Did People in the Bible Really Live 900 Years?
A simple question about Methuselah opens the door to a deeper mystery in Genesis.
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A reader left a comment on one of my recent articles that caught my attention immediately.
It was not a complicated theological question, just a simple observation from someone reading the Bible carefully.
“The Bible lists several people who lived longer than 500 years, with the longest being 969, I think. Was that actually true, or was it just examples of longer lives?”
I love questions like that.
Partly because they are honest, and I have asked them myself. Partly because they force us to stop skimming familiar passages. But most of all because they remind us that many of the things we take for granted in Scripture are actually quite strange when we stop and look at them.
After all, imagine reading Genesis for the first time.
Adam lives 930 years.
Seth reaches 912.
Jared lives 962.
Methuselah manages an astonishing 969 years.
By comparison, most of us would be delighted with eighty or ninety. So what are we supposed to do with numbers like these?
Did people really live for centuries? Or is something else happening in the text?
