The Meaning of Genesis 6:3??

He's saying that no one lives forever. Our bodies were designed to live past 120 years. Few make it remotely close.

 

This is one of those tough verses. Look back in this forum to the thread, “Question about Adam and Noah”,( http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=001634 )
In that thread I said,

This is another one of those verses that make us question whether we really understand the genealogies offered in Genesis. Lets see, Noah fathered his sons when he was 500 years old and lived long after that (5:32 and 7:6). Abraham lived to 175; Isaac, to 180; and Jacob, to 147 years.

Do we really understand the Word of God or are we just following the lead of people who tell us a believable story and we agree. Sometimes it’s okay to say, I don’t know!

My stab at what the verse means: God is Spirit, man is flesh, God put a general limit on our fleshly lives of 120 years.

Rob

 

Scarlett, you are O so right.

 

i am thinking of putting this reply on the other thread with the title: "Contribute: Let's explain seemingly biblical contradictions". i'd rather put this here though.

if the 120 years is the age-limit of man, then there will be a contradiction, as Deacon pointed out.

if it is the number of years before the flood though, there is still a contradiction. comparing,

this is when God announced the coming flood, which is after 120 years, and Noah was five hundred years old then. come the flood, though, Noah was only 600 years old.

whether the 120 years is a warning period or an age limit, seeming contradiction will arise. any answer for this?

 

Good question. Look at how the verses in the previous chapter overlap. It says...
A. Patriarch X was born...
B. Patriarch X begat Patriarch Y...
C. Patriarch X Died

Then when it starts with Patriarch Y it goes back to "B" and covers the time when "both" Patriarch X and Y were alive at the same time.

The same is true here. Gen 5 ends with Noah being 500 years old but that does not mean that Chapter 6 starts at that same point. Verses 1 and 2 MUST take place quite a few years before Noah's 500th birthday, therefore, verse three only has to be placed prior to the flood and it indicates that that was 120 years before.

 

It could not be a limit imposed on the lifespan of man. See Genesis 10:11-32! There was a rapid decrease in the lifespan of ALL CREATURES after the flood because the canopy of water that had shielded the UV rays of the sun was no more - a God-ordained, scientific change in the earth's atmosphere!

Scarlett got it right!

"who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water" (1 Peter 3:20)

 

It was the prophesy that the flood would come in 120 years.

It is not a verse that arminians can use with any kind of consistency. It has nothing to do with that.

 

It may have had both meanings. The ages of men dropped in half approximately at the end of the Flood and in half again, approximately after the division of the continents at the time of Peleg. So the vapor canopy cannot have been soley, if at all responsible. After Peleg we see a fairly steady decline in lifespans -- until Moses at 120 years when he died. Since then, although the lifespans of men have bounced up and down depending on the culture, food, hygiene, etc., 120 years does seem to be the top, or limit.

This is not to deny that it was 120 years from God warning Noah to the Flood. It probably was that.

A word about the reason for the age drop: it was probably exposure to the radioactive elements erupting from the interior of the earth when all the great fountains of the deep BURST forth before the rains started. These boiling hot waters would have carried with them tons upon tons of pulverized rock from pretty far down. Scientists today are reasonably sure that the early earth did not have any radioactive elements on its surface, but only buried deep down.

Thus, at the time of Noah when the great 'fountains of the deep' burst forth and again at the time of Peleg when the catastrophic movement of the continents happened, we have the two times of massive exposure to radioactive elements for humans and animals -- and everything on the surface. Not so coincidently, these are also the times when the ages of man are chronicled as being dramatically shortened.