Catholic Commentary
The Generation of Jared
18Jared lived one hundred sixty-two years, then became the father of Enoch.19Jared lived after he became the father of Enoch eight hundred years, and became the father of other sons and daughters.20All of the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty-two years, then he died.
Genesis 5:18–20 records that Jared lived 162 years before fathering Enoch, then lived 800 more years while having other children, dying at age 962. The passage exemplifies the antediluvian genealogy's pattern of longevity and fruitfulness, with Jared's death reinforcing that mortality applies to all humanity despite centuries of life.
Jared's greatest gift to history was a son he probably didn't fully understand—the man who walked with God and never died—reminding us that our faithfulness often bears fruit we will never witness.
Genesis 5:18 — "Jared lived one hundred sixty-two years, then became the father of Enoch."
The name Jared (Hebrew: Yered, יֶרֶד) derives from a root meaning "descent" or "to go down," a detail that captured the imagination of later Jewish and patristic interpreters. The Book of Enoch (1 En. 6) speculated that Jared's generation saw the descent of the Watchers, the fallen angels, and some ancient interpreters took his name as a dark omen — though mainstream Catholic exegesis treats such extracanonical embellishments with critical reserve. What the canonical text insists upon is straightforward: after 162 years, Jared becomes a father. This is the longest waiting period before the birth of the key son in all of Genesis 5, surpassing even Methuselah's 187 years (v. 25). The very length of Jared's solitary years before Enoch arrives underscores that Enoch is not simply born but awaited — prepared for by a full life of generation leading up to him.
The number 162 is not explicitly symbolic in Catholic canonical tradition, but the structural symmetry of the genealogy — each patriarch's pre-son years, post-son years, and total — gives these figures a liturgical, almost chanted quality. St. Augustine in The City of God (Books XV–XVI) reads the entire Sethite genealogy not as mere chronicle but as the unfolding "city of God" in history: each birth is a new carrier of the promise, each generation a link in the providential chain that will eventually lead to Christ.
Genesis 5:19 — "Jared lived after he became the father of Enoch eight hundred years, and became the father of other sons and daughters."
The phrase "other sons and daughters" appears identically for each patriarch in the chapter and should not be passed over as mere filler. It insists on the fruitfulness of each generation — the human family expanding as God commanded in Genesis 1:28 ("Be fruitful and multiply"). For Catholic anthropology, this fruitfulness is not incidental to the theological narrative; it is part of the theological narrative. The Catechism teaches that "God himself is the author of marriage" (CCC 1603) and that the fecundity of the marital union is one of its essential ends (CCC 1652). Jared's anonymous sons and daughters populate the antediluvian world and are part of the fabric through which God's covenant promises will be woven toward Noah and ultimately toward Abraham.
The eight hundred years Jared lives after Enoch's birth also frames Enoch's own life (365 years, v. 23) within his father's continued existence. Jared almost certainly outlives Enoch, since Enoch is "taken" at 365 while Jared dies at 962, having fathered Enoch at 162 (meaning Jared would have been 527 when Enoch was taken). This is a poignant subtext: the father who gave the world Enoch watches, perhaps in wonder, as his son is removed from the earth without death.
Genesis 5:20 — "All of the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty-two years, then he died."
The closing formula — "then he died" — falls on Jared as it falls on every patriarch in this chapter, except Enoch. At 962 years, Jared holds the second-highest recorded lifespan in Scripture, exceeded only by Methuselah's 969 (v. 27). Yet the blunt finality of "then he died" is unsparing. For all his centuries, Jared is mortal. St. Paul's declaration that "death spread to all men because all sinned" (Romans 5:12) echoes through the rhythmic mortality of this chapter. The Fathers — particularly St. John Chrysostom in his Homilies on Genesis (Homily 21) — note that the long lifespans do not diminish death's reality but rather make its inevitability more striking: no accumulation of years defeats it. Jared's death thus keeps the reader oriented toward the only resolution to mortality: resurrection in Christ.
From a Catholic perspective, Genesis 5:18–20 participates in what the tradition calls the historia salutis — the history of salvation — a continuous divine action threading through seemingly ordinary human events. The Catechism affirms that God's revelation unfolds through "deeds and words having an inner unity" (CCC 53), and Jared's quiet generativity is precisely such a deed.
Catholic exegesis, following the literal-spiritual hermeneutic established by St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica I, q.1, a.10) and reaffirmed in Dei Verbum §12, holds that the literal sense is the foundation but not the ceiling of scriptural meaning. At the literal level, Jared is a faithful patriarch who begets and multiplies. At the spiritual level, he is a type of every parent, priest, and teacher whose greatest contribution to history is the child or disciple they form — Enoch being the supreme fruit of Jared's fatherhood.
The Church Fathers were struck by the antediluvian patriarchs' extreme longevity. Augustine (City of God XV.9–12) defends the historical reliability of these figures against pagan skeptics, arguing that God's purposes included granting early humanity extended years for the proper development of civilization and the accumulation of wisdom. He also notes a typological dimension: the long ages of the righteous patriarchs prefigure the eternal life that awaits those who "walk with God," as Enoch preeminently does.
Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini §29, reminds us that genealogies in Scripture are never merely administrative records but "theological syntheses of the history of salvation." Jared's three-verse entry is a concentrated instance of this: in begetting Enoch, he becomes, without knowing it, the father of the man Scripture identifies as a prototype of bodily assumption — a foreshadowing of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the resurrection of the body (CCC 966, 997).
Jared does not preach, perform miracles, or receive a divine vision. He fathers children — most famously one — and he dies. For the contemporary Catholic, this is a quietly revolutionary witness. In an age that prizes visible achievement and measurable legacy, Jared represents the profound vocation of what might be called hidden fidelity: faithfulness in the daily work of love, marriage, and parenthood whose fruits may not be recognizable within one's own lifetime.
Parents who raise children in the faith without seeing immediate results, godparents who pray for decades for a godchild's return to the Church, priests who serve small or struggling communities — all share in Jared's pattern. The greatest thing Jared ever did was have a son he did not fully understand, whose destiny exceeded anything Jared could have imagined. Catholic spirituality, particularly in the tradition of St. Thérèse of Lisieux's "little way," insists that holiness is often invisible to the one who practices it. Concretely, this passage invites Catholics to ask: Who is the Enoch I am raising, mentoring, or praying for? God's providence routinely works through the faithfulness of people who never see the full arc of what their love sets in motion.
Commentary