Despite the fact that
we don’t know anyone in our day who has lived to 600 (or especially to 969,
like Methuselah), I take these rather strange accounts quite literally. If you
don’t, and you can find another logically consistent explanation for the
existence of such a careful and apparently historical record, good for you: I’m
not looking for a debate about it.
I find it interesting
to read and meditate on such things, though I don’t go to the lengths some do
in analyzing them.
As mentioned, prior to
the Flood detailed for us in Genesis 7 and 8, men and women appear to have lived a great deal longer than they do today (see
Genesis 5), in many cases close to 1,000 years. Adam, for instance, lived to 930, and
his son Seth lived to 912. While there is quite a bit of variation in length of
life among early men, it does not appear that, on the whole, human life spans
were diminishing prior to the flood. Methuselah, for instance, was eighth in
descent from Adam, but he lived longer than Adam did.
So despite the fact
that sin had entered the world (and death with it), mankind was given much greater
opportunity to pursue its activities of choice prior to the Flood without any
direct divine intervention. And for the most part, it seems they chose evil.
After the Flood
What changed with the
Flood? Well, something surely did. There are all kinds of speculations about the mechanics of that (which I won’t detail here). Some are goofy and others may be close to the mark but in the end they are speculative. The Bible does not
tell us what the Flood changed about man’s environment.
What we do know is
that directly after the Flood, life spans began to drastically diminish until
by the time of the Hebrew patriarchs they begin to approximate current human
age expectations. These numbers are often discussed rather coldly and
analytically, as is natural in scholarship generally.
I cannot do that with
Shem. Whenever I’m feeling really miserable, I think about him.
The Story of Shem
Shem was a son of Noah and the forefather of the Hebrew and Arab nations. Shem lived to
age 600. In Genesis 11 we read about his descendants who, by and large, did not.
So, for example, the
year Shem celebrated his 438th birthday, his great-great-grandson Peleg passed
away at a measly 239. The next year, Shem’s great-great-great-great-great
grandson Nahor followed his ancestor into eternity at a trifling 148. Nineteen
years later, Reu, the son of Peleg, died, and thirty-three years after that,
Reu’s son Serug died too. And Shem lived on.
Bear in mind these are
only his offspring mentioned in scripture (frequently only the firstborn son in
any given family shows up in Bible records, unless there’s something special of
note about another child). Shem surely had many, many more children, and each
of them had many more children and grandchildren, most of whom, one way or
another, packed it in long before Shem. Even if they had obituaries back then, the
poor guy would never have needed to read them: all he would have had to
do is take a regular stroll through his neighbourhood and inquire which of his near-innumerable
descendants had preceded him into the graveyard this week.
All told, eight of the next nine firstborn males in Shem’s family, including the legendary Abraham, did the dust-to-dust thing — no doubt along with the vast majority of their brothers and sisters — before Shem himself finally succumbed. His life was an absolute litany
of death after death after death, of loss upon loss.
On the bright side,
Shem’s great-grandson Eber did manage to outlive him.
There’s Always Someone Worse Off
Those of us who live
long enough to regularly experience the deaths of loved ones have enough difficulty saying goodbye to parents, friends and contemporaries without adding to that
the pain and sorrow of losing generation after generation of children.
I get no satisfaction
out of knowing that no matter what may happen to me, plenty of others have had
it much worse. But it’s the truth, if we care to examine the suffering of
others with the same magnifying glass through which we view our own pain.
When Paul tells the Romans, “Death reigned from Adam to Moses,” I suspect this is the sort of thing he means.
This is the bit we should never forget:
“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”
Or to put it another way, none of this needs to be permanent.
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