God’s Word for You

Genesis 6:3 120 Years

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, October 21, 2026

3 The LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is corrupt. His days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The word translated “contend” (as in the NIV) is diyn, which usually means “to judge” (Deuteronomy 32:26) or to plead in court (Jeremiah 30:13). It can also mean to govern (Zechariah 3:7). Some translations assume that there should be a change in the consonants to dor and make it to be “my Spirit will not abide.” The courtroom idea of “calling man to account” (as in Genesis 15:14) seems to be a root idea.

The gospel, which was held out to all mankind in those days by the godly patriarchs, was being rejected. Noah himself is called “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5), but the means of grace (in this case, the gospel in the spoken word) was not calling men to faith, but was doing that other function of the word, which is hardening hearts. For “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Romans 9:18).

The Holy Spirit would not keep on calling sinful men to account for their sins “forever,” which here means “for the rest of time.” After Noah and his fathers Lamech and Methuselah died, who would be left of the tiny number of believers? Noah did not yet have any children, and was perhaps or probably not yet married. Soon there would be no more believers left, and the result would be that forevermore God would only condemn sinners, condemn and condemn and condemn, with no one knowing or striving for the gospel or for any forgiveness from God.

There was a serious probability that the wicked were about to wipe out the last of the believing people from the face of the earth. The Holy Spirit did not want to contend or call down judgment on a world filled only with damned, that is condemned, sinners, for the rest of time.

Therefore, God told the youngest believer left—the three hundred and eighty year-old Noah—that mortal mankind only had a hundred and twenty years left.

The Cainites had given themselves over to sin and unbelief. Man was “corrupt.” In Hebrew this is the word basar, which is “flesh” (Greek σάρξ), but flesh in the sense of that power by which man is insubordinate to God and his will. James proclaims that man is dragged away and enticed to evil by his inborn desire (James 1:14). Therefore the NIV’s attempt to translate basar as “mortal” makes no sense at all, for “he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you” (Romans 8:11). God does not despise us on account of our mortality, but pities us and is gracious to us, so that, as Paul says, “what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:4). No, it was sinful, wicked man’s corruption that God’s Holy Spirit would no longer contend with.

The gospel promise of the coming Messiah was still available to all those living in those final twelve decades before the Flood. Enoch had preached in the years before, “The Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones” (Jude 1:14), and Noah was a preacher of righteousness. But the world was no longer listening. So after centuries of continuous preaching and patient pleading, God did two things:

1, He removed his word from their ears and minds. This consequence of hard hearts was “a famine of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11).

2, He removed his gracious Spirit from their hearts. He took away his Spirit on account of their hard and stubborn hearts.

For just as men can sin by committing sinful acts, so also man can sin by simply not believing in God. For without faith in Christ or without the desire to live according to God’s will, man still sins even if he thinks or seems to be leading an upstanding, benevolent, and good life. He might look like the very image of a saint, but without faith he is as corrupt and lost as any murderer, adulterer, or idolater.

God therefore set a limit on the time he would wait. In one sense he would be patient and delay his judgment for more than a century so that a few more souls could be saved through the gospel. We see that this is true without the point being made too dramatically, but when Methuselah, Lamech and Noah appeared to be all that was left, God led Noah to seek out a wife who would come to faith and be a believing spouse in his tent (and aboard ship), and through her, three believing sons were born and grew up into full manhood. And although Lamech was lost in death as the 120 years were drawing quickly to a close, Noah’s three sons each took a wife some time during those final years. When at last Methuselah died, just weeks or days (or hours?) before the rain began, the church had grown from three to eight.

A hundred and twenty years. God was being patient. There are times when God is very patient with us, as well. But there are also times when God might speed up his time table if it will keep some of his dear people from being swept away in unbelief. We never stand in judgment of God over these things, but rather we stand in awe of him. How gracious he is! How forgiving he is! When faith is lost, the body, mind, mouth and heart do nothing but sin. But when faith is restored through repentance, and terror leads to trust once again, the whole self, spirit, body, mind, mouth and heart strive to love and honor God. We never do this perfectly, but he encourages us with his word and promises. Keep at it! Keep looking to him for his grace and forgiveness. Let tomorrow, as Jesus says, worry about itself (Matthew 6:34). To “seek his kingdom and his righteousness” makes us let go of our own ideas of kingdom and personal righteousness. Instead, we look to Christ, and trust in him day by day.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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