Genesis 5:23

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty-five years.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Highlights

Septuagint runs longer here — compare

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חֲנ֑וֹךְ

Chănôwk

H2585

“Hanoch”

Noun, Proper

Appears 16× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 4:17

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H2596

TWOT: None

Hanoch = "dedicated" - eldest son of Cain (noun proper masculine) - son of Jared and father of Methuselah whom God took home to heaven without dying (noun proper locative) - the city which Cain built and named after himself (noun proper locative) - a son of Midian, the third child (noun proper masculine) - the eldest son of Reuben (noun proper masculine)

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

10: words
9: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is חֲנ֑וֹךְ Hanoch H2585 — appearing just 16 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

חֲנ֑וֹךְ Hanoch H2585 occurs in 15 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

1 verb
5 nouns
4 adjectives

Verb forms

וַיְהִ֖י Qal · Sequential Imperfect

Repetition

A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

שָׁנָ֔ה year H8141 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 10 words from the Hebrew and 14 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the Septuagint runs noticeably longer here. See the side-by-side →

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 10 Hebrew tokens and 10 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

Here the Septuagint runs noticeably longer than the Hebrew — LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) 14 words vs World English Bible 10. A rough length comparison of the two English translations, not a word-level alignment — read both below.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Genesis 5:23 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַיְהִ֖י כָּל יְמֵ֣י חֲנ֑וֹךְ חָמֵ֤שׁ וְשִׁשִּׁים֙ שָׁנָ֔ה וּשְׁלֹ֥שׁ מֵא֖וֹת שָׁנָֽה

all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty-five years.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Genesis 5:23 Septuagint · lemma form

καί γίγνομαι πᾶς ὁ ἡμέρα ενωχ τριακόσιοι ἑξήκοντα πέντε ἔτος

And all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty and five years.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

On this verse, John Gill's Exposition discusses the Septuagint’s reading. Read the note in Commentary ↓

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וַהֲוָה כָּל יוֹמֵי חֲנוֹךְ תְּלַת מְאָה וְשִׁתִּין וַחֲמֵשׁ שְׁנִין

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וַהֲווֹ כָּל יוֹמֵי חֲנוֹךְ עִם דַיְירֵי אַרְעָא תְּלַת מְאָה וְשִׁיתִּין וַחֲמֵשׁ שְׁנִין

And all the days of Hanok with the sojourners of the earth were three hundred and sixty-five years.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Genesis 5:23 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Gen 5:23 And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:

Ver. 23. All the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years.] So many years only lived Enoch as there be days in the year. But what he wanted in the shortening of his time, was made up in his son Methuselah, the longest living man. Besides that, God took him to a better place, transplanted {Son 6:2} {a} him, as it were out of the kitchen garden into his heavenly paradise; which was not more to his own benefit, than to the comfort of the other patriarchs that survived him, before the fear of death, and the crosses of life. Seth in Enoch (whatever discouragement they had in Abel’s death) they had a hidden demonstration that "there is a reward for the righteous," and that it is not altogether in vain to walk with God.

{a} “To gather lilies,” i.e., to transplant his people into heaven.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

23. and all the days, &c.] Concerning Enoch the following points deserve attention: (1) He is the seventh in the genealogy, cf. Jdg_1:14; (2) by comparison with the lives of his fathers and descendants, the length of his life is immensely curtailed; (3) the number of his years agrees with the number of days in the solar year; (4) owing to the closeness of his walk with God he was believed to have been “translated” into Heaven. With this summary must be compared the account of the seventh king in the antediluvian Babylonian Dynasty, Enmeduranki by name, who received revelations from the Sun-god Samas, and was the builder of the town of Sippar, which was dedicated to the Sun-god.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

And Lamech lived, after he begat Noah, five hundred ninety and five years,.... The Septuagint version is five hundred and sixty five; and the Samaritan version six hundred:

and begat sons and daughters; of which we have no account.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Genesis, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 10 words (9 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Chănôwk (“Hanoch”). The Greek Septuagint runs longer here. A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “Hanoch” (Chănôwk) contribute to the verse as a whole?
Genesis 4:17 shares the word «Hanoch» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
“year” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
Compared with the Hebrew, the Septuagint runs longer here. What questions does that raise?
These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
The verb «וַיְהִ֖י» is Qal Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

This verse counts 10 Hebrew ↔ 10 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 6 words in this verse.
“year” occurs 2× in this single verse.
9 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 10 words in this verse.