Hi Craig,
You wrote: I'm curious about the long ages reported in Genesis 5 and 11. Has
this been discussed on the list before?
A while back we discussed this subject matter a bit. When we did I wrote the
following:
The long lives of Adam and some of his descendants were certainly very
unusual for men in their day. Could it be that the writer of Genesis made a
point to record the length of their lives because they were so unusually
long?
I think the Bible itself gives us indications that this is the case. For
instance, the writer of Genesis makes a point to tell us that Noah's three
sons who accompanied him on the ark were all born after Noah was 500 years
old. (Gen. 5:32) And he tells us that Noah was 600 years old when the flood
began. (Gen. 7:6) And the writer of Genesis only records an unusually long
life for only one of Noah's sons, Shem. (Gen.11:11) Thus the writer of
Genesis seems to have made a point of allowing us to understand that Noah's
other two sons may have had lives of normal length.
The writer of Genesis also seems to say that God Himself told Noah that He
intended for men to be "mortal," with life spans limited to about "a hundred
and twenty years." (Gen. 6:3) To me this seems to indicate that God gave only
a few of Adam's descendants extremely long lives.
I believe this was the case for a few reasons. One is the math of the whole
thing. Let's assume that most of Adam's descendants had lives as long as
those mentioned in Genesis 5. If that were true, and if most of them produced
children at normal rates for much of their unusually long lives, in the
sixteen hundred years between the creation of Adam and the flood of Noah's
day there would have been an awful lot more of Adam's descendants around than
could have been contained in the land of Noah to be drowned by the flood. The
reason human population growth is always relatively slow is because people
die after only a few score years and because they only produce children for
an even much shorter period of time.
But let's assume, as some have argued, that all of Adam's early descendants
had extremely long lives, and that most of Adam's normally extremely long
lived offspring died unnatural early deaths due to the violence that was
prevalent in the land of Noah prior to the flood. If that was the case then
maybe the population explosion that would have normally resulted if Adam's
descendants all normally had extremely long lives might have not taken place.
But that still does not solve the population problem that would have occurred
if the long lives referred to in Genesis were common to all of Adam's
descendants. For Genesis 11 tells us that Noah's descendants also had life
spans which were much longer than normal, and they had these extremely long
lives for hundreds of years after the flood. If that was true of all of
Noah's descendants a similar population explosion would have occurred in the
Middle East between the time of Noah and Abraham. But historians tell us such
a population explosion never happened in ancient times.
So, I can only conclude that God must have only given a few specially
selected descendants of Adam and Noah extraordinarily long lives. If this is
true He must have done so for a reason. Why would He have done such a thing?
After Adam, from my count, the Bible records only 24 people as dying at an
age beyond their 120s. With this in mind, I believe God may have
supernaturally extended the lives of these 24 people to numerically symbolize
something.
24 is 2 x 12 and brings to mind the 24 elders in Revelation. I believe 12 is
the number the Bible uses to represent God's people. In Old Testament times
there were 12 tribes. Thus 12 may be used to represent all of God's faithful
Old Covenant people. In New Testament times there were 12 apostles. Thus 12
may also represent all of God's faithful New Covenant people. Together these
two 12s, totaling 24, may well represent all of God's faithful people
throughout time. (I believe the number 144,000 in Revelation - 12 x 12 x 1000
- may be a variation on this same theme.) By God supernaturally postponing
the deaths of 24 people, He may have been symbolically pointing to the fact
that He will one day eternally extend the lives of all of His people.
I believe God probably extended the lives of some of these 24 people so the
years of their lives would reach certain specific numbers for other symbolic
purposes. Abraham, for instance, lived to be 175, which is 1/40 of 7000
years. Noah was exactly 600 when the flood began. And he lived exactly
another 350 years. I believe both of these numbers probably were meant to
have strong symbolic significance. God took Enoch (though Enoch did not die)
when he was 365 years old, the same number of years as the number of days in
a year.
Mike
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