Did God Limit The Lifespan Of Human Beings To 120 Years?

Genesis 6:3 And Jehovah said, “My spirit shall not remain with man forever, in that he is also flesh. And his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

Genesis 6:3 is popularly interpreted to mean that God limited the maximum lifespan of human beings to 120 years. The biggest problem with this interpretation is that according to the Bible, there are quite a few people who still lived past 120 years generations after the Flood.

Notice that Genesis 6:3 is a pronouncement of judgement upon “man”. The mistake is to take the word “man” in this passage to refer to the whole of mankind. However, that is clearly not the case. Let us take a look at the rest of the passage:

Genesis 6:5–7 And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the day. And Jehovah regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. And Jehovah said, “I will erase man whom I have created from the face of the earth, from man, unto beast, unto creeping thing and unto bird of the heavens, because I regret that I have made them.”

God said, “I will erase man.” The text goes on to confirm that God did exactly what he said he would:

Genesis 7:23 Thus, he [God] erased every standing thing upon the face of the land, from man unto beast, unto creeping thing and unto bird of the heavens, and they were erased from the earth. And only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark.

According to the text, “man” was indeed erased in the Flood just as God had spoken. But did literally all mankind—every single human being—die in the Flood? Of course not, since Noah and his family survived! Clearly, then, the word “man” in this passage does not refer to all of mankind, but refers specifically to the wicked generation that existed in those days—not Noah, not us, not anyone else. Therefore, when God said “My spirit shall not remain with man forever... his days shall be 120 years,” he meant that this wicked generation had 120 years more to live before they were wiped out by the Flood.

After the Flood, God reaffirmed the Cultural Mandate to Noah: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth...” (Genesis 9:1). These are the same words of the Cultural Mandate which God spoke to Adam at Creation (cf. Genesis 1:28). Just like Adam before him, Noah became the new “man” of the new Creation; the new leader of the human race.