How old was Noah when he died?

Undoubtedly for the earth, and God's government, Shem has the richer promise, as that day will establish and proclaim. But all history even in the past attests God's enlarging Japheth, the great coloniser of the earth, and in the strongest contrast with Shem as to this. For he was not only to spread nationally as Shem never was, but to dwell in Shem's tents. Europe and the north-east of the old world sufficed not, nor yet the new world of America, Australia, etc., but he must also encroach on Shem's tents in the east. So it was to be, according to this earliest oracle; and so it has been to the letter, as no foresight of man could have anticipated. This closes the divine account of Noah: "And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years; and all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died" (Gen. 9:28-29).

Noah continued to live 300 years after the flood, attaining an age of 950 years, only 19 short of Methuselah. He lived long enough to see a large population of his own descendants.

Noah continued to live 300 years after the flood, attaining an age of 950 years, only 19 short of Methuselah. He lived long enough to see a large population of his own descendants.

Job lived to the age of 140 years, and Jacob to 147 years. The ages of men, as recorded in the Book of Genesis, decline from Noah, who lived for 950 years, Shem, his son, died at 600, Shelah, the grandson of Shem, at 433, and Peleg, the grandson of Shelah, at 239. After three generations comes Abraham, who lived to be 175 years old, and after another three there is Joseph, who died at 110. Moses and Joshua, who died at 120 and 110 years respectively, seemed to have lived longer than their contemporaries, for Moses, in Psalm 90 writes, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten," showing that by his time the normal span of human life had been brought down to what it is now.

From Adam to Noah men lived much longer than in the period that followed. Adam lived 930 years, Noah 950, and Methuselah 969, the longest recorded. After the flood, Shem lived 600 years, but no one after him reached 500. In Peleg is another decline, he lived 239 years; Abraham only 175 years. We can easily understand why God caused people in the early age of the earth to live so much longer than afterwards. God said to Adam "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth." Gen. 1:28. He also said the same to Noah after the flood. Gen. 9:1, 7. When the earth became more and more peopled the life of man was shortened. The only intimation of what may perhaps now be called the normal longevity of man is in Ps. 90:10, and yet it is a lament for his short and troubled life: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow: for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." This is remarkable as being, according to the heading "A prayer of Moses the man of God," for of Moses we read that he lived 120 years, and "his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated," Deut. 34:7; but the Psalms were prophetic both for our, and future times, and Moses leads short-lived man to the eternity of God. (Ver. 2.) In the thousand years of the millennium apparently no one will die but the wicked, and one at a hundred years of age will be called a child: the days of God's people will be as the days of a tree, and they will, when the curse is removed, long enjoy the work of their hands. Isa. 65:20-22.

Some have taken the concluding clause of Genesis 6:3 to mean that man's age was from that point limited to 120 years. But men lived to be older than that for a long time. Noah was 950 when he died. Abraham was 175. Miriam was well over 120. Job lived 140 years after his trial.

We may say then, that after the flood mankind was given under Noah a fresh start; But, as under Adam so again, failure and sin rapidly supervened. We have had abundant testimony to the fact that Noah was a godly man who found grace in the sight of the Lord, and he lived for no less than 350 years after the flood, as we are told at the end of our chapter, yet the one and only thing on record concerning him in all those years is that he planted a vineyard made wine, was trapped into self-indulgence, and became unconscious in drunkenness. The man most responsible now to control others lost control of himself. The age of patriarchal government broke down at the outset, even in the hands of a godly man.

NOAH (whose name signifies rest, repose, comfort), lived some 350 years after the judgment of the FLOOD; long enough, alas! to witness a general outbreak of rebellion against GOD, and the rise and spread of idolatry over the then inhabited earth.

"And these [are the] generations of Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and sons were born to them after the flood" (Gen. 10:1). This is the true place for such a statement given after Noah's fall and its remarkable consequences; just as the genealogy of Adam's sons followed in Gen. 5 after his sin and that of Cain led to the revealed state of the world before the flood. Noah lived on for centuries after, but is mentioned no more in the history, as Adam disappears after his sin, with Cain's crime leading to Seth given instead of Abel. One Spirit forms the narrative beyond the wisdom of Moses, and in total disproof of incoherent fragments pieced together, least of all at an epoch when all was crumbling to ruin among the chosen people. It was well ordered that none of Noah's sons had children till they emerged from the ark. So Adam became a father only after the fall and expulsion from paradise.

In old times people lived long. Methuselah, the longest, 969 years. His son, 777; his grandson, Noah, 950. Noah, a righteous man, walked with God.