Is there an age limit to how long we can live?

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.

Translators and commentators differ considerably as to the rendering and scope. Onkelos and Saadiah, the Septuagint, the Syriac, and the Vulgate substantially agree in the sense of "remain" for "strive." But the force is moral rather than physical existence, and fairly given in the A.V. Some prefer "in his wandering" instead of "for that," which may well be. So it is said in Isa. 31:3, that Egypt is man and not God, and their horses flesh and not spirit. Man had now proved himself no better. But if Jehovah warn that His Spirit will not always plead, He sets a term of patience. For the hundred and twenty years refer, not to man's span of life, but to the space given for repentance.

He is flesh - mortal man - and not God; "the Egyptians are men, and not God - their horses flesh, and not Spirit." "He is flesh, and so let his days" - this with a slight change of stop, to give emphasis to hu basar, is De Wette's translation. But I apprehend De Wette applies 120 years to the length of life - this I believe to be a total mistake. It is the space allowed for preaching repentance, and the ark; "in their wanderings" would be quite as good as "because of," or better. It would then stand thus: "My Spirit shall not always strive with man (or amongst men) in their wanderings - he is flesh - but his days shall be 120 years."

Then further as to the "spirits in prison." They are in prison now (that is the force of it) as having been once disobedient in the days of Noah. But disobedient to what? Why, to the Spirit's preaching. It was of these that of old God had said, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." Plainly it was in that time of old that Christ had preached to them, and what should make it certain, without any nice questions of translation, is that the limit of God's striving with these antediluvians is plainly set: — "My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: but his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." It is strange that some should think that a limit put to human life, which was then, and for generations afterwards, far longer. It is the limit of the Spirit's striving with that generation, at the end of which the flood came. With them the end of the Spirit's striving and of their life came together. And it is just these whom Dr. Farrar and others will have it that Christ specially singled out to preach to more than two thousand years afterward, in direct contradiction of the divine assertion that His Spirit would not strive.

"And all the days which Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died" (ver. 5). There is not the slightest sound reason to doubt the longevity here attributed to antediluvian man. Man was made to live, not to die; his death came in through sin. The truth of life will appear when the Second man takes the world-kingdom (Rev. 11). Those who live righteously when He reigns shall continue through the thousand years, none dying save under curse for rebellion; and the righteous, as scriptural principles imply, are at last changed, without passing through death, into everlasting incorruption; as Christians are entitled to expect who are alive and are left to the coming of the Lord, before His displayed kingdom begins (1 Thess. 4, 1 Cor. 15). Lengthened as the span of years may seem, compared with the measure which the prayer of Moses (Ps. 90) lays down as the ordinary rule of human life, they were but "days" of Adam or any other here recorded. After Adam they were begotten, and they begot; they lived and they died. This sums up the history of most; but of this more when we review the account of others, as well as the exceptions.

It is in vain for men to decry the longevity of the men before the deluge, and, though diminishing, after it. Oriental and other nations long retained the tradition, however disguised, pointing to the primitive facts. To argue that it is contrary to the known laws of physiology is only the resort of narrow-minded and ignorant unbelief. For God if He pleased could easily by change of conditions reduce man's life from 900 years to 90. It is a question of fact for which His word vouches. Nor is there any need to labour on behalf of the plain statements of scripture; for man unfallen never partook of the tree of life; and, when fallen, he was driven out lest he should. The gradual experience of men since the deluge is of no validity against the immensely greater age of mankind as scripture avers before that great event, whatever the physical or secondary causes may have been before or after, as they are presumptuous who deny it.

God's prolonging man's life at that time acted instead of writing the word; we see God's wisdom in it so. At the flood we get life shortened by half; and by half again, when the earth was divided and portioned out to the people. It would not do, in the way the world is now, for men to live 900 years.

Compared with his father Noah and those before him, Shem's years mark the growing diminution of human age after the flood. Yet it was given to him before he came near the end of his six hundred years to live into the days not of Abram only but of Isaac. Peleg, the fifth in this series, did not reach half the limit of Shem's term; and Nahor, the father of Terah, dwindled to a hundred and forty-five years. So that in God's providential arrangements man was coming by rapid steps to the span of years ordinary since the prayer of Moses (Ps. 90), himself an exception as there have been a few even in modern times.

Then comes the reiterated statement of man's vanity, the experience, now shrunk from near a thousand to seventy or eighty years, in which man's pride, if it last so long, goes out in travail. Soon cut off indeed, we fly away.