Adam, Seth, Enosh: The writer does not mention Adam’s first two sons, Cain and Abel. Only the descendant whose line leads to the people of Israel is mentioned. The Hebrew name Adam is also the word for “man” and “mankind.” So also is the name Enosh, which means “man” and “human being.” The original readers would have known who Adam, Seth, and Enosh were, but many readers today will not be familiar with the account in Gen 5. It will be better to make explicit here and in the following two verses that the first person named is the father and the next person is the son in the sequence of names in these verses. Good News Translation provides one possible model for doing this (similarly the Brazilian common language version [Nova Tradução na Linguagem de Hoje]). This information may also be made clear by saying “Descendants of Adam: Seth, Enosh…” (Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente) or “The line of descent from Adam to Noah: Seth, Enosh…” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch).

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on 1-2 Chronicles, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2014. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .