The Birth of Noach (Noah)
Lemech, aged 182, fathers a son named Noach—"this one will comfort us in our toil"—the tenth generation from Adam.
Noach is born in AM 1056, when his father Lemech was a hundred and eighty-two—126 years after Adam's death and 14 after Shet's. He is tenth from Adam and the last name in the genealogy of chapter 5; the list ends with him because history now narrows to a single story.
His father names him with an explanation: "this one will comfort us in our work and the toil of our hands, from the ground which the Lord has cursed". The sages link this to a change in farming itself—before Noach the soil was worked by hand. The decisive description comes later: "Noach was a righteous man, whole in his generations; with God did Noach walk"—a phrase used before him only of Chanoch.
The words "in his generations" became a famous dispute. Some sages hear praise: he stayed righteous among the wicked, and in a righteous age would have been greater still. Others hear a limit: righteous only by the standard of his time. The argument is really about how any person should be measured.
How we know
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereishit 5:28–29 — the birth, the name, and Lemech’s words “this one will comfort us”
- Bereishit 6:9 — “righteous, whole in his generations; Noach walked with Elohim”
- Bereishit 7:6 — Noach was 600 at the Flood — hence the birth year 1056
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bereishit Rabbah 25:2 — how Noach “comforted”: the change in working the land
- Sanhedrin 108a — the dispute: praise or reproach in the words “in his generations”
Rishonim
- Rashi on Bereishit 6:9 — both readings of that dispute in brief
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.