NOTES

Dating Noah

His birth

Noah's father was Lamech. We have established that Lamech was born in the year 875 in the Lunar 354-day Gentile Calendar and we know that he was 182 years old when Noah was born (Genesis 5:28-29).

His life

Noah lived for 950 years (Genesis 9:29).

His age when Shem was born

We can work out that Noah was 502 years old when his son Shem was born. We know that Shem was 100 years old when Arphaxad was born two years after the Flood (Genesis 11:10), when Noah would have been 602, so Shem would have been 98 in the year of the Flood when his father Noah was 600 (Genesis 7:11). This means Noah was 502 when Shem was born 98 years earlier.

However, Genesis 5:32 says:

Noah was five hundred years old, and Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

This is a discrepancy of two years.

The solution is that Noah gave birth to his firstborn when he was 500, but this was Japheth not Shem, for in Genesis 10:21 he is called ‘Japheth, the elder.’ Ham was the youngest son (Genesis 9:24), and so Shem was the middle son, born two years after Japheth. Shem is mentioned first, because he is in the Messianic Line, as Noah said:

Blessed be the Lord God of Shem. (Genesis 9:26)

We will see the same kind of thing in Genesis 11:26 in connection with the birth of Abraham.

His death

Noah was 600 years old when the Flood started (Genesis 7:6) and he lived for 350 years after the Flood (Genesis 9:28). The Flood lasted 151 days inclusive of the first and last day (Genesis 7:24), so it did not add an extra year in the calculation of Noah's life. The calendar changed to the Lunisolar Autumn Calendar after the Flood when the first visible crescent new moon appeared following the collapse of the water canopy, when Noah was 601 years old. This meant that the last 299 years of Noah's life were counted in the Lunisolar Autumn Calendar.

FIGURE: dating the life of NOAH from the year of the birth of his father Lamech

About Noah

Noah means Rest or Comfort a name given to him in a prophesy by his father Lamech (Genesis 5:29). Noah, as the one who would preserve life in the ark as the cursed earth was being cleansed by the flood, was not the final fufillment of Lamech's prophesy. The Messiah - the promised seed - was still in the future.

Although he lived in an age of moral darkness, Noah was perfect in his generation. He walked with God and learned of the God's plan to destroy mankind (Hebrews 11:7) and was given the task of building the ark, a vessel large enough to shelter his family and a pair of all the birds and beasts of that time. This is a wonderful illustration of how Jesus Christ preserves believers from the flood of divine judgement.

The number of generations before the flood

Noah was born 84 years before Enos died. Since Enos was born about a quarter of the way through the life of Adam, it is easy to understand how details of the history of mankind before the Flood were transmitted by word of mouth through the three generations of Adam, Enos and Noah.