Adam and Eve’s Family Tree: Their Children and Descendants to Noah

Adam and Eve had three sons whom Genesis names, and daughters whom it does not. The sons were Cain, Abel and Seth; Genesis adds that Adam “begat sons and daughters” (Genesis 5:4). Abel left no recorded children. Cain’s line runs to Lamech and his four children (Genesis 4:17–22), and Seth’s runs ten generations from Adam to Noah (Genesis 5).

Adam and Eve’s family tree at a glance

Below Adam and Eve the tree has four branches. Names follow the King James Version; modern translations such as the NIV and ESV spell four of them Methushael, Enosh, Kenan and Mahalalel, and write Tubal-cain with a hyphen.

• Cain and a wife Genesis does not name: Enoch, then Irad, Mehujael, Methusael and Lamech. Lamech married Adah and Zillah. Adah bore Jabal and Jubal; Zillah bore Tubalcain, and Genesis names his sister, Naamah.
• Abel: killed by his brother Cain; no children recorded.
• Seth: Enos, then Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech and Noah. Noah’s sons were Shem, Ham and Japheth.
• Other sons and daughters, born after Seth and not named in Genesis (Genesis 5:4).

Who were Adam and Eve’s children?

Cain was the firstborn. “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground” (Genesis 4:1–2). After both brothers brought offerings and God accepted Abel’s, “Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him” (Genesis 4:8). Abel died without children, as far as Genesis records, so his branch of the tree ends with him.

Seth was born when Adam was 130. Genesis says Adam “begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth” (Genesis 5:3), and at his birth Eve said that “God … hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew” (Genesis 4:25). When Seth’s own son Enos was born, “then began men to call upon the name of the LORD” (Genesis 4:26). Seth is the son whose line Genesis follows to Noah, and the son through whom Luke traces Jesus back to Adam.

Genesis gives no number for Adam and Eve’s children; how many there may have been, and how they came to have children of their own, is answered in how Adam and Eve’s sons had children. The old Jewish and Christian answer is that in the first generation brothers married sisters, long before the law of Moses forbade it (Leviticus 18:9).

Who were Cain’s descendants?

After killing Abel, “Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch” (Genesis 4:16–17). Genesis then lists his line in six verses.

Lamech is the first man in the Bible with two wives, and he is remembered for a short song to them in which he boasts of killing a man who wounded him: “If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold” (Genesis 4:24). Genesis gives no ages for anyone in Cain’s line, and it follows the line no further than Lamech’s children. Counting Adam as the first generation, Lamech is the seventh.

Who was in the line from Adam to Noah?

Genesis 5 opens, “This is the book of the generations of Adam” (Genesis 5:1), and for each father it gives three numbers: his age when the named son was born, the years he lived afterwards, and his age at the end. These are the figures of the Hebrew text that the King James Version translates.

Noah’s row comes from Genesis 5:32, where he is five hundred years old and “Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth”, and from Genesis 9:28–29, which gives him 350 years after the Flood and 950 in all; 450 is the difference. For every father from Adam to Lamech, Genesis adds that he “begat sons and daughters”, so the named son is one child among several in each generation. Each father’s entry from Adam to Lamech ends “and he died”, except Enoch’s: “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him” (Genesis 5:24). The Letter of Jude calls him “the seventh from Adam” (Jude 14). When Lamech named his son Noah, he said, “This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed” (Genesis 5:29).

The same line opens the First Book of Chronicles, with other spellings, as a bare list of names: “Adam, Sheth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalaleel, Jered, Henoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth” (1 Chronicles 1:1–4).

Was Adam alive when Noah was born?

No. Adding the fathers’ ages at their sons’ births puts Noah’s birth 1,056 years after Adam was created, 126 years after Adam died at 930. Adam did live to see Lamech, Noah’s father, born, and died when Lamech was 56. Noah was born 14 years after Seth died. Methuselah died in the year of the Flood, when Noah was six hundred (Genesis 7:6), and Lamech five years before it.

The Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, gives different numbers. In it Adam is 230 when Seth is born, and five other fathers are also a hundred years older at their sons’ births, while most lifespans stay the same; Lamech lives 753 years instead of 777. The New American Bible’s notes say simply that “there are some differences in the numbers in the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.”

Why are there two Enochs and two Lamechs?

Because the two lines use some of the same names. Cain’s son is Enoch (Genesis 4:17), and so is Jared’s son in Seth’s line (Genesis 5:18). Methusael’s son is Lamech (Genesis 4:18), and so is Methuselah’s son (Genesis 5:25). Several other names sound alike: Cain and Cainan, Irad and Jared, Mehujael and Mahalaleel, Methusael and Methuselah.

Genesis keeps the two pairs apart by their fathers and their stories. Cain’s Enoch has a city named after him, while Seth’s Enoch walks with God; Cain’s Lamech boasts of revenge, while Seth’s Lamech names Noah in hope of comfort. Augustine read the chapters as the record of two families, “recorded in separate tables, the one line descending from the fratricide Cain, the other from Seth.” The New American Bible’s notes, published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, point out that “Most of the names in the series are the same as the names in Cain’s line” or spelled differently, and they read Genesis 5 as tracing the line “through Seth rather than through Cain.”

Who were the wives in Adam and Eve’s family tree?

Genesis names four women before the Flood: Eve, Lamech’s wives Adah and Zillah, and Naamah, Tubalcain’s sister. Cain’s wife has no name in Genesis, and no wife in Seth’s line is named, Noah’s included.

The Book of Jubilees, a Jewish retelling of Genesis from the second century BC that the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church counts among the books of its Old Testament, names the missing wives. In it Cain married his sister Awan, the traditional answer to who Cain married, and every man from Seth to Noah has a wife. Seth married Azura, Enos married Noam and Cainan married Mualeleth, all of them their sisters. From Mahalaleel on, each married a daughter of his father’s brother: Mahalaleel married Dinah, Jared married Baraka, Enoch married Edna, Methuselah married another Edna, Lamech married Betenos, and Noah married Emzara. Other Jewish tradition gives Noah a different wife. Rashi, the medieval commentator, says of Naamah, Tubalcain’s sister, “She was Noah’s wife”, citing the midrash Genesis Rabbah.

How does Adam’s family tree reach Jesus?

Through Seth and Noah. Genesis continues with “the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood” (Genesis 10:1), and Shem’s line runs on through Genesis 11 to Terah, who “begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran” (Genesis 11:26). The Gospel of Luke traces Jesus’ ancestry backwards and ends with the names of Genesis 5: “Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God” (Luke 3:38). Each generation from Noah down to Jesus is set out in the genealogy from Noah to Jesus in Luke 3.

Related reading

• How did Adam and Eve’s sons have children?
• Who were Adam and Eve’s grandchildren?
• How old were Adam and Eve?
• What did Adam and Eve look like?
• How many years from Adam to Jesus?
• How many wives did Noah have?