Genesis 5:6

Summary

The verse states that Seth lived a certain number of years before fathering Enosh: the Hebrew gives this as chamesh ("five", H2568) shanim ("years", H8141) u-me'at ("and one hundred", H3967) shanah ("year", H8141), i.e., 105 years. It follows the recurring genealogical formula of Genesis 5, combining a lifespan notice with the birth of a named descendant.

Key words

• yechi ("he lived", H2421) — qal verb with narrative vav prefix, placing the clause in sequence with the preceding genealogical notices; the subject "he" is embedded in the verb form.
• shet ("Seth", H8352) — proper noun, subject of the verb yechi, identifying whose lifespan is being recorded.
• me'at ("one hundred", H3967) — cardinal number in construct form ("hundred of"), syntactically bound to the following noun shanah, forming the compound number "one hundred and five."
• shanah ("year", H8141) — feminine singular noun, appears twice: once plural (shanim) with "five," once singular (shanah) with "hundred," reflecting Hebrew number-noun agreement patterns rather than a semantic distinction between "years."
• yoled ("he fathered", H3205) — hiphil (causative) verb with narrative vav, indicating Seth "caused to be born" — the causative stem marking the act of begetting rather than simply "having" a child.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from two coordinated narrative clauses, each opened by the vav-consecutive construction (va-): the first reports how long Seth lived before the birth (va-yechi-shet chamesh shanim u-me'at shanah, "and Seth lived five years and a hundred of a year"), and the second reports the birth itself (va-yoled et-Enosh, "and he fathered Enosh"). The number "105" is expressed by placing the smaller unit (chamesh, "five") before the larger (me'at, "hundred"), a common Hebrew numerical ordering, with shanim (plural) following the smaller number and shanah (singular) following the construct form me'at. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) before Enosh signals that Enosh is the object of Seth's begetting, though it carries no independent lexical meaning. The hiphil stem of yoled frames the birth as something Seth caused to happen, consistent with the causative sense of "to father" used throughout the Genesis 5 genealogy.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text gives Seth's age before fathering Enosh as chamesh shanim u-me'at shanah, 105 years. The Septuagint (LXXSWETE) instead reads διακόσια καὶ πέντε ἔτη, "two hundred and five years." The Vulgate (VULCLEM), by contrast, reads "centum quinque annis," matching the Hebrew figure of 105 years. The modern versions (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) also follow the 105-year reading found in the Hebrew and Vulgate.