창세기 5:5의 주석

ויהיו כל ימי אדם. The total lifespan of Adam comprised, etc. There is a reason why the Torah describes the lifespan of Adam in general as well as in specific terms i.e. כל ימי אשר חי. We have to remember that the lifespan of every human being is determined prior to his birth. This rule did not apply to Adam when he was created as he would have lived forever had he not sinned.. The line ויהיו כל ימי אדם אשר חי tells us that his lifespan was determined only while he was already alive. When the Torah does employ the words ויהיו כל ימי פלוני this means that all the people mentioned lived out the full lifespan allocated to them at birth. The Torah did not intend to teach us arithmetic by giving us totals when it had already given us the number of years the respective person lived before fathering a son and the years he lived subsequently.

ויהיו כל ימי אדם, the reason why the Torah summed up once more the total of the number of years Adam lived since his creation, although anyone who is not a simpleton could have figured this out from the data already provided by the Torah, is in order that the scribe should not make a mistake. Once both the individual numbers and the sum total is provided one can double check the total and no mistake will be made. When the number of the soldiers in the army of Israel is recorded, an individual number being supplied for each tribe, the Torah nonetheless troubles itself to spell out the grand total of all these numbers combined. Compare (Numbers 1,46 as well as 26,51).

ויהיו כל ימי אדם תשע מאות שנה ושלשים שנה, “Adam lived for a total of 930 years.” This is not a precise number, i.e. that he lived 930 years to the day after his creation, but that he lived longer than 929 years. This rule applied to all the numbers given in the Torah for the number of years that people lived prior to the deluge.

Nine hundred. Sometimes the hundreds are written first and sometimes the units. In general when the units are written last it indicates that the person’s last few years were just as fruitful as the rest of his life and when they are written first it indicates that his final years were unproductive. There are exceptions to this rule, however; see Rashi 23:1.

וימת, “he died;” this is the standard formula used by the Torah for the death of anyone who died before Noach. It is to tell us that this death occurred not due to sickness, etc., but due to the curse of mortality that man became subject to after having been seduced by the serpent. From Noach’s time onward, the Torah did not always add the fact that a person died, once it had informed us about how many years they lived. [The author’s problem appears to have been that the words: “he died,” were superfluous once we knew how old they became. Ed.]