Rabbinic Disagreements on Noach’s Lifespan and Flood Year Calculation
Noach’s Ark in the universal flood.
When reading the weekly Torah portion Noach (Genesis 6:9-11:32), there is good reason to ask why the Creator chose the Deluge as the instrument with which to punish mankind, rather than any other means at His disposal. But there is also good reason to ask why the Torah lists the age of Noach (the second Adam). And the reason for this is that it enables us to count back to when human history started with the creation of the first Adam.
At first reading, Torah portion Noach looks like easy to understand, when we look only at what has been revealed to us in the narration, but a closer examination shows that some of the text is overlooked. But in our Torah portion, we face a seeming oddity in the reckoning of Noach’s lifespan, namely one year of Noach’s life appears to have been omitted. If this is the case, we need to resort to the writings of the Rabbis to make better sense of this whole episode of the Flood.
It all began with the opening verse of Chapter 7 and the command of the Lord to Noach to enter the ark which he had built for 120 years. The Rabbis have discussed the question which many have overlooked: In what year of his life did Noach come into the ark? This will be further explained in the interpretation of the verses in question.
Come into the ark, you and all your household, for it is you that I have seen as a righteous man before Me in this generation. (Genesis 7:1)
Insight: The Hebrew word for “ark” is תֵּבָה teivah, but literally it means a box. The traditional presentation of teivah in the form of ship or boat may not be the actual vessel which Noach built. This word appears one more time in the story of saving baby Mosheh in Exodus 2:3-5 wherein the proper pictorial rendering would be “basket” or “box” made of bulrushes. Hence, the ark Noach built was in the form of a box rather than a ship. We now return to the text.
Then, He gave him instructions to gather of every clean species animal seven animals with his mate, and of the unclean species two with his mate; of the bird seven pairs to keep all species alive on the earth. For yet seven days, and the Lord would cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living being that He had made would be blotted out from off the face of the earth. And Noach did according to all that the Eternal commanded him.
Then Torah saw fit to tell us Noach’s age when the waters came upon the earth,
And Noach was six hundred years old, and the flood was water upon the earth. (Genesis 7:6)
After Noach and his family, and all clean and unclean creatures entered the ark, and the seven days passed (verse 10), the Torah informs us that,
In the six hundredth year of Noach’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. (Genesis 7:11)
Note this, for we will return to it later to explain!
In the 600th year of Noach’s life (Genesis 7:11), all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the flood began. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. Only eight humans were saved from the flood waters: Noach and his wife, Shem, Ham, Yaphet, his sons, and their three wives. And all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, and whatsoever was in the dry land, died. That was the year 1656 from Creation; the year when life on the earth was reset.
In verse 17 through 22 of Genesis 7, the Torah refers to the fact that this was in reality not mere rain but a deluge by describing it as מַבּוּל mabul, “floodwaters” covering everything fifteen cubits upward, even the mountains were covered.
As the floodwaters surged and increased greatly over the earth, the ark drifted on the surface of the water. The upheaval of those months of intense heat from the waters of the deep and the turmoil might have caused a great shifting and turning of geological strata that buried all human and animal remains. We could also speculate that Earth’s surface was a result of that violent disturbance, when the tectonic plates moved to create the mountains and oceanic trenches and ridges, as we know them today.
Insight: The attempt to date the earth and fossils is difficult for no one can know how much the heat of the subterranean water and water pressure had affected the geology of the planet, the human, animal, and plant remains in order to be dated with Radiocarbon-14. We now return to the text.
The floodwaters from cavities of the earth surged for an additional 150 days (Genesis 7:24) after the rainfall from above stopped and did not subside throughout this entire period. And God remembered Noach and every living thing that were with him in the ark. The waters returned from off the earth continually; and after the end of 150 days the waters decreased. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat, as the waters decreased continually until the tenth month. And in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen (Genesis 8:1-5).
Insight: Ararat was the name of a province (2Kings 19:37), which is mentioned along with Minni (Armenia) as a kingdom in Jeremiah 51:27, probably the central province of the country of Armenia. Flavious Josephus, in his work Antiquities of the Jews 1.3.6, claimed to have known the whereabouts of Noach’s Ark and quoted earlier historians as saying that people would take parts of the Ark to use as amulets to prevent evil. We now return to the text.
Summary: It first rained for forty days and during the forty days, the amount of water that fell became greater every day, until it was fifteen cubits over the top of all the mountains. The wellsprings and the windows of the heavens were opened, and the waters were at their full strength for one hundred and fifty days. Afterwards, the Mighty One sent a strong wind and the wellsprings were stopped up and the windows of heaven from which the water had come were closed.
The judgment of the generation of the Flood was for 365 days; the rains started to fall on the 17th day of the 2nd month until Noach exited the ark on 27th day of 2nd month the following year. Therefore, a whole year was 354 days (measured from to the 17th day of the 2nd month) and eleven days to 27th day of the 2nd month. These are the eleven days by which the solar year exceeds the lunar year: 365 – 354 = 11 days. Total time in the ark was 365 days (one solar year), which is one lunar year 354 days (29.5 days times 12 months) and 11 days.
We read further,
And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth; and Noach removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dried. (Genesis 8:13)
From this record we learned that the judgment of the generation of the Flood lasted twelve months. It began on the 17th day of the 2nd month (Genesis 7:11), and ended on the 27th of the 2nd month the following year (Genesis 8:14).
The Midrash tells us that when Noach emerged from the ark, he saw a new world and a new sun that was shining differently. New sun?
Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews 1.1.1, explains that the firmament (Hebrew, rakiya) the Creator made (Genesis 1:6-7) was “a crystalline round the earth, and put it together in a manner agreeable to the earth, and fitted it for giving moisture and rain, and for affording the advantage of dews”. This crystalline divided the waters which were under it from the waters which were above it, serving as a large blue barrier holding up the heavenly waters. This rakiya we now call “atmosphere”, but before the Flood it was a layer of frozen ice blocks floating above the earth that contained a significant amount of water. This water was poured upon the earth, which together with the water from the deep cause the floodwaters to surge. Before the Flood this layer of ice served as a UV filter that protected the life on the earth. After the Flood though, that filter was gone. That was not the same world Noach knew. It was not just that no life roamed the earth; there was silence. The flood generated a radical changes within the physical world relative to the world that had been created “In the beginning”.
And Noach lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. And all the days of Noach were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died. (Genesis 9:28-29)
The text of the Hebrew Bible presents the following chronological data regarding Noach’s life:
- Noach was born in the year 1056 from Creation.
- In 1656, “Noach was six hundred years old when the floodwaters were upon the earth.” (Genesis 7:6)
- “And Noach lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.” (Genesis 9:28) and he died in 2006, ten years after the Dispersion.
- Total lifespan: “So all the days of Noach were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died” (Genesis 9:29).
[Avraham was born in 1948 from Creation. Hence we learn that Avraham knew Noach and was 58 years old when Noach, the new patriarch of mankind, died.]
Neither of these facts is in question. But the careful reader may ask that seeing we already know from Genesis 7:11 that Noach lived 600 years before the Flood, at the end of it he was 601 (Genesis 8:13) year old, and from Genesis 9:28 that he lived 350 years after it. So, why did the Torah have to write verse 29? The fact is that Noach had lived 951 years, not 950. It appears that the reckoning of time ( ) has omitted the -year duration of the Flood itself (Genesis 7:11 to Genesis 8:14). But is it so? To understand all the aforesaid clearly an explanation is called for.
Classical Rabbinic literature addresses this specific textual oddity through two primary approaches to explain the missing year. We find the following difference of opinion.
- The Year of the Deluge Was Excluded from Human Calendar Calculations
In Classical Rabbinic literature (Sidrei Bereshit), the primary midrashic explanation is that the full year during which the Flood occurred is not calculated as a standard calendar year in human history because the natural order of creation was suspended.
In Bereishit Rabbah 32:6, we read:
“Rabbi Yehudah said: The year of the Flood is not counted in the tally [of human years]. Rabbi Nehemiah said to him: Even though it is not counted in the tally, it is counted in terms of solstices/seasons and calendar calculations.” [Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 32:6]
According to Rabbi Yehudah in the Midrash, because the heavenly bodies (sun, moon, and stars) did not function in their regular order while the earth was submerged and life on it was destroyed, that year was categorized as a supernatural period separate from the standard count of history of mankind.
But it does not appear to us to be satisfactory, for indeed if that were correct, we are hard pressed to understand why would the narrator of the story create confusion as to how to count Noach’s years: one for the sake of the calendar, and the other for the sake of recording Noach’s lifespan. We will explain that the opinion of these rabbis is not the only way to interpret these verses, as we do not agree with them.
- Inclusive Counting of Partial Year (nothing is missing)
Medieval Rabbinic commentators clarify that the discrepancy is resolved through the standard Biblical Hebrew idiom of age reckoning.
Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi) on Genesis 9:28 notes that Noach entered his year when the Flood began (see again Genesis 7:11: “In the six hundredth year of Noach’s life”), and at the end of the Flood year, he was exiting his year (entering his year; see again Genesis 8:13: “in the six hundred and first year”). When Genesis 7:6 states that Noach was “six hundred years old,” it means he was in his year. The years counted “after the flood” (Genesis 9:28) complete the count to without double-counting the year spent inside the Ark.
There is another noteworthy comment by Ibn Ezra on Genesis 7:6. He explains that Scripture frequently uses round numbers or counts a person’s age based on their current year rather than elapsed complete years. Thus, Noach was complete years old and in his year when the water fell and lived complete years following the drying of the earth, yielding exactly years.
The Rabbis holding this view base it on the wording in the verse which reads that Noach entered his year when the Flood began: “In the six hundredth year of Noach’s life”, i.e., incomplete year. Thus, it will be clear to the reader that the perception of incomplete year is expressed by the wording: “In the six hundredth year”.
While classical interpretation offers both physical-catastrophic and linguistic-chronological solutions, the underlying resolution is consistent:
- Theologically: The Rabbinic tradition underscores that the year spent inside the Ark was a period suspended from the regular natural order, making it an anomaly in standard genealogical tallies.
- Linguistically: “Six hundred years old” in Genesis 7:6 designates the point in time when the Flood initiated (his year of life). Therefore, the post-Flood years begin at the conclusion of that year, totaling years ( ).
It is difficult to decide with certainty between these two opinions, because both views are much in harmony with the context. But in our opinion, it is not correct to fit the former thought into the language of Genesis 9:29. But we are not completely satisfied with latter either. Since one view is problematic and the other unsatisfactory, this compels us to search for a different interpretation, as will be clarified below according to our view.
Yet, we will try to present to the studious reader our understanding of what Torah means when it says in Genesis 7:6. Indeed, this verse says: “And Noach was six hundred years old”. But only a few verses later, after we are told who came into the ark, Genesis 7:11 clarifies with more details: “In the six hundredth year of Noach’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month”. How does that help?
We need to resolve why, in the previous verse, Torah says first that Noach was 600 years old thus implying that he had 600 complete years, while later it says, “In the 600th year of Noach’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month” suggesting that the 600th year was incomplete. The correct interpretation appears to us to be the following. There is a basic rule of interpretation: When there are abbreviated and expanded passages in the Scripture, and they seem to contradict each other, the expanded passage always explains or clarifies the abbreviated one, not the other way around. We can therefore only explain all this by referring to the style of the Torah when narrating such details. In this case, the language of the text, if properly considered, contains the answer: Genesis 7:11 clarifies what Genesis 7:6 has only briefly touched upon and condensed in a short statement. Besides, the statement of Genesis 9:29 (“So all the days of Noach were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died”) is explicit, while that of Genesis 7:6 Genesis 7:11 are interpretive.
So, why was there the necessity for the Torah to introduce in Genesis 7:6 what will follow in Genesis 7:11? This is how the Torah begins to explain Noach’s age implying that what the reader will read from that point on is closely related to what the reader has already read previously in verse 6. This is a common way for the Torah to connect two accounts together. We find a similar formula in the creation story; first, Torah mentions briefly that the man and the woman were created in Genesis 1, and then in Genesis 2 it expounds it. And this is our understanding to which we adhere: Noach indeed lived 950 years, for since Scripture found it necessary to say: “And all the days of Noach were nine hundred and fifty years; and he died” (Genesis 9:29). The Torah wants us to know this. And the language of the verses fits in well with our explanation.
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