GENERATION (jen'er-a'shiin), (Heb. ;1;741.
to-led-aw' ; Gr. yevccres. ghen'es-is, birth, nativity; Gr. -141,vill.ia, ghen'nizy-inah, offspring; Heb. dere; Gr. -yeviel,ghen-eh-ah', period).
1. Considerable obscurity attends the use of this word in the English Version, which arises from the translators having merged the various mean ings of the same original word, and even of sev eral different words, in one common term, 'gen eration, instead of bringing out the abstract and concrete ideas of the word. Thc following in stances seem to require the original words to be understood in some or other of their deriva tive senses—(Gen. :4). 'These are the genera tions,' tgledaw (Vulg. generationes), rather 'origin,' 'history,' etc. The same Greek words (Matt. i :1), are rendered 'genealogy,' etc., by recent transla tors: Campbell has 'lineage' (Gen. v:1), 'The book of the generations' is properly a family reg ister, a history of Adam.
The same words (Gen. xxxvii :2), mean a his tory of Jacob and his descendants: so also (Gen. vi:9; x:1), and elsewhere. (Gen. vii :1), 'In this generation' is evidently 'in this age.' (Gen. xv :6), 'In the fourth generation' is an instanceof the word in its concrete sense. ( Ps. xlix :19), 'The generation of his fathers'Geseniusrenders'the dwelling of his fathers,' .i c., the grave, and adduces (Is. xxxviii: 12 ; Ps. lxxiii:15), 'The generation of thy chil dren' is 'class,"order,"description;' as in Prov. xxx :11, 12, 13, 14. Is. liii :8, 'Who shall declare his generation?' is rendered, "Who can describe his length of life?" (Seiler), or "who of his con temporaries reflected?" (Gesenius and Rosenmul ler).
In thc New Testament, Matt. i:17, yevcal, gen erations is a series of persons, that is a succession from the sante stock. The passage in Matt. : 7, is well rendered by Doddridgc and others 'brood of vipers.' Matt. xxiv h -wed at;rn, means the generation or persons then living con temporary with Christ (see Macknight's Har mony for an illustration of this sense.) (Luke xvi :8), 'in thcir generations,' etc., wiser in re gard to their dealings with the 11ICII of their gen eration. Rosenmiiller gives. inter se. The pas sage found in Pet. ii:o, is a 'chosen people,' quo. ted from the Sept. Version of Is. xliii :20. The an cient Greeks, and, if we may credit FIerodotus and Diodorus Siculus, the Egyptians also, as signed a certain period to a generation. The Greeks reckoned three generations for every hun dred years. This is nearly the present computa tion. The ancient Hebrews also reckoned by the generation, and assigned different' spaces of time to it at different periods of their history. In the titne of Abraham it was one hundred years (comp. Gen. xv :in, 'in the fourth generation they
shall come hither'). This is explained in verse 13, and in Exod. xii :4o, to be four hundred years. Caleb was fourth in descent from Judah, and Moses and Aaron were fourth from Levi. In Deut. i :33; ii :14). Moses uscs the term for thirty eight years. In later times (Baruch vi., in thc Epistle of Jeremiah, verse 2) -yevia, generation, clearly means ten years. In Matt. i:17, it means a single descent from father to son. (Sec GENE A LOGY.) j. F. D. 2. (Gr. yevimp.a, ghen'nay-mah, Luke ii.i:7), pro geny, offspring, brood. "0 generation of vipers." GENESIS (Sept. revares, beginning), the first book of the Pentateuch, is, in Hebrew, called r";::.8.-.1?, ber-ee-sheeth', from the word with which it begins.
This venerable monument, with which the sa cred literature of the Hebrews commences, and which forms its real basis, is divided into two main parts; one universal, and one special. The most anciem history of the whole human race is contained in chapters i-xi., and the history of Israel's ancestors, the patriarchs, in chapters xii-1. These two parts are, however, so intimately con nected with each other that it would be erroneous to ascribe to the first merely the aim of furnishing a universal history. The chief aim which per vades the whole is to show how the theocratic in stitution subsequently founded by Moses was ren dered possible and necessary. The book, there fore, takes its starting-point from the original unity of the human race, and their original rela tion to God, and proceeds thence to the interrup tion of that relation by the appearance of sin, which gradually and progressively wrought an ex ternal and internal division in the human race for want of the principles of divine life which originally dwelt in man in general, but which had subsequently been preserved only among a small and separate race—a race which in progress of time became more and more isolated from all the other tribes of the earth, and enjoyed for a series of generations the special care, blessing, and guid ance of the Lord. The Mosaical theocracy ap pears, therefore, by the general tenor of Genesis. partly as a restoration of the original relation to God, of the communion of man with God, and partly as an institution which had been prepar ing by God himself through a long series of manifestations of his power, justice, and love. Genesis thus furnishes us with the primary view and notion of the whole of the theocracy, and may therefore be considered as the historical foundation without which the subsequent history of the covenant people would be incomplete and unintelligible.