Genesis 5:2

Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

Male and female created he them. The Hebrew word 'aadaam (H120), like the Latin homo and the English word "person", is a generic term, including woman as well as man (Genesis 5:2; cf. Genesis 1:26; Genesis 2:7; Genesis 6:7; Numbers 31:25; Hebrew, Deuteronomy 4:32; Deuteronomy 8:3); but from being originally an appellative, it came, by frequent repetition, to be applied as the name of the first man, and in this application, according to Gesenius; it has commonly, in Hebrew, the prefix of the article. But this rule does not hold universally, as Genesis 3:17 presents a striking exception; and it cannot be doubted that, though without the article in this passage Adam designates the progenitor of mankind, both because the word is so used (Genesis 5:3), and because in several other parts of Scripture it clearly bears the same distinctive reference (Luke 3:38; Romans 5:14; 1 Corinthians 15:45; 1 Timothy 2:13-14; Jude 1:14).

The explanation just given is opposed equally to two theories of interpretation: the one, that in the first and second verses Adam is used collectively, not with reference to a particular individual, but to the human race, each country or climate having, according to this view, produced its own indigenous race of men, which sprang from its own prototypal Adam and Eve; and the other, that the Adam here mentioned was different from the first man, being the earliest chieftain of the Shemitic nations, and living in historic times - i:e., that there were different centers of creation and that all mankind, though similarly constituted, are not of the same race. With regard to the first of these theories, which received the apparent approval of Augustine, and which has been in recent times strenuously adopted by the author of 'The Genesis of the Earth and of Man,' and doubtingly supported by Dr. Pye Smith, it rests on the alleged obscurity, or rather, the ambiguous language, of the opening verses of this chapter, viewed in connection with Genesis 4:14-17, and Genesis 6:1-4. But we have already shown that two of these passages admit of an explanation perfectly consistent with the sole parentage of Adam; and we shall, in due course, prove that the other can receive no other interpretation than an exclusive reference to his descendants. The testimony of Scripture generally is most explicit on the point, and the researches of science, in archaeology, physiology, and philology, unitedly lead to the establishment of the same result, that all the families of mankind, however apparently diverse, have had a common origin, or sprung from the same ancestral pair.

The second theory does not claim the support of Scripture at all, but is founded on the alleged impossibility of knowing so much about the first man and his family history as this chapter indicates. 'For many generations,' says Rask, 'must have passed away, and the name of the first man (if he had a name) been buried in eternal oblivion long before our species could have arrived so far in intellectual attainments as to have a language containing words to denote the parts of time, their curiosity excited to observe its flight, and the desire of transmitting to posterity the observations they had made. What a length of time, then, must have elapsed between the first man and the Adam of this chapter, of the year of whose birth and death, of whose wife and children we have accounts!' This objection points to the favourite idea of sceptical philosophers, that man existed at first in a state of barbarism, from which, by dint of his own inherent energies, he gradually rose to the dignity, attainments, and habits of civilized life; whereas, it is the clear and unmistakable testimony of sacred history, corroborated by the concurring testimony of secular historians and travelers, that the original condition of the human creature was a social one; that he was endowed with the gifts of reason and language; and that the savage state was a second or subsequent one into which man fell through vice and voluntary degradation (see the notes at Genesis 1:1-31, p. 23, Colossians 2:1-23; Colossians 3:1-25:, p. 49, Colossians 1:1-29; Colossians 4:1-18:, Remarks).