Adam (אָדָם) is the first human being, formed by God from the dust of the adamah — the ground — and given life through the divine breath. His name carries the double resonance of his origin: adam from adamah, the creature named for the clay that formed him. Placed in the Garden of Eden to work and guard it, he is given a single prohibition: not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
When Adam and Chava transgress this boundary, the consequences reshape all of human history: exile from the garden, painful labor, mortality. He names his wife Chava — "mother of all living" — and together they have Kayin, Hevel, and after Abel's murder, Shet. Through Shet's line the genealogy flows unbroken to Enosh, Chanoch, Metushelach, Noach, and eventually to Avraham.
Adam lives 930 years and fathers many sons and daughters. He stands at the root of every family line in the Hebrew Bible. In the New Testament genealogy of Luke 3, the line runs from Yeshua back through David, Abraham, and Noah, and terminates: "the son of Shet, the son of Adam, the son of God."
