The list
Genesis 5 is a family record. A father, how long he lived, the son he had, and on to the next. Ten men, from the first man to the flood.
Most readers skip it. But every Hebrew name has a meaning, and in Genesis the Bible often tells you why a child got his name. Seth was named because "God hath given me another seed" (Genesis 4:25). Noah was named because "This same shall comfort us" (Genesis 5:29).
So read the meanings.
The ten names
These are the Douay-Rheims spellings. In most Bibles: Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Enoch, Methuselah and Noah.
The sentence
Now read them straight through:
"Man is appointed mortal sorrow. The blessed God shall come down, teaching. His death shall bring the despairing rest."
The fall of man. God coming down. His death. Rest for the hopeless. It's the whole story of the Bible, hidden in a list of names written thousands of years before Christ.
His death shall bring
One name came true in a way you can check with arithmetic.
Mathusala, or Methuselah, means "his death shall bring." Bring what? Look at the numbers in Genesis itself:
And how long did Mathusala live?
"And all the days of Mathusala were nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and he died."
Genesis 5:27
He died the year the flood came. His death brought it. And his was the longest life in the whole Bible.
The man who didn't die
One more. The seventh name, Henoch, "teaching," is the one man on the list who never died:
"And he walked with God, and was seen no more: because God took him."
Genesis 5:24
Why this is a big deal
Ten fathers named ten sons over more than a thousand years. None of them could have planned a sentence across the whole family line.
But the sentence is there, and it's the gospel: God shall come down, and his death shall bring the despairing rest.