And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
All the days of Adam amounted to nine hundred and thirty years and then ended in death, after the regular order of the early records that give the length of a patriarch's life and its close. His age belongs to the nearly thousand-year lifespans from Adam to Noah, lived in remarkable health on the appointed food of vegetables, fruits and grains, and closed as the natural death of a sound man full of years without sickness, feebleness or suffering. That length and vigor came from a perfect creation endowed with about tenfold present vitality and from the life-sustaining power of the tree of life, which kept death away while eaten and continued its effect in Adam and his early descendants. Since the fall the race has steadily decreased from near a thousand years to about seventy years, under the curse and accumulated transgression and violation of natural law, hastened when flesh became food after the Flood. Through those centuries Adam lived in sorrow, humility and continual repentance over the sin that brought misery on his posterity, and used his long overlap with later generations to teach God's law and the promise of a coming Saviour.
Long Life Before Flood
The record gives the full measure of Adam's life as nine hundred and thirty years, and then notes that he died, following the regular pattern of reporting that a patriarch lived many years and then died. His nine hundred and thirty years belongs to the nearly thousand-year lives of the patriarchs from Adam to Noah, who with few exceptions lived almost a millennium, including Noah at nine hundred and fifty years, with an average of nine hundred and twelve years across nine generations before the Flood. His death was the natural death of a healthy man in good old age, full of years, old and full of days, with only the measure of life and its cessation given and no mention of sickness, local disease, feebleness, prolonged suffering, bodily pain, epidemic, congenital defect, or agonizing death. The simple words for his dying mean death not by unnatural disease but in full health when the springs of life grew weary and stood still.
For more than sixteen hundred years from Adam to Noah people lived on vegetables, fruits, and grains in remarkably good health, with no blind, deaf, crippled, or imbecile births, no fevers, dyspepsia, gout, or consumption, no natural death in infancy, childhood, or early manhood, and a son dying before his father so rare it was specially recorded. Adam lived as a vegetarian in health without dyspepsia or gout, showing that flesh formed no part of the food appointed in Eden. The long ages show humanity was created perfect in bodily organs, defiant of heat and cold and drought and humidity, and surcharged with vital force, with about ten times more vital force than now, without which known violations of health and life would have extinguished the race altogether. Physical size and strength were proportioned to length of days, and Adam in Eden was a noble, grand, beautiful, perfectly symmetrical specimen of perfect work, intellectually vast through walking and talking with God and communing face to face with His Son and with holy angels and the highest intelligences. Before the Flood men had sound minds in sound bodies with such mental and physical strength that at one hundred they were considered but youths and came upon the stage of action from sixty to one hundred, having nearly one thousand years to acquire knowledge in intellect, skill, art, and science, so that the present feeble age bears no comparison to them and the belief in present progress in true knowledge is a delusion.
Adam's greatly lengthened life came from the tree of life, which had power to keep life going so that while he ate from it he could not die, and its life-giving power remained in him and was passed to his descendants, so that lives before the Flood were made long. Only a few generations after Adam's access to that tree human existence in Noah's day was still measured by centuries with much early vigor and rare powers to plan and execute. Since the fall the race has gone downward with a steady decrease from nearly a thousand years, as disease passed from parents to children and continued violation of the laws of life increased disease and mortality. After Noah lifespans tapered gradually to between one and two hundred years by the Egyptian bondage, to an average of seventy years in David's time about halfway from Adam to the present, and to about thirty years in Europe and America and twenty years in great cities, contrasted with seventy years as typical in later times and the sickness and mortality of the present generation. The fall from that lifespan to the present brief existence marked with disease, decrepitude, and imbecility came from the original curse with its accumulated weight of transgression and violation of natural law, accelerated from the time Noah and his sons of necessity ate flesh as food, after which the race rapidly declined. The early generations had such great vitality that the effects of corrupt appetites, passions, and violations of physical law were not sensibly felt across the race until more than a thousand years after humanity's beginning, requiring more than two thousand years of combined violations by appetite and ignorance, and ages more afterward, to drain human energies and breed present distempers.
Sorrow, Repentance, and Death
Through some hundreds of years, extending to nearly a thousand years, Adam lived in sorrow, humility, contrition, and continual repentance, teaching his children and grandchildren the fear of the Lord while bearing bitter reproach for the sin that brought misery upon his posterity.
At first the sentence of death filled him with horror as a dreadful calamity. It was first made real to him in the human family when his own son Cain slew his brother Abel. That murder filled him with the bitterest remorse for his own transgression, with grief at being deprived of Abel and at looking upon Cain as a murderer under the curse God pronounced upon him, with self-reproach for his first great transgression, with entreaty for pardon through the promised sacrifice, and with a deep sense of God's wrath for his crime committed in Paradise. He was bowed down with anguish as one doubly bereaved by Abel's death and Cain's rejection.
After beholding for nearly a thousand years the general and wide-spreading corruption that would finally provoke God to destroy the inhabitants of the earth by a flood, the sentence of death pronounced upon him by his Maker no longer appeared terrible. It looked just and merciful in God to bring to an end a miserable life of suffering and sorrow.
Teaching Future Generations
Adam lived nearly one thousand years among the people before the Flood, himself witnessing the events of that long span. Having conversed with God and angels in Eden, he knew God's law and communicated that knowledge to them. He used his long life by teaching, by example, and by humble obedience to all God's requirements to exalt God's law. He sought to turn his posterity from transgression to a life of obedience and faith in a Saviour to come. Formed in God's image, instructed by God in all wisdom pertaining to the material world, and having learned the history of creation from the Creator, he imparted his knowledge to his descendants. With great physical and mental vigor and strong memory, able to grasp, retain, and transmit what was communicated without books or written records, his presence among them for hundreds of years, with seven generations living contemporaneously and consulting together, gave the antediluvians unrivaled advantages for acquiring and preserving religious and scientific knowledge.
The chronology shows Adam lived long enough to overlap with later patriarchs, for Adam lived until Methuselah was 243 years old. This long overlap allowed knowledge of what God had taught Adam to be passed directly through successive generations, from Adam to Methuselah, then to Shem, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. During the centuries of his life and the lives that followed, righteous men such as Seth, Enoch, Noah, Methuselah and others kept the knowledge of God continually before the world. The people despised that truth, the imaginations of their hearts were evil and only evil continually, and secret societies were formed to work in darkness to do violence. Because of that corruption the Lord destroyed that long-lived race by a flood.
The early history of Abel, Seth, Enoch and Noah belongs to this period later taught to Daniel and his companions. The truth about those first generations was handed down by human lips passing down the line from one generation to another and was cherished. With that transmission the image of God was engraved upon the heart.
All the days of Adam amounted to nine hundred and thirty years and then ended in death, after the regular order of the early records that give the length of a patriarch's life and its close. His age belongs to the nearly thousand-year lifespans from Adam to Noah, lived in remarkable health on the appointed food of vegetables, fruits and grains, and closed as the natural death of a sound man full of years without sickness, feebleness or suffering. That length and vigor came from a perfect creation endowed with about tenfold present vitality and from the life-sustaining power of the tree of life, which kept death away while eaten and continued its effect in Adam and his early descendants. Since the fall the race has steadily decreased from near a thousand years to about seventy years, under the curse and accumulated transgression and violation of natural law, hastened when flesh became food after the Flood. Through those centuries Adam lived in sorrow, humility and continual repentance over the sin that brought misery on his posterity, and used his long overlap with later generations to teach God's law and the promise of a coming Saviour.
Long Life Before Flood
The record gives the full measure of Adam's life as nine hundred and thirty years, and then notes that he died, following the regular pattern of reporting that a patriarch lived many years and then died. His nine hundred and thirty years belongs to the nearly thousand-year lives of the patriarchs from Adam to Noah, who with few exceptions lived almost a millennium, including Noah at nine hundred and fifty years, with an average of nine hundred and twelve years across nine generations before the Flood. His death was the natural death of a healthy man in good old age, full of years, old and full of days, with only the measure of life and its cessation given and no mention of sickness, local disease, feebleness, prolonged suffering, bodily pain, epidemic, congenital defect, or agonizing death. The simple words for his dying mean death not by unnatural disease but in full health when the springs of life grew weary and stood still.
For more than sixteen hundred years from Adam to Noah people lived on vegetables, fruits, and grains in remarkably good health, with no blind, deaf, crippled, or imbecile births, no fevers, dyspepsia, gout, or consumption, no natural death in infancy, childhood, or early manhood, and a son dying before his father so rare it was specially recorded. Adam lived as a vegetarian in health without dyspepsia or gout, showing that flesh formed no part of the food appointed in Eden. The long ages show humanity was created perfect in bodily organs, defiant of heat and cold and drought and humidity, and surcharged with vital force, with about ten times more vital force than now, without which known violations of health and life would have extinguished the race altogether. Physical size and strength were proportioned to length of days, and Adam in Eden was a noble, grand, beautiful, perfectly symmetrical specimen of perfect work, intellectually vast through walking and talking with God and communing face to face with His Son and with holy angels and the highest intelligences. Before the Flood men had sound minds in sound bodies with such mental and physical strength that at one hundred they were considered but youths and came upon the stage of action from sixty to one hundred, having nearly one thousand years to acquire knowledge in intellect, skill, art, and science, so that the present feeble age bears no comparison to them and the belief in present progress in true knowledge is a delusion.
Adam's greatly lengthened life came from the tree of life, which had power to keep life going so that while he ate from it he could not die, and its life-giving power remained in him and was passed to his descendants, so that lives before the Flood were made long. Only a few generations after Adam's access to that tree human existence in Noah's day was still measured by centuries with much early vigor and rare powers to plan and execute. Since the fall the race has gone downward with a steady decrease from nearly a thousand years, as disease passed from parents to children and continued violation of the laws of life increased disease and mortality. After Noah lifespans tapered gradually to between one and two hundred years by the Egyptian bondage, to an average of seventy years in David's time about halfway from Adam to the present, and to about thirty years in Europe and America and twenty years in great cities, contrasted with seventy years as typical in later times and the sickness and mortality of the present generation. The fall from that lifespan to the present brief existence marked with disease, decrepitude, and imbecility came from the original curse with its accumulated weight of transgression and violation of natural law, accelerated from the time Noah and his sons of necessity ate flesh as food, after which the race rapidly declined. The early generations had such great vitality that the effects of corrupt appetites, passions, and violations of physical law were not sensibly felt across the race until more than a thousand years after humanity's beginning, requiring more than two thousand years of combined violations by appetite and ignorance, and ages more afterward, to drain human energies and breed present distempers.
Sorrow, Repentance, and Death
Through some hundreds of years, extending to nearly a thousand years, Adam lived in sorrow, humility, contrition, and continual repentance, teaching his children and grandchildren the fear of the Lord while bearing bitter reproach for the sin that brought misery upon his posterity.
At first the sentence of death filled him with horror as a dreadful calamity. It was first made real to him in the human family when his own son Cain slew his brother Abel. That murder filled him with the bitterest remorse for his own transgression, with grief at being deprived of Abel and at looking upon Cain as a murderer under the curse God pronounced upon him, with self-reproach for his first great transgression, with entreaty for pardon through the promised sacrifice, and with a deep sense of God's wrath for his crime committed in Paradise. He was bowed down with anguish as one doubly bereaved by Abel's death and Cain's rejection.
After beholding for nearly a thousand years the general and wide-spreading corruption that would finally provoke God to destroy the inhabitants of the earth by a flood, the sentence of death pronounced upon him by his Maker no longer appeared terrible. It looked just and merciful in God to bring to an end a miserable life of suffering and sorrow.
Teaching Future Generations
Adam lived nearly one thousand years among the people before the Flood, himself witnessing the events of that long span. Having conversed with God and angels in Eden, he knew God's law and communicated that knowledge to them. He used his long life by teaching, by example, and by humble obedience to all God's requirements to exalt God's law. He sought to turn his posterity from transgression to a life of obedience and faith in a Saviour to come. Formed in God's image, instructed by God in all wisdom pertaining to the material world, and having learned the history of creation from the Creator, he imparted his knowledge to his descendants. With great physical and mental vigor and strong memory, able to grasp, retain, and transmit what was communicated without books or written records, his presence among them for hundreds of years, with seven generations living contemporaneously and consulting together, gave the antediluvians unrivaled advantages for acquiring and preserving religious and scientific knowledge.
The chronology shows Adam lived long enough to overlap with later patriarchs, for Adam lived until Methuselah was 243 years old. This long overlap allowed knowledge of what God had taught Adam to be passed directly through successive generations, from Adam to Methuselah, then to Shem, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. During the centuries of his life and the lives that followed, righteous men such as Seth, Enoch, Noah, Methuselah and others kept the knowledge of God continually before the world. The people despised that truth, the imaginations of their hearts were evil and only evil continually, and secret societies were formed to work in darkness to do violence. Because of that corruption the Lord destroyed that long-lived race by a flood.
The early history of Abel, Seth, Enoch and Noah belongs to this period later taught to Daniel and his companions. The truth about those first generations was handed down by human lips passing down the line from one generation to another and was cherished. With that transmission the image of God was engraved upon the heart.