Hi.
Quick question - without doing any real research on my own.
It is without a doubt a lot of research and I did most of my researching years ago when I was younger and more willing to do such research.
It was so demanding of a task that it made so I never forget the findings ever after.
Imagine everything that has happened from the year 1061 until now. You would have been alive to witness it all if you lived until Noah's age
My understanding is that because of the "original sin" which is still ongoing - then each of our lives throughout all of humanity are consumed with suffering and sorrows and pain, therefore to live some 950 years would be horrible and such a person would pray for death after the first 120 years.
Historical records tell us that from 1061 till today that the life of mankind has been a never ending succession of wars and cruelties and barbarism, and that is what a life of 950 years would have witnessed.
God was giving mankind a blessing by limiting our individual lives to just 120 long miserable years.
Good points from Scripture VoteJP!
Indeed, mankind lived into the hundreds of years in age as stated in the Bible.
I thank you for that acknowledgement and since I do not often get such a compliment then I figure to add some more info because I myself see this subject as an interesting subject from the Bible.
If we go just by what the Bible itself says and exclude any scientific or rationality claims then the Bible explain it as this:
"And Yahweh said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." Genesis 6:3-4.
So here God changed the life of mankind down to 120 years.
That was long after the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and it was said just before Noah's Ark and the Bible tells that for God "one day is like a thousand years" per 2 Peter 3:8.
So Adam lived 930 years, Genesis 5:5, which means that Adam did die in the same "thousand year day" as he ate the forbidden fruit, Genesis 2:17.
So when God said He changed the living age of humanity down to 120 years, then per the Bible record the age of death is recorded as growing shorter and shorter with Noah living the longest at 950 years, until some generations later where Joseph died at 110 year old and there is where the long life ends per the Bible.
So according to the Bible then people did live hundreds of years but God changed it down to a 120 year life span.
It also means that according to the Bible then per "generation" is 120 years each.
The Bible actually shows why God made the transition of a longer life down to the shorter 120 year life span as it declares that "
Haran died before his father Terah" per
Genesis 11:28.
That is an odd and peculiar verse, because the text obviously values the ancestry as in "begat, begat, begat ..." so in
verse 28 the father dying before his son was a big deal and recorded as such into the text, and the reason is that it was the age limit being lowed to the 120 years with the son dying before his father.
The son dying before the father does not mean much now-a-days but at that time if God had done it instantly then Noah would not have lived the 950 years when it was needed for Noah to live so long, and if God changed the age limit too fast then Noah would have lived longer then his children and his grand children and beyond.
So if one believes the Bible to be a view of God too then this shows us a reasoning as to why God would make a new order (120 year limit) but then God takes time to fully implement that order out of a consideration for how it would affect humanity and individuals.
Another add-on to my research is that God told Abraham that his descendants would be afflicted for 400 years and then return within the "
fourth (4th) generation" per
Genesis 15:13-16, and as we see a "generation" means 120 years as in one (1) life span, and the Bible declares that the children of Israel came out of captivity in Egypt at 430 years,
Exodus 12:40-42, and then they spent another 40 years in the wilderness, per
Numbers 32:13.
So 120 x 4 = 480, which means God delivered the children of Israel within ten (10) years shy of the full "fourth generation".
God made a close cut there.
ffice
