Weekly Article

Questions and Answers 4: Long Lives of the Bible?

Weekly Article 12/16/05

by the Rev. Matt Kennedy

Church of the Good Shepherd

This week aquestion from Jenna Dean:

"How did people live so long in the Old Testament? Some of them are hundreds of years old?"

This is a very good question and it's one that lots of people have asked.

Before diving into an answer, let's take a look at some of the longest living people in the bible.

Turn to Genesis 5 and you'll find a list of descendants from Adam to Noah through Adam's son Seth.

Here is a shorthand version of that list:

1. Adam: died at 930 years old

2. Seth: died at 912

3. Enosh: died at 905

4. Kenan: died at 910

5. Mahalalel: died at 895

6. Jared: died at 962

7. Enoch: taken up at 365 (the text says God took him away; no record of his death)

8. Methuselah: died at 969

9. Lamech: died at 777

10. Noah is the last name listed. The only age given for Noah in chapter 5 is his age when he fathered children, 500 years old. According to Genesis 9:29 Noah died at the age of 950.

One of the more important things to remember about this list is that it is not a full listing of every single male descendant from Adam to Noah. The biblical writers often compressed or telescoped genealogies by including only the most important ancestors in a given line. Thus, it would be a mistake to calculate the ages of the men listed in chapter 5 and come up with the number of years between Adam and Noah (as some have tried to do). Likely the time between Adam and Noah was much, much longer; possibly tens of thousands of years.

If you count the names in chapter 5 you will note that there are ten names listed from Adam to Noah. This reinforces the conclusion of the paragraph above that this genealogy has been stylistically shaped or compressed.

Why? Well, “ten” like seven, three, and forty, was a symbolic number in the ancient world. Ten, like the number seven, conveyed the idea of completeness or wholeness. So the ancient writer of this section of Genesis (probably Moses) included only ten of the most prominent human ancestors from Adam and Noah as a kind of literary device to communicate to the ancient reader, that these 10 ancestors are symbolic of the whole or complete number of Adam's descendants before the flood recorded in Genesis 6.

Now comes the hard question. Do the incredible ages listed also reflect some unknown symbolism or literary device? Are these ages intended as literal ages or are they figurative?

One possible solution and the one I favor is related to God's purpose in creating the human body. When you read through the accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2, you'll notice that God originally designed Adam and Eve to live forever.

They were given souls and bodies and commanded to use their bodies to increase and multiply, to have lots of babies.

Most importantly, death was not part of God's original plan.

Human beings were created to live forever in loving communion with God, and with each other, body and soul, forever.

Is this even possible?

God is the very source of life. He gives it and he sustains it. So long as humanity remained in perfect communion with God, death had no foothold in creation.

But when humanity rejected God and fell to the temptations of Satan (Genesis 3:1-13), that communion, that perfect connection, between humanity and God was broken. Death entered the world.

When Adam and Eve sinned it was like they unplugged a lamp. Their connection to God, the Life-source, was broken; the light went out and their bodies began to decay.

Now, have you ever tried to unscrew a light bulb right after you unplug a lamp? It burns. The bulb stays hot for quite a while. You have to wait before you can unscrew it.

In the same way, the long lives of the descendants of Adam in the years directly after the perfect communion between humanity and God was broken might reflect a sort of residual heat, a residual life-force, bearing witness to the life-giving relationship that had been destroyed.

Are the years literal or figurative?

I don't know for certain because we simply don't know the intent of the author. Was he recording actual ages or was he using a literary device? One day we'll be able to ask Moses and the people themselves face to face.

The safest bet is to take the recorded ages at face value and to remember that nothing is impossible with God. I personally think the ages are real literal ages.

But in either case, whether they are literal or figurative, the ages point us back to the fact that death was never part of God's plan.

They should also point us forward. Because while human beings rejected God and became subject to death, God loved us so much that when the time was right he became a human being himself.

In Jesus of Nazareth, God lived as one of us for 33 years and then, after he had taught many things, he sacrificed himself by being nailed to a wooden cross. He suffered death and was buried.

His death took away the sins that separate you and I from God.

His death made it possible for us to be reconciled, reconnected, with him forever.

When you give your life to Jesus Christ, your sins are washed away, God comes to live in your heart, and the perfect communion, broken so many years ago, is restored. Not only will your soul always be alive with God through Jesus Christ, your body also will live forever.

How do I know this?

On the third day after Jesus died. He rose from the dead. He wasn't a ghost or a spirit. He wasalive, body and soul.

And he promised us that everyone who believes in him will share in his resurrection.

If you die before Jesus comes again, he will call your body up out of the grave and you will live with him here on earth, forever and ever, just like he intended in the Garden of Eden so long ago. If you are alive when he returns, then you will never die. Your body will be transformed from a perishable body to an imperishable body and, like Enoch, you will never experience death.

If you think the people in Genesis 5 lived a long time, just wait until Jesus returns. You and I willhave all eternity to explore the world and the universe in perfect communion with our loving Father and His Son Jesus Christ.

home  links weekly update last week's article sermons contact us

Matt+