I’ve heard the late Dr. Chuck Missler go through the meanings of the names of the 10 pre-flood patriarchs in Genesis 5. In his lecture he shows how the meanings of their names hint at the Gospel.

But I’ve also read people who disagree. They say he stretched the definitions. I decided to look them up myself. Here’s what I found in the Strong’s Concordance.

Adam – man

Seth – put, (or “appointed” as Eve said it)

Enosh – mortal

Cainan – fixed, dwelling

Mahalaleel – praise/fame of God

Jared – descent

Enoch – initiated

Methuselah – man of a spear/dart (the speared/darted/pierced man? 👀)

Lamech… K. The Strong’s had nothing for me here except “from an unused root of an uncertain meaning.” So I’m on my own. Sort of. I visited a favorite site: FathersAlphabet.com. I know that serious Hebrew scholars raise eyebrows at meanings drawn from Paleo-Hebrew but I find the results compelling enough that I think we shouldn’t throw it out entirely. I make no claims on being an expert in Hebrew, but here goes.

Hebrew words come from a 3-letter root called a “lemma.” Lamech is LMK. Lamed (pronounced lah-med), Mem and Kaf.

Lamed – In paleo-Hebrew the letter lamed is a pictograph of a shepherd’s staff. It carries all the ideas of a shepherd’s staff: the shepherd himself, lead, guide, teach(er), even the prepositional idea of going to or toward.

Mem – is the pictograph of water- it’s basically our letter M, which looks like waves 🌊. It carries all the ideas of water, the unknown, tumult/upheaval, and to lift up- like a wave lifts a boat. In Revelation, the sea is many peoples.

Kaf – (sounds exactly like “cough”), this letter was depicted as the palm of the hand or the sole of the foot in its paleo form. And the letter carries the ideas of those: to grip/grasp but also to crush, like crushing grapes with the sole of the foot.

Let’s put Lamech’s name together. I’m not going to be dogmatic on this. And I’m not trying to force a particular meaning, but I can’t help but notice…

Shepherd, Lift Up, Sole of the Foot Crushing

Is anyone else seeing the Good Shepherd lifted up on the cross where He crushed the head of the serpent with the sole of His bruised foot?

After Lamech there’s just one more. Noah. It means “rest.”

So- here they are, just the meanings. We report, you decide.

Man. Appointed. Mortal. Fixed/Dwelling. Praise of God. Descent. Initiated. Pierced Man. Shepherd/Lifted Up/Sole of Foot Crushing. Rest.

Mind. Blown. 🤯

Now for Chapter 6…

The late Dr. Michael H. Heiser (as well as the aforementioned Dr. Missler) wrote and spoke at length on this chapter. No need for me to repeat it all here. I will merely point you toward their resources (YouTube, Heiser’s blog and books,) and say that when actually examined, “the angel view” is the only one that stands up to scrutiny as far as I’m concerned. And it was the only view in existence for the first 400ish years of the Church.

Basically- the “Sons of God” in chapter 6 are fallen angelic beings and the “daughters of men” are simply human women. Genetic engineering is not new. And it wasn’t just humans that were corrupted, by the way. The text says “all flesh” was corrupted. I don’t believe it’s a stretch to understand that the text is saying the fallen realm was doing…something with animals too. (Folks, there’s a reason why beastiality had to be forbidden in the Law. Just sayin.) It was bad. So bad that even the animals had to be destroyed.

If the muddying of creation’s gene pool was the catalyst for the first global cataclysmic judgment (the Flood), could it be that it might also be the thing that comes before the second global cataclysmic judgment? This time with fire? So when we hear that scientists have engineered this or genetically modified that… just know, God in His mercy, must intervene. He cannot allow non-human entities to hijack the genome sequence He created and reproduce unchecked.

Oh, by the way, remember Enoch? He was “caught up” to God before the flood hit. Interesting huh? Methuselah escaped it by dying before it happened (at the good old epic age of 969). And Noah and his family escaped by being obedient and building the Ark.

“The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment,”
‭‭2 Peter‬ ‭2‬:‭9‬ ‭ESV‬‬