The Births of Kenan, Mahalalel and Yered
The fourth, fifth and sixth generations from Adam: Kenan (325), Mahalalel (395) and Yered (460)—links in the chain of Genesis 5.
Genesis 5 reads like a ledger: Enosh lived 90 years and fathered Kenan; Kenan lived 70 and fathered Mahalalel; Mahalalel lived 65 and fathered Yered. Added up, these give the years 325, 395 and 460. Each lived close to nine centuries—Kenan 910, Mahalalel 895, Yered 962, the longest life after Methuselah's.
The Torah says nothing else about them, which is itself eloquent: fifteen centuries lie between Adam and the Flood, described in fewer words than a single day at Sinai. But the names speak. "Mahalalel" means "one who praises God"—in an age when, per Maimonides, worship was already sliding toward the stars. "Yered" comes from the root "to descend", and the midrash ties it to a decline that began in his days. These quiet centuries are what the verdict on the generation of the Flood will finally rest upon.
How we know
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereishit 5:9–20 — the years of three generations of the line of Shet
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bereishit Rabbah 26 — the discussion of the “sons of Elohim” in Yered’s generation
- Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 22 — “in his days they came down” — the reading of the name Yered
- Seder Olam Rabbah 1 — the addition of ages into a continuous chronology
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.