Genesis 5:18-20 “And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two years, and he begat Enoch: And Jared lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died.”
The name Jared (yered, H3382) comes from the root word (yârad, H3381) which means to descend or fall, although it can also mean to subdue or take down. The first time the root word of Jared’s name appears in the Bible is in Genesis 11:5 when God descends (yârad) "to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded,” and again in verse seven when He says “Go to, let us go down (yâred) […] Thus Jared’s name is a reminder of God’s personal intervention after man's fall. In all His descents, including both advents, God has ever descended to take hold of humanity, to relate and identify with us, to raise up descendants, to investigate, test and verify them, and ultimately to execute justice and judgment.
Have you ever seen someone get tackled and stay down without the tackler going down too? To take down Satan’s kingdom permanently, Jesus first came down from His throne and became a helpless baby. Born to poor parents, He bore the rigors of a life of manual labor and public service, and humbled himself unto death on the cross. It is only as we submit to Christ, invite Him to take hold of us, and our selves go down with Him in humble submission to God that we can permanently take down or subdue anything or anybody.
Curiously, in whatever areas Jared descended in his life, the number of years he let pass before starting a family was not one of them. Assuming that Enoch was his firstborn, Jared reverse the trend of rushing to fatherhood, and waited longer than anyone else had before him while going on to be the second oldest man who ever died. The long planning, patient waiting and preparation paid off in another way as well, because Enoch proved to be an exceptional man of God: a prophet and a living parable for how God can eradicate sin in a man and translate him to glory. Jared’s willingness to go down on his knees to seek God in repentance, to take down his own pride and selfishness, to humble himself in service and sacrifice and take his son with him through the whole process, prepared the way for Enoch’s going up to glory as a type of the risen Christ and of the redeemed.
So how about you? Will you be like the godly patriarch Jared and brave the descent with Christ? Will you choose to go down and be buried with Him that He might subdue unrighteousness? Will you take hold of your family and friends in the process so that Christ can raise you all up together in His triumph?
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