Again, some thought-swapping with Jeff, this time over at Joel Watt’s blog, has led me to post about Genesis.
Genesis 6:3 says, “And Jehovah said, My spirit will not always strive with Man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” Or, if we translate it according to Young’s theory about the verse, “And Jehovah said, My spirit will not always strive with Man, for in their erring they [are] flesh; yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.”
But regardless of which of the two translations we treat as authentic, there remains the question of what “his days shall be a hundred and twenty years” means. I’ve known people who assumed that this meant there were 120 years until the flood. I’ve known other people, such as Jeff, who thought it was a reference to God shortening human lifespans to 120 years. And E. W. Bullinger thinks it’s a reference to Adam, made 120 years before his death.
Today I’d like to examine whether it’s a reference to a shortening to 120 years of the lifespan. Here’s some lifespans:
Genesis 5:5 — Adam lived 930 years.
Genesis 5:8 — Seth lived 912 years.
Genesis 5:11 — Enosh lived 905 years.
Genesis 5:14 — Kenan lived 910 years.
Genesis 5:17 — Mahalalel lived 895 years.
Genesis 5:20 — Jared lived 962 years.
Genesis 5:23 — Enoch lived 365 years.
Genesis 5:27 — Methuselah lived 969 years.
Genesis 5:31 — Lamek lived 777 years.
(Genesis 6:3 — 120 year announcement)
Genesis 9:29 — Noah lived 950 years.
Genesis 11:10-11 — Shem lived 600 years.
Genesis 11:12-13 — Arfaxad lived 438 years.
Genesis 11:14-15 — Selah lived 433 years.
Genesis 11:16-17 — Eber lived 464 years.
Genesis 11:18-19 — Peleg lived 239 years.
Genesis 11:20-21 — Reu lived 239 years.
Genesis 11:22-23 — Serug lived 230 years.
Genesis 11:24-25 — Nahor lived 148 years.
Genesis 11:32 — Terah lived 205 years.
Genesis 23:1 — Sarah lived 127 years.
Genesis 25:7 — Abraham lived 175 years.
Genesis 35:8 — Isaac lived 180 years.
Genesis 47:28 — Jacob lived 147 years.
Genesis 50:26 — Joseph lived 110 years.
Job — Job lived 140 years after the death of his ten adult children. So if he started having children at about 25 years old, had fathered his youngest by 50, and then was 70 when his calamity occurred, his age would equal the 210 of Rabbinic tradition.
Exodus 6:16 — Levi lived 137 years.
Exodus 6:18 — Kohath lived 133 years.
Exodus 6:20 — Amram lived 137 years.
Deuteronomy 34:7 — Moses lived 120 years.
Joshua 24:29 — Joshua lived 110 years.
1 Samuel 14:15 — Eli lived 98 years.
So in the
Conclusion: For 17 generations after the Flood, lifespans remain more than 120 years. Therefore it doesn’t seem to me that God’s decree in Genesis 6:3 limited the human lifespan to 120 years. I’d either go with the Flood theory or the Adam theory, but I’m not sure which.
3 Comments
Thanks for bringing this up. I’ve been reading through the OT this time in the NLT. (My primary translation is HCSB and that is what I will read thereafter.)
Here is how it reads:
Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.”
So you can see how I came up with that conclusion at first reading (this time) without looking into it. What do you think of that translation of this verse?
Jeff
NET – completely different
So the LORD said, “My spirit will not remain in humankind indefinitely, since they are mortal. They will remain for 120 more years.”
What’s going on there in the NLT is overinterpretation. Even if they’re right about the meaning of the verse that’s overinterpretation. The practice of translating that way also makes it more difficult to sort through the merits of various interpretations, and it decreases people’s confidence in the text they’re reading when such disputes surface. For all the grief it gets, one of the reasons I like the KJV/NKJV is that it doesn’t pull these kinds of stunts. Ever. I think we’d all be a bit better off if translations stuck pretty close to literal, with interpretive stuff relegated to commentary where it belongs.
So the conclusion you came to was totally reasonable considering the translation you were reading from. It might even be reasonable otherwise.
As to the NET, they tend to do a better job than the NLT, especially because their for-the-internet focus on massive numbers of footnotes has made the translation process much more transparent. Not quite as transparent as I’d like, but more than any other mainstream-type translation I know of.
I like the HCSB. Back when I was preaching about every third week at a little church back in my hometown, a lady in the church had me borrow an HCSB for a while for me to see if it was a solid translation. It looked good to me. That’s all the contact I’ve had with it, though.
And now I’ve got all sorts of thoughts swirling about in my head about that NET rendering. I’d go into them here but I think I’ve got a whole post worth.
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