Why did people in Genesis live such long lives?

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.

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.

He objects to the long lives of the patriarchs (Phases, p. 110); but he does not say why. Nor is there any reason why a man should not be constituted to live nine hundred as well as seventy years. It is a question of the sovereign power of God, on which mere reasoning is absurd. The longevity of the patriarchs would have rendered the peopling of the earth easier, as well as the communication of true knowledge more secure. But Mr. N. does not even state the difficulty with any accuracy; for the earth must have been peopled from two persons (or, at any rate, from six since the flood) according to the Mosaic account. After that, five hundred years, four hundred, and so on; and on the division of the earth in Peleg's days two hundred years were the allotted term of man's life, and, ere long, "three-score years and ten." But if we take the flood as the point of departure, the universal tradition, mythology, and worship of men confirm the account of Moses, and of the existence even of the three sons of Noah.

We are not in a position to ascertain where God has said so little; but there were reasons we can appreciate why in the early history of mankind their prolonged span of life was of incalculable moment. It was in their high interest that the origin of the race should be attested, as well as of the earth and heavens, and of all creatures in them; still higher was it to hear of the fall and its solemn results; highest of all, to know that He, alike the Creator and in moral relationship with man, had interposed in a way not more righteous than graciously revealing a suffering Deliverer, the woman's Seed, to destroy the enemy: the victory of good over evil for all who believe as well as creation. What can be conceived of such great weight for God and man as to convey aright this pregnant revelation of grace, and to those so immediately concerned as the fallen race, or at least such as had ears to hear? And how was a revelation as yet oral to reach the family of Adam effectually save by the longevity which characterised that early day? For Methuselah lived to tell Shem what Adam communicated from God Himself, and Shem lived to repeat all to Abraham and Isaac: facts and prospects briefly expressed, of plain meaning, and profoundly important.

Then again one can understand how favourable the lengthened span of life in those days was to carrying out God's word in blessing the first pair, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over fish of the sea, and over bird of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. Thus not only is the fact unquestionable for all that respect revelation, but the wisdom, not to say necessity, of that exceptional condition, is pretty apparent.

The fact is, so far from the truth are those who judge solely from present experience, that man was naturally made at the outset to live. Death was sin's wages, not then a physiological necessity. God had provided the means for prolonging his life if obedient; but deprived him of that means peremptorily when fallen. For what greater misery, or moral anomaly, than an everlasting life of sin? Death therefore is in no way a debt of nature but of sin; and here we read its knell for each even of those who stood aloof from the evil way of Cain, the ancestors not of Israel only but in due time of the Messiah. Of Adam, so of Seth, Kenai], Mahalaleel, Jared, it was alike said "he died." Now that man is a sinner, it is the one event that happens to all in the seen world; in the unseen there will be another still more solemn. "For it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this judgment" (Heb. 9:27).

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.

Another important element now stands out in the history: the introduction of idolatry. Not only does Satan, as tempter, make man wicked, but he makes himself into a god for man, in order to help him to satisfy his passions. Having lost God, with whom, nevertheless, he had been in relation, and had made a fresh beginning in Noah, man made a god of everything in which the power of nature shewed itself, making of it a plaything for his imagination, and using it to satisfy his lusts. It was all he had. Even that part of the race that was in relationship with Jehovah (Gen. 9:26) is specially noticed as having fallen to that depth (Joshua 24:2). Terrible fall! Although man could not free himself from the consciousness that there was a God, a Being who was above him, and though he feared Him, he created for himself a multitude of inferior gods, in whose presence he would seek to drive away this dread, and obtain an answer to his desires, hiding that which always, in reality, continued to be an "unknown God." Everything took the form of 'God' in man's eyes; the stars, his ancestors, the sons of Noah, and members of the human race still more ancient and less known, the power of nature, all that was not man but acted and operated without him - the reproduction of nature after its death, the generation of living creatures. The true God he had not; yet needed a God, and in a state of dependence and wretchedness, he made gods for himself according to his passions and imagination, and Satan took advantage of it. Poor mankind without God! Then God interposed sovereignly, reducing also, as we may note in passing, the length of man's life by half after the flood, and by as much again in Peleg's time, when the earth was methodically divided.

In Shem God's history begins. He is Jehovah, the God of Shem. We have dates and epochs, for after all God governs, and the world must follow: man belongs to God. Other people's ages were shortened surely besides those here named: here we know when. And when the earth was divided, for God after all disposed of it, men's years lost one-half of what they were, as they had already done immediately after the flood. But of known history God's people have ever been the centre. This comes down to Abraham. And here again a new element of evil had become universal, at least practically so — idolatry (Joshua 24:2), though it had not been the subject hitherto. It is man in the world; and in Shem, the secret providential ordering of things by God. Still it ended in the power of evil, even in the family of Shem.

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.

Diminution of half the duration of life, connected with the regular settling of the earth; not the spreading of the various stocks and branching off of families.

Abram's descent from Shem shows him in the line of promise. Jehovah's revelation of Himself to Shem was to be realized above all in that Seed of Abram whose day his own faith rejoiced to see. But the promise itself expressed a grace in God which preceded all personal claim whatever on Abram's part. In the chosen line itself, though we have only a scanty record of names and of the length of life, it is plain that there is decay, and that continuous. No doubt the years of man's life were every where shortening, but there was at any rate no exception, and elsewhere we read of spiritual apostasy on their part, which left all possibility of hope to the sovereign grace of God. The root of all the blessing following is here and only here.