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Now God loved this man for his righteousness: yet he not only condemned
those other men for their wickedness, but determined to destroy the whole
race of mankind, and to make another race that should be pure from wickedness;
and cutting short their lives, and making their years not so many as they
formerly lived, but one hundred and twenty only, 1
he turned the dry land into sea; and thus were all these men destroyed:
but Noah alone was saved; for God suggested to him the following contrivance
and way of escape : - That he should make an ark of four stories high,
three hundred cubits 2
long, fifty cubits broad, and thirty cubits high. Accordingly he entered
into that ark, and his wife, and sons, and their wives, and put into it
not only other provisions, to support their wants there, but also sent
in with the rest all sorts of living creatures, the male and his female,
for the preservation of their kinds; and others of them by sevens. Now
this ark had firm walls, and a roof, and was braced with cross beams, so
that it could not be any way drowned or overborne by the violence of the
water. And thus was Noah, with his family, preserved. Now he was the tenth
from Adam, as being the son of Lamech, whose father was Mathusela; he was
the son of Enoch, the son of Jared; and Jared was the son of Malaleel,
who, with many of his sisters, were the children of Cainan, the son of
Enos. Now Enos was the son of Seth, the son of Adam.
1 Josephus here supposes that the life of these giants, for of them only do I understand him, was now reduced to 120 years; which is confirmed by the fragment of Enoch, sect. 10, in Authent. Rec. Part I. p. 268. For as to the rest of mankind, Josephus himself confesses their lives were much longer than 120 years, for many generations after the flood, as we shall see presently; and he says they were gradually shortened till the days of Moses, and then fixed [for some time] at 120, ch. 6. sect. 5. Nor indeed need we suppose that either Enoch or Josephus meant to interpret these 120 years for the life of men before the flood, to be different from the 120 years of God's patience [perhaps while the ark was preparing] till the deluge; which I take to be the meaning of God when he threatened this wicked world, that if they so long continued impenitent, their days should be no more than 120 years.
2 A cubit is about 21 English inches.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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