Genesis 5:5 “And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died”
After the birth of Seth, Adam lived to see at least another seven generations of grand and great-grand children numbering in the hundreds of millions, if not billions. Can you imagine living nearly a millennium? What a burden it must have been to Adam to see the world spiraling out of control with evil everywhere, and know that he could have prevented it, if only he had been obedient! Talk about a torturous existence. No doubt many of his descendants heaped reproaches and blame on him whenever he remonstrated with them for their evil ways, or in any way tried to counteract the results of his sin. Finally, Adam’s long life came to an end and he received the payment for his sin: death. But how is that Adam was allowed to live so long when God had said that “in the day that thou eatest thereof [of the tree of knowledge of good and evil] thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17)? Was God’s proclamation a lie? First, remember that there was a death the same literal day that Adam sinned. At least one animal had to die in their place so that Adam and Eve could be clothed (Genesis 3:21). If it had not been for the promised Substitute to come, represented by those animal sacrifices, Adam and Eve surely would have died that very same day.
Yet God’s sentencing proves true on an additional level as well, when we consider the divine computation of time. Psalms 90:4 tells us: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night,” and 2 Peter 3:8 declares “[…] that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Therefore by God’s reckoning, Adam did literally die within the first day of his transgression, a solid seventy years shy of the thousand-year mark. Every word of God is true, not one of them shall fail.
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