found in the Tanakh. That are found in the Old Testament. And they're all out there waiting for you to come and discover.
Thank you for watching our show today. We hope that you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Now, after watching this episode you might be saying to yourself, “Who is this Messiah that Dr. Smith is talking about?
Is he talking about the Christian Messiah? Is he talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary. And then lived a blameless and holy life on the earth, And then was tortured and crucified. And after he died he then was resurrected from the dead after 13
three days. Then after people witnessed this, he was then taken up bodily by Elohim into heaven from the Mount of Olives.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Muslim prophet Isa. Isa Ibn Maryam, the messenger, who was sent by Allah to bring a message to the people. The Quran says he that lived a holy and blameless life, was born of the virgin Mary. He fulfilled all the Jewish prophecies in exact accordance. But one difference, instead of being crucified, he then was taken up by Allah into heaven before the Romans laid hands on him. And he awaits there now in the fourth heaven where at the end of days at the day of judgment he will be revealed to all.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Jewish Messiah? The Messiah who has not yet been revealed, that the entire Jewish world is waiting for his revelation. Now, the beautiful thing is that you can hold to any of these beliefs. And we can all still learn together about Messiah. We can learn about our Christian Messiah. We can learn about our Jewish Messiah. We can learn about our Muslim prophet Isa who will be revealed. It doesn’t matter what you believe. You can even be an atheist or agnostic and still learn from this program about Messiah. Now, I have to admit I am a Christian so I approach things, obviously, from a Christian point of view. And I promise you, as we reveal these prophecies, which I believe have all been fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Or will be fulfilled when he comes back, returning in the clouds in the same way he was taken up. I believe that all of this is true, but I promise you I will do my very best to present these prophecies from a neutral point of view. And try to keep my Christian bias to a minimum. Obviously, it will pop up from time to time but I will try to stay only in the Tanakh and try not to get into the New Testament very often. Now, if you want more information about Messiah, we have resources for you.
We have a website which is findingmessiah.org. Now, on that website you are going to find several resources. You will find links to all the videos, all the episodes that we have created so far. You will find links to download the transcripts of any of these episodes. And then you will
find a section where you can get more information about Messiah through frequently asked questions. And then there is a section for donation. If you want to come alongside our ministry at Finding Messiah.
Now, there’s going to come a time in this series where you are going to be confronted with the question: What are you going to do with Messiah? Who do you believe Messiah is? Which of these Messiahs do you believe Dr. Smith is talking about? And Messiah will become real to you if you look at all the information presented and come to your conclusions. So, join us as we continue our journey through the Old Testament Scriptures looking for all the Messianic Prophecies. And join us next time as we reveal those to you.
