And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.
And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died, records the real lifetime of a literal person who lived and real history including the Flood. His total lifespan was nine hundred and fifty years, nearly a thousand years, ending in his death, like the patriarchs from Adam to Noah who with few exceptions lived nearly a thousand years before and around the Flood. His life stands at the close and end of that age of long life.
After Noah's time human life steadily and rapidly shortened, and the average length of life has been decreasing, while disease and mortality increased through successive generations. This shortening after Noah and the Flood is linked to the curse, accumulated sin, and increased violations of the laws of life and natural law. The beginning of flesh eating after the Flood was the point from which the decline proceeded.
Noah lived three hundred and fifty years after the Flood as a faithful preacher of righteousness. His long life together with Shem, who lived five hundred years after the Flood, gave their descendants as they went forth to found nations in different parts of the earth the opportunity to become acquainted with God's will and requirements and the history of His dealings with their fathers, so that they could carry with them a knowledge of God's will and the light of truth could shine undimmed to succeeding generations. Yet the descendants were unwilling to listen to these unpalatable truths and had no desire to retain God in their knowledge, and by the confusion of tongues they were in great measure shut out from intercourse with those who might have given them light.
Noah's day prefigures the present age before Christ's appearing in the clouds of heaven, with the character and condition of that generation characteristic of this age, since human nature uninfluenced by the Spirit of God is the same in both ages. The verse carries divine authority as part of inspired Genesis, showing the Old Testament Scriptures pronounced divine by Truth and Life cannot be divorced from the New Testament. Even the longest possible human labor, a life as long as Noah's spent presenting the truth, would be without effect if the truth were handled tamely without fervor and conviction, merely repeating theory without being stirred by it, without clear and strong ideas, without a fervent spirit, without intense love for souls and fervent zeal.
And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died, records the real lifetime of a literal person who lived and real history including the Flood. His total lifespan was nine hundred and fifty years, nearly a thousand years, ending in his death, like the patriarchs from Adam to Noah who with few exceptions lived nearly a thousand years before and around the Flood. His life stands at the close and end of that age of long life.
After Noah's time human life steadily and rapidly shortened, and the average length of life has been decreasing, while disease and mortality increased through successive generations. This shortening after Noah and the Flood is linked to the curse, accumulated sin, and increased violations of the laws of life and natural law. The beginning of flesh eating after the Flood was the point from which the decline proceeded.
Noah lived three hundred and fifty years after the Flood as a faithful preacher of righteousness. His long life together with Shem, who lived five hundred years after the Flood, gave their descendants as they went forth to found nations in different parts of the earth the opportunity to become acquainted with God's will and requirements and the history of His dealings with their fathers, so that they could carry with them a knowledge of God's will and the light of truth could shine undimmed to succeeding generations. Yet the descendants were unwilling to listen to these unpalatable truths and had no desire to retain God in their knowledge, and by the confusion of tongues they were in great measure shut out from intercourse with those who might have given them light.
Noah's day prefigures the present age before Christ's appearing in the clouds of heaven, with the character and condition of that generation characteristic of this age, since human nature uninfluenced by the Spirit of God is the same in both ages. The verse carries divine authority as part of inspired Genesis, showing the Old Testament Scriptures pronounced divine by Truth and Life cannot be divorced from the New Testament. Even the longest possible human labor, a life as long as Noah's spent presenting the truth, would be without effect if the truth were handled tamely without fervor and conviction, merely repeating theory without being stirred by it, without clear and strong ideas, without a fervent spirit, without intense love for souls and fervent zeal.