Adam, Seth, Enosh…
— 1 Chronicles 1:1
This is the opening verse of the book of 1 Chronicles — a book believed to have been written by Ezra the priest following the seventy-year exile of the children of Israel in Babylon. As the name suggests, Chronicles goes about the task of chronicling the generations of God’s people, beginning here with Adam and working all the way through to the period after the exile.
Why Ezra Wrote This
The purpose behind Ezra’s writing was to remind the children of Israel of who they were and to whom they belonged. During the exile, both the northern and southern kingdoms had been carried off into foreign nations — Assyria and Babylon — where they were immersed in entirely different cultures, gods, and ways of life. Over time, something devastating had happened: they had lost their identity. They had lost their connection to the story of God’s people. It could no longer be clearly said that these were the chosen generation, the people set apart from the beginning of time.
And so what Ezra does, in order to strengthen and restore the people, is to remind them of who they are — by reminding them of where they came from. He traces their ancestry, reconnecting them to their fathers and their forefathers.
All the Way Back to Adam
What is striking is how far back Ezra goes. He does not begin with Jacob, from whom the nation took its name:
He said, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.”
— Genesis 32:28
He does not even begin with Abraham, the father of the faith, called out from the land of the Chaldeans:
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great.”
— Genesis 12:1-2
Instead, Ezra goes all the way back to Adam — the father of the entire human race:
Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
— Genesis 2:7
The reason for this is deliberate and profound. When the genealogy is traced back to Adam, the connection leads directly to God — because God is the one who created Adam. That line from Adam flows to Abraham, to Jacob, to the children of Israel, through the exile, and out the other side. Their identity was never rooted in their nation or their culture — it was rooted in God Himself.
The Importance of Identity
What Ezra understood is that identity is foundational. If you want to destroy a person’s sense of worth, purpose, and direction, one of the most effective ways to do it is to disconnect them from their origins. When the children of Israel went into exile and began absorbing the gods and cultures of foreign nations, they became disconnected from their God — and with that disconnection came a loss of identity and purpose.
Ezra was doing nothing less than reconnecting them to God Himself through the story of where they came from.
The evangelist Luke recognised the same importance when writing his account of the gospel to the Gentiles. He traces the genealogy of Jesus in a strikingly similar manner to Ezra — all the way back through the generations until he arrives at:
…the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
— Luke 3:38
Luke’s genealogy connects Jesus directly back to Adam and to God — making the point unmistakably clear that Jesus is indeed the Son of God, the one in whom the broken connection between humanity and its Creator is restored.
Finding Our Identity Again
The reason the human race is so lost, so corrupt, so dead in sin, and so blind to its own worth and purpose — is precisely this disconnection. Just like the children of Israel in exile, we try to find our identity everywhere except the one place where it can actually be found. We look to ourselves, to culture, to the spirit of the age, to the approval of others — and we always come up empty, because that is not where our identity lies.
But when we come to Jesus in repentance and faith — when we receive Him by believing in His finished work on the cross, His life, death, and resurrection — we are placed into Christ. And in Christ, we are reconnected. We are restored to our origins. We are brought back to our Creator.
For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.
— Colossians 1:13
When we struggle to find ourselves, may we look to Jesus — and remember that in Him, we have been placed into the family of God. The Creator of the universe is our Father. And that truth alone is enough to rekindle every sense of purpose, worth, and meaning we could ever need.
Amen.
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