Genesis 6:3

And the Lord said,.... Not to Noah, as in Genesis 6:13 for, as yet, he is not taken notice of, or any discourse addressed to him; but rather to or within himself, he said what follows, or thus

And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. And the Lord said.

The Lord said; either, 1. To the men of that age by the mouth of Noah; or, 2. Within himself; he determined. Strive with man, or, contend, or, debate in or against men, as it hath hitherto done, by inward motions and suggestions in the minds and consciences of wicked men, or by the mouths and ministry of that small remnant of holy men, and particularly of Noah, who protested against and contended with the world of the ungodly, and by their doctrines, admonitions, threatenings, and examples, endeavoured to bring them to repentance: ; or dispute with, or concerning, or because of men, i.e. whether I should destroy or save him, as God disputes with or about Ephraim, . For that he also, i.e. even the seed of Seth, or the sons of God also, no less than the offspring of Cain; the pronoun being here put for the foregoing noun, and the singular number put for the plural, he, i.e. they, to wit, the sons of God. Both which figures are frequent in the use of Scripture. Or, he, i.e. man, all mankind, the sons of God not excepted, is flesh; not only fleshly in part, or in some actions, but altogether, in regard of soul as well as body, minding nothing but making provision for the flesh to fulfil its lusts, . Not having the Spirit, , nor heeding its good motions, but suppressing and resisting them. Flesh not only in the condition of their nature, but in the baseness and corruption of their hearts and lives; as the word flesh is commonly used when it is opposed to the Spirit, as , , , . Yet, though he deserve a speedy destruction, his days, i.e. the time allowed him for repentance, and the prevention of his ruin, shall be an hundred and twenty years. During which time Noah was preaching; and, to assure them of the truth of his doctrine, preparing the ark. See . Quest. How did God perform this promise, when there were but a hundred years between this time and the flood, by comparing , with ? Answ. 1. The increasing wickedness of mankind might justly hasten their ruin, and forfeit the benefit of this indulgence. 2. This promise, though mentioned after that, , yet seems to have been made twenty years before it; for that verse is added there out of its proper place only to complete the genealogy; and therefore, after this narration, it is repeated here in its due order, . And such hysteron proterons are frequently noted in Scripture.

Genesis 6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also [is] flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.Ver. 3. My Spirit shall not always strive,] that is, I’ ll consult no longer, but resolve to ruin them, as some gloss it; or, I’ ll pull the sword out of the sheath, the soul out of the body, as others gather out of the Hebrew word here used. But they do best, in my mind, that sense it thus: My Spirit - whereby I hitherto "went and preached," by Noah and other patriarchs, to those "spirits" (once in pleasure, now) "in prison," but prevailed not - shall not always strive with perverse men by preaching, disputing, convincing, in the mouths of my servants, whom I have sent unto them; nor in their own minds and consciences, by inward checks and motions, which they have made no good use of. Delicata res est Spiritus Dei . Grieve it once, and you may drive it away for ever. It "bloweth where it listeth," and will not be at your whistle. For that he also is flesh.] He is therefore the worse, because he ought to be better, God expects singular things from his people, and takes it ill when they are "carnal and walk as men". They should be higher than others by head and shoulders, as Saul was; and all that is in them, or comes from them, should be as the fruit of the trees in Paradise, fair to the eye, and sweet to the taste. Yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.] It shall be so long ere I destroy. This longsuffering of God is celebrated by St Peter, and well it may; for had he not been God, and not man, he could never have held his hands so long. Neither indeed did he; for so extreme was the provocation, that he cut them off twenty years of this promised count: that all the earth might "know" to their woe his "breach of promise". Sunt qui deductum volunt a Nadan, Vagina. Ideo deteriores sumus, quia meliores esse debemus - . Salv.

(3) And the Lord said.—As the Sethites are now the fallen race, it is their covenant Jehovah who determines to reduce the extreme duration of human life to that which, under the most favourable sanitary influences, might still be its normal length. My spirit shall not always strive with man.—The meaning of this much-contested clause is really settled by the main purpose and context of the verse, which is the Divine determination to shorten human life. Whether, then, God’s spirit be the animating breath spoken of in Genesis 2:7; Genesis 7:22, whereby human life is sustained, or the spiritual part of man, his conscience and moral sense—God’s best gift to him—in opposition to his flesh, the struggle henceforward is not to be indefinitely prolonged. In the first case, the struggle spoken of is that between the elements of life and death in the body; in the second, it refers to the moral probation to which man is subject. The versions generally take the former meaning, and translate “shall not dwell,” or “abide “; but there is much in favour of the rendering “shall strive,” though the verb more exactly means to rule, preside over, sit as judge. Literally, then, it signifies that the Divine gift of life shall not rule in man “for ever;” that is, for a period so protracted as was antediluvian life. (Comp. Deuteronomy 15:17, &c.) With man.—Heb., with the adam: spoken with especial reference to the Sethites. For that he also is flesh.—So all the versions; but many commentators, to avoid an Aramaism which does not occur again till the later Psalms, translate, “in their erring he is (= they are) flesh.” But no reason for shortening human life can be found in this commonplace assertion; and if Abraham brought these records with him from Ur, we have an explanation of the acknowledged fact that Aramaisms do occur in the earlier portions of the Bible. Man, then, is “also” flesh, that is, his body is of the same nature as those of the animals, and in spite of his noble gifts and precedence, he must submit to a life of the same moderate duration as that allotted them.

Verse 3. My spirit shall not always strive] It is only by the influence of the Spirit of God that the carnal mind can be subdued and destroyed; but those who wilfully resist and grieve that Spirit must be ultimately left to the hardness and blindness of their own hearts, if they do not repent and turn to God. God delights in mercy, and therefore a gracious warning is given. Even at this time the earth was ripe for destruction; but God promised them one hundred and twenty years' respite: if they repented in that interim, well; if not, they should be destroyed by a flood. See note on "Genesis 6:5"

3. And the lord said] It is not evident in this verse, why the Lord should pass a sentence of condemnation upon man. In the two preceding verses, it is not man, but “the sons of God,” whose depravity has been described. Perhaps, however, the object of the words is, in view of the mixed marriages, to impose a more restricted limit upon the duration of human life. Man is warned, as in Genesis 4:22, that on earth he has no immortality. The warning is administered to the progeny of the sons of God and the daughters of men no less than to the children of men generally. Following this line of interpretation, we obtain some clue to the meaning of a most obscure verse. Its obscurities, indeed, are such that it may well be the case, that the original text has suffered corruption in the early stages of its transmission. 1. The R.V. text may be paraphrased: “My spirit shall not for ever be contending with man; seeing that he also is carnally minded. His days are numbered: but I will not at once consume him. There shall yet be an interval of 120 years, before I bring upon mankind the catastrophe of the Deluge.” The objections to this are numerous: (a) the rendering “strive” is exceedingly doubtful; (b) the idea of the spirit of Jehovah striving with men is unsuitable; (c) the rendering, “for that he also, &c.” represents a Hebrew idiom found nowhere else in the Pentateuch, while the word “also” has no logical connexion; (d) the mention of “his days” being 120 years despite the Flood is, to say the least, strange—Noah is expressly stated in P to be 500 years old at the birth of his sons (Genesis 6:22), and 600 years old when he entered the ark (Genesis 7:6); (e) “flesh” is used in its metaphorical, not in its literal, sense. 2. R.V. marg. rule in. Better, according to many ancient versions, abide in … in their going astray they are flesh. The following paraphrase may be given: “the Spirit which I have implanted in man is not to abide in him for ever. (Still he shall not be judged too severely.) In their continual going astray men shew that they are frail flesh. Mortal life, therefore, shall be limited to 120 years (no admixture of the heavenly strain shall avail for the greater prolongation of life).” It is objected that the lives of the patriarchs in P exceed this limit. But the passage is evidently an independent fragment from J. And it is a more serious objection that the words of the verse, taken literally, make no clear allusion to the illicit marriages, and are applicable to mankind generally.

3. My Spirit shall not always strive with man — γεο, here rendered strive, occurs nowhere else, and its meaning is doubtful.