Genesis 5:3
And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:
Adam was one hundred and thirty years old when his son Seth was born. Unlike Adam as created sinless in the likeness of God, Seth was begotten after the fall in Adam's own fallen likeness and image, born in sin with a fallen nature and no more natural goodness than Cain. Seth resembled his father more closely than any of his other sons and was of nobler stature than Cain or Abel. His worthy character came not by nature but by divine grace and by Adam's faithful instruction in the Redeemer and in righteousness, so that he honored God by doing His will and labored to turn sinful men to revere and obey their Creator. He separated himself from the corrupt descendants of Cain and founded a separate line that cherished the knowledge of God's will and kept His commandments, with truth handed down unimpaired through overlapping lives from Adam to Methuselah to Shem to Abraham and Jacob. That line belongs to the nine generations before the Flood who lived between nine hundred and nearly one thousand years, averaging 912 years, sustained by the life-giving power of the tree of life passed down from Adam, until the descendants of Seth departed from God by taking wives from Cain's idolatrous race and the long-lived race was destroyed by the Flood.
Birth in Fallen Likeness
Adam was one hundred and thirty years old when Seth was born. Adam himself had been created sinless in the likeness of God, but after the fall he begot Seth in his own fallen likeness and after his own fallen image. Seth was thus born in sin, inheriting the fallen nature of his parents with no more natural goodness by nature than Cain.
Seth resembled Adam more closely than any of his other sons. He was of nobler stature than Cain or Abel.
His worthy character came not by nature but by divine grace and by the faithful instruction of his father Adam. Adam instructed him in the knowledge of the Redeemer and in righteousness, and by receiving that instruction Seth honored God by doing His will. Called to take the place of Abel in right doing, he labored, as Abel would have done had he lived, to turn the minds of sinful men to revere and obey their Creator.
Long Life Before Flood
Genesis 5:3 stands in the genealogical record in which the nine generations before the Flood lived far longer than later generations, averaging 912 years compared with 332 years for the nine generations after it. The patriarchs from Adam to Noah lived literally between nine hundred and nearly one thousand years, with few exceptions. Adam was 130 years old when Seth was born, as part of that account of nearly thousand-year lives after which the average length of life decreased.
The sacred record from Adam to Noah covers more than sixteen hundred years of vegetarian living on vegetables, fruits, and grains. It was a time of remarkably good health when all lived nearly one thousand years in full enjoyment of health until the springs of life grown weary stood still. There is no mention of sickness and death of children, feebleness in youth or middle age, fevers, dyspepsia, gout, consumption, local diseases from breakdown of organs, sufferings long drawn out, or excruciating agonies in death, the record simply giving the measure of each life and its cessation.
The great length of antediluvian life came from the life-giving power of the tree of life, which had power to keep life going so that while Adam and Eve ate from it they could not die. That power was passed down from Adam and Eve to their children. Because Adam had access to the tree which was to prolong life, in Noah's day only a few generations had passed since Adam and the human race still retained much of its early vigor, so man's existence was still measured by centuries.
The race was created with ten times more vital force than it now possesses, for otherwise its violations of the laws of Health and Life would long ago have extinguished it. Violation of God's laws of Health and Life cut down the years of man to contemptible brevity and filled them with pain and disease. Lifespans tapered down to between one and two hundred years by the time of the Egyptian bondage. So rapidly had the race run down that by the time of David, about halfway from Adam to the present day, the average of human life was only seventy years, while now the average in Europe and the United States is but thirty years, and in great cities but twenty years.
That long-lived people had rare powers to plan and execute and included many giants, men of great stature and strength, renowned for wisdom and skillful in devising cunning and wonderful works. God gave them life to devote themselves to His service and to make His name a praise in the earth, but they failed to do this. Their guilt in giving loose rein to iniquity was in proportion to their skill and mental ability.
Faithful Line Preserved Truth
Seth separated himself from the corrupt descendants of Cain and founded a separate line that cherished the knowledge of God's will and respected His sacred commandments. His descendants maintained that separation from the wicked descendants of Cain and held fast the knowledge of God's will. In contrast stood Cain's wicked, ungodly race, which had no respect for God.
Through Seth begins the long-lived line by which Adam, made in God's image and pronounced good, passed on what God Himself had taught him concerning the material world and the history of creation. Adam lived through nine centuries as an eyewitness and taught his descendants directly, while for hundreds of years seven generations lived at the same time and could learn from one another. With no books or written records, knowledge was grasped by strong memory and handed down unimpaired. The long lives beginning with this record kept Adam alive until Methuselah was 243 years old. That overlapping of lives allowed all that God taught Adam to be communicated directly without break, Adam imparting it to Methuselah, Methuselah to Shem, Shem to Abraham and Isaac, and Abraham and Isaac to Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel.
Seth stands among the righteous men before the Flood, with Enoch, Noah, Methuselah and others, through whom truth was passed from generation to generation and the image of God was engraved upon the heart. With them he presented the truth and kept the knowledge of God continually before the world. The people around them despised the truth, the imaginations of the heart being evil and only evil continually, with secret violence, until God destroyed that long-lived race by a flood. When men multiplied on the earth, the descendants of Seth saw that the daughters of Cain's descendants were very beautiful and departed from God, displeasing Him by taking wives as they chose from the idolatrous race of Cain.