Genesis 5:18

Summary

The verse states that Jared lived 162 years and then fathered Enoch. The sentence follows the standard genealogical formula of Genesis 5, giving an age followed by the birth of a descendant.

Key words

• y.chi- ("he lived", H2421) — qal verb in narrative sequence, marking the first event in the chain: Jared's lifespan before the birth mentioned.
• she.Ta.yim ("two", H8147) — feminine dual cardinal number, the smallest unit in the age count, combined additively with the following numbers.
• me.'At ("one hundred", H3967) — feminine singular construct form, indicating a construct relationship ("hundred of...") with the following sha.Nah.
• sha.Nah ("year[s]", H8141) — feminine singular noun, repeated twice in the verse (once with the 62 portion, once with the 100 portion), a common pattern in these genealogical formulas rather than a single combined number word.
• i.Yo.led ("he fathered", H3205) — hiphil (causative) verb in narrative sequence, the second event in the chain: causing Enoch to come into being, i.e., fathering him.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of two narrative verbs connected by the vav consecutive: va-y.chi- ("and he lived") followed later by va-yi.Yo.led ("and he fathered"). Between these two verbs sits the age formula, which in Hebrew is expressed additively rather than as a single compound number: she.Ta.yim ve-shi.Shim sha.Nah ("two and sixty year[s]") u-me.'At sha.Nah ("and a hundred of year[s]"). This structure — smaller unit, then larger unit, each with its own occurrence of sha.Nah — is typical of Biblical Hebrew numerical syntax and differs from the single continuous number ("162 years") used in translation.

The verb i.Yo.led is in the hiphil stem, a causative form of the root meaning "to bear/give birth." Used of a male subject, it conveys "he caused to be born," i.e., "he fathered," distinguishing the male role in the birth from the qal stem typically used for the mother's act of bearing. The direct object marker 'et- preceding cha.Nokh ("Enoch", H2585H) simply marks Enoch as the grammatical object of the fathering, with no semantic content of its own.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew expresses Jared's age through an additive two-part formula ("two and sixty years, and a hundred years"), while the LXX (ἑκατὸν καὶ ἑξήκοντα δύο ἔτη) and the Vulgate (centum sexaginta duobus annis) both render this as a single continuous number, "162 years," consistent with Greek and Latin numerical conventions. This is a difference in how each language's grammar packages the same numerical content, not a difference in the value itself.