Seth שת
Adam's third son, ancestor of the line from Adam to Noach
After Hevel's murder a third son is born to Adam and Chava. His mother names him Shet—"for God has granted me other seed in place of Hevel". The name carries the sense of "setting a foundation": not a replacement for the dead, but a new beginning.
The Torah stresses that Shet was born "in his likeness, after his image"—the same words used of Adam's own creation. The line of Kayin ends in the Flood; the line of Shet reaches Noach, and through him Avraham, Moshe and David. By the Torah's reckoning every living person descends from Shet.
His own life is long and outwardly uneventful: born in the year 130, father of Enosh in 235, he dies in 1042 at the age of 912. Idolatry begins in his son's generation, yet Shet himself is remembered among the righteous of the pre-Flood world.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereishit 4:25–5:8 — the birth after 130 years and the 912 years of life
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bereishit Rabbah 23 — “in his own image” — the righteous line
- Seder Olam Rabbah 1 — the years within the continuous count
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.