B. F. Bonnell, of Geyserville, Cal., has encountered a little chronological puzzle in Genesis which very frequently calls careful Bible readers to a halt. He presents it very compactly in the following lines:

      According to Gen. 5:32, Noah was five hundred years old when Shem was born. According to 7:11-13, he was six hundred when he entered the ark. According to 11:10, Shem was one hundred when Arphaxad was born. How, then, could Arphaxad have been born, as stated in 11:10, two years after the flood?

      Again:

      Noah was six hundred years old (Gen. 7:11-13) when he entered the ark. He lived, according to 9:28, 350 years after the flood. The flood, according to 7:11 and 8:14, lasted one year and ten days. How could Noah, as stated in 9:29, be 950 years old at the time of his death?

      In your critical review of Harper's lectures, March 2, 1895, you say, "Shem's real age at the time of the flood was ninety-eight years," but you do not say how you reached that conclusion.

      In attempting an explanation, let us begin at the beginning of this list of figures. [294]

      First, then, it is not correct to say that, "according to Gen. 5:32, Noah was five hundred years old when Shem was born." The text does not say so. It says this: "And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham and Japheth." Here are two distinct facts asserted, not connected by an adverb of time to show that they were simultaneous. If they were simultaneous, notwithstanding the omission of the adverb, then Shem, Ham and Japheth were triplets. But we know that they were not triplets, because Ham, in 9:24, is called Noah's "youngest son," which he could not be if all three were born at one birth. What is the meaning, then, of 5:32? It means, that at the close of the period contemplated in the genealogy of which it is the closing verse, Noah was five hundred years old; and that, either earlier or later, the text does not determine which, Noah begat these three sons.

      If now we wish to ascertain the exact time when Shem was born, the key is given us in the statement that "Shem was one hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood" (11:10). But if Shem was one hundred years old two years after the flood, he was ninety-eight at the time of the flood. And as he was ninety-eight at the time of the flood, when his father was six hundred, he was born when his father was five hundred and two. We have no figures by which to determine the exact ages of his two brothers; but it is clear from the fact of Ham being the youngest, that he was born still later.

      Now, we turn to the first statements about the age of Noah. The text does not say, with Bro. Bonnell, that "Noah was six hundred years old when he entered the ark." The statement is that "Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth," [295] and this means, not merely when the flood began, but during nearly the whole continuance of the flood. By Hebrew custom a man would be six hundred years old all the time from the day he entered his six hundredth year till the day he reached his six hundred and first year; and this custom grew out of their other custom of counting any part of a year at the close of a series as if it were a whole year. Our own custom is similar, but not the same. When a man asks me now, "What is your age?" I answer I am sixty-nine; and I will continue to answer thus till I become seventy. If I should live to Noah's age I would not call myself six hundred till I had completed my six hundredth year; but he called himself six hundred when he began that year. It is in this sense then that Noah was six hundred years old when the flood was on the earth. But if we inquire his exact age when the flood began, it is given in 7:11, which says: "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, in the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of the heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights." Noah's age, then, was five hundred and ninety-nine years, one month and seventeen days. Nothing could be more exact than this; and this exactness when exactness was called for, combined with a peculiar Semitic inexactness when exactness was not called for, is no mean evidence that the writer knew perfectly the facts in the case and described them precisely as they were.

      We are now ready to understand the statement about Noah's entire age. When he came out of the ark his age was six hundred years, one month and twenty-seven days (8:14). If he lived through the rest of that year, [296] and three hundred and forty-nine years longer, he was nine hundred and fifty when he died; for the Hebrews counted a piece of a year at the beginning of a series, as well as at the end of it, as if it were a whole year. According to this method of counting, if he lived to any point within the three hundred and forty-ninth year afterward, he would still be said to have lived, after the flood, three hundred and fifty years, and his whole life, on either supposition, was nine hundred and fifty.

      In conclusion I will remark, that young people and older brethren, who have not had opportunity to familiarize themselves with the peculiarities of early Hebrew style, may be excused for becoming confused on some points of Biblical chronology; but those trained scholars who take advantage of these peculiarities to make out a series of contradictions, and thus to assail the credibility of the sacred narratives, are without excuse, and must be held accountable for the evil which they are doing.

[SEBC 294-297]