We know Adam as the first man, and the Bible tells us how long he lived, but how old was Adam when he died?
We base our ages on the day we are born, even though our life begins way before then. King David wrote:
“Your eyes have seen my unshaped substance;
And in Your book all of them were written
The days that were formed for me,
When as yet there was not one of them” (Psalm 139:16).
Was it the same for Adam?
What Does the Bible Say about Adam’s Lifespan?
The Bible tells us Adam became father to Seth when he had lived 130 years and after that, he lived 800 years (Genesis 5:3-4). Genesis 5:5 tells us Adam lived 930 years. To us, that’s an incredibly long lifespan, but given God created us to live forever, it’s astoundingly short.
In addition to Adam’s relatively long life, once he and Eve were separated from perfection by their sin, they were sent out from the Garden of Eden. The tree of life was no longer available to them, and God told Adam, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you;
In pain you will eat of it
All the days of your life” (Genesis 3:17).
And so, Adam exchanged a perfect life for one of turmoil and pain. He would eat plants of the field which also bore thorns and thistles. And the Lord God told Adam he would do this, “Till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).
What Can We Learn from Adam’s Long Life?
1. God created us with eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and this causes us to long for something more than the short life we now lead. In God’s mercy, He gave Adam and long span of life and many children. The line to the Messiah, who restores our hope in eternal life with Him, stemmed from Adam.
2. Each of us in Christ has the possibility of a long and significant life. Not significant in anything we do, but significant because of Christ’s work in and through us for His kingdom and glory.
3. Adam, in what we assume was his short time in the Garden of Eden, must have realized that time and fellowship with God is precious. When he sinned, Adam faced the rest of his long life in disfellowship with God. A long lifetime apart from God’s favor is not the kind of time for which man was created.
4. The extreme importance of obedience and faithfulness forms a lesson to us when we regard how long Adam had to ponder and live in the consequences of his sin. While our lives are short compared to Adam’s, faithfulness to the Lord in the time He gives us counts for eternal rewards.
5. Surely God’s words to the devil in Adam’s presence in Genesis 3:15 imbued Adam with hope. He may have hoped his Deliverer would come in his lifetime, but still we assume the hope would have helped sustain him as he bore many children from whom the Savior would come.
We are blessed to be on this side of Calvary, knowing our Redeemer lives. Faithful Christians are tethered to the hope we have in Christ, and we know, no matter when the Lord calls us home, our lives are held in His hands and for His purpose (Psalm 31:15; Isaiah 41:10; Jeremiah 26:14).
How Does Adam’s Age Compare to Other Early Biblical Figures?
Genesis 5:6-32 gives us a genealogy from Adam to Noah and the ages at their death are given.
From father to son, the list is:
- Adam – 930 years (Genesis 5:5)
- Seth – 912 years (Genesis 5:8)
- Enosh – 905 years (Genesis 5:11)
- Kenan – 910 years (Genesis 5:14)
- Mahalalel – 895 years (Genesis 5:17)
- Jared – 962 years (Genesis 5:20)
- Enoch – 365 years (Genesis 5:23, see paragraph below)
- Methuselah – 969 years (Genesis 5:27)
- Lamech – 777 years (Genesis 5:31)
- Noah – 950 years (Genesis 9:29)
A notable man in the listed lineage is Enoch, Methuselah’s father. The Bible says, “And Enoch lived 65 years and became the father of Methuselah. Then Enoch walked with God 300 years after he became the father of Methuselah, and he became the father of other sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Genesis 5:21-24). Enoch gives us the first record of a human who didn’t die (Hebrews 11:5).
As we look at the list above, we can see 900 years was the average for the first ten generations of humanity. The exceptions were, of course, Enoch, and Lamech. In Lamech’s time, the Lord had decreed man’s years would be shorter, “Then Yahweh said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever because he indeed is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be 120 years.” Noah was an exception because he found favor on God’s eyes (Genesis 6:8).
Lifespans after Noah grew increasingly shorter, and by the time of Abraham, the Bible tells us he lived only until the age of 175 years (Genesis 25:7). In Psalm 90:10 (the final Psalm written, and the only Psalm written by Moses), Moses writes, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.”
Why Did People in the Bible Live So Long?
At least three reasons for early man’s longevity are possible. Adam and Eve, when they were first created, had the ability to live forever, but only in their perfect, untarnished state. God provided everything they needed for contented and vigorous lives in fellowship with God and each other. Death didn’t enter the “scene” until the first couple sinned. Their and our lives were changed at that moment, and, while the first generations of man lived to almost 1,000 years, it’s (as we’ve mentioned), only a fragment of the eternity for which man was created (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
1. No doubt it was God’s will that the first ten generations of people would live as long as they did. He is sovereign over everything, including man’s lifespan (Psalm 115:3).
2. Because Adam was created as a perfect being, the farther away from Adam’s time man gets, the farther we are, biologically, from perfection. Therefore, humans may have lived longer because they were closer to the perfection God created in Adam. And now, as Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell says, “we see that God seems to have imposed aging as an ever-present and inescapable reminder of sin’s curse, including the vanity of life on earth and our need for him. Jesus Christ paid the price for sin and defeated death so that through him alone, we find the sure hope for life eternal.”
3. Before the flood (Genesis 6:17), some scholars interpret Genesis 1:7 as the earth having a canopy of water between it and the sun’s rays (Psalm 18:11). And the Lord God brought the flood, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the fountains of the great deep split open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened. Then the rain came upon the earth for forty days and forty nights” (Genesis 7:10-12).
This opens the probably that God caused this barrier to dissipate as part of the flood that enveloped the earth. This would then allow harmful outer atmospheric phenomena and events to affect the longevity of humans, including a breakdown of the ozone layer.
In each of the above scenarios, we see a glaring and wonderful truth; God controls everything (John 1:3; Ephesians 1:11)
Reflecting on Adam’s Life and God’s Plan
God created Adam from dust, and given the nature of dust, he must have been what we call perishable, even before the Fall (Genesis 3). We can assume this because the Tree of Life was within the Garden of Eden. If Adam had a body that was meant to last forever, that tree would not have been necessary. But then, God knew Adam would sin and would therefore bring death to all of humanity (Romans 5:12-21).
Professor Joshua Van Ee tells us, “Adam, if he had obeyed, would have attained to the consummated/glorified body without having to pass through death. The Bible, especially Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, makes it clear that Adam’s body would have been changed at some point, but the details of how and when are not revealed. Some commentators, including John Calvin and Derek Kidner, have wondered if Enoch provides in some ways a pattern for what human life would have been like if Adam had obeyed, not in his experience of the common curse during his earthly life, but in his translation to heavenly life without experiencing death.”
God, however had a redemptive plan He enacted when Adam fell. Genesis 3:15 records what is called the protoevangelium (the first gospel). Salvation would come through the Seed of the woman, and He is Jesus Christ. The Lord God took the worst event for humans and turned it around for our salvation and His glory. He exchanged the perishable/corruptible (Adam and the rest of humanity) for the imperishable/incorruptible—Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:52-57).
To guard His promise of life and the coming Savior, and prophecy of Satan’s and death’s death (Colossians 2:15; 1 Corinthians 15:54-57; Hebrews 2:14-15), the Lord God banished Adam and his wife, Eve from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:23-24a). He also displayed His loving mercy when He placed cherubim and the flaming sword at the entrance of the Graden to keep Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:24b). Had they taken from that tree, they and we would have been forever in sin, with no hope of redemption.
Our gracious God completed Adam’s story when He put on flesh (John 1:14). The Apostle Paul reveals Jesus’ title as the Last Adam, who brings us life: “So also it is written,’The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45).
Because of Christ, the lives Christians live after He saves us are worked together for our good and His glory (Romans 8:28). Christ Jesus prepares us for an eternity that can never be lost or destroyed (John 10:28-29).
Hallelujah!
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