except dr. bill.
God does not say that the shortening life span will be immediate.
you're thinking about this all wrong. let's start with what the text says.
quote:
, —- ‘ ——, ‘’, ‘; ,
v'yo-amar yahueh, "lo-yadon ruchi b'adam l'olam, b'sha-gam basar hu v'hayu yomiu meah v'esrim shanah."
and-said yahueh, "no-fighting soul(mine) in-man(kind?) to-eternity, in-who-also flesh he, and be(his) days(his) hundred and-twenty years.
and [the lord] said, "my soul will not struggle over man for eternity. because he is also mortal, his days will be 120 years."
or more idiomatically,
quote:
and the lord said, "i will not be bothered with mankind anymore. but because he is fallible, he has 120 years"
look at the context in genesis 6. this god saying mankind is a pain, and nothing but trouble. he is tired of fighting with or judging them, something that
grieves him to his soul. he decides to destroy mankind -- ALL mankind. but god, being a loving and forgiving god, gives mankind 120 years to shape up. take a look a bit down the page. 100 of those years are spent building a giant boat. it is not a coincidence that this passage uses a number so close to the duration of noah's ark building term.
this
is not a limit on human lifespan. to read it as such is to misunderstand the usage of
adam in this verse, and then to take the verse entirely out of textual context -- all of which has to do with god wanting to wipe ever living thing off the face of the earth. but to assume it applies to human lifespan is to do more than to read it ouf context. while there
are internal conflicts, it seems a little ludicrous this time. maybe the fact that
only two people in the entire book of genesis die before their 120th birthday is a product of editting different documents together (this is j. genealogies are p). but to have internal descriptions in j of noah living a lot longer? and shem? and abraham? it requires the author of a single document to have made a big important point explaining something, and then totally forgotten about it.