How old was Noah when the flood came?

Six hundred, twice over

Genesis gives the number twice, once as an age and once as a date. The date, the 17th day of the second month of Noah’s 600th year, opens the flood’s logbook, told in how long Noah was on the ark. The age comes first, plainly.

Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth. Noah went into the ship with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, because of the floodwaters.

So he went aboard at 600, on the day the water broke loose: “In the same day” the whole family entered (7:13). He stepped out again in his 601st year (8:13).

How old were his sons?

Genesis 5 ends with Noah at 500: “Noah was five hundred years old, then Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth” (5:32). That makes the sons about a hundred at the flood, married but with no children yet. Eight people board, and “sons were born to them after the flood” (10:1).

The numbers hide a small puzzle. “Shem was one hundred years old when he became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood” (11:10). If Shem was 100 two years after the flood, he was born when Noah was about 502, not 500. Either 500 is a round figure for when Noah began to have sons, or Shem was not the eldest. Genesis 10:21 can be read both ways: the World English Bible calls Shem “the elder brother of Japheth,” while the King James Version makes Japheth the elder.

The year of the flood

Add up the ages at which each father in Genesis 5 had the next son, and you can date the flood from Adam.

1. Adam, 130 (5:3)
2. Seth, 105 (5:6)
3. Enosh, 90 (5:9)
4. Kenan, 70 (5:12)
5. Mahalalel, 65 (5:15)
6. Jared, 162 (5:18)
7. Enoch, 65 (5:21)
8. Methuselah, 187 (5:25)
9. Lamech, 182 (5:28)

That is 1,056 years from Adam to Noah’s birth. Add Noah’s 600 and the flood falls in year 1656 of the world, the date Jewish chronology gives it. In 1650 Archbishop James Ussher, counting the same Hebrew numbers, set it in 2348 BC. The Greek Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch give some of the fathers different ages, so their totals differ. The same sums show Noah’s grandfather Methuselah dying in the flood year.

Old enough to wait

Genesis never says how long the building took, and it records no word from Noah before the rain. The New Testament fills the silence a little. First Peter speaks of the time “when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ship was being built” (1 Peter 3:20), and 2 Peter calls Noah “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5). Jesus remembers people “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ship” (Matthew 24:38).

His age also sets him apart from the older flood heroes of Mesopotamia. The Epic of Gilgamesh gives Utnapishtim no age at all, only a reward: after the flood the gods make him immortal. Genesis gives Noah a birth, a flood at 600 and, 350 years later, a death at 950.