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Jubilees uses Psalm 90 to explain why Abraham’s life is shorter than earlier patriarchs. Genesis describes lifespans over 900 years, yet Abraham lives only 175 years, and Psalm 90 connects this typical lifespan to difficulty and oppression.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Psalm 90:10
Hebrew Bible
8 You are aware of our sins; you even know about our hidden sins. 9 Yes, throughout all our days we experience your raging fury; the years of our lives pass quickly, like a sigh. 10 The days of our lives add up to 70 years, or 80, if one is especially strong. But even one’s best years are marred by trouble and oppression. Yes, they pass quickly and we fly away. 11 Who can really fathom the intensity of your anger? Your raging fury causes people to fear you.
Date: 600–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 23:15
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
14 And all these shall come on an evil generation, which transgresses on the earth: their works are impurity and sexual immorality, and pollution and abominations. 15 Then they shall say: 'The days of the ancestors were many (even), to a thousand years, and were good; but look, the days of our life, if a man has lived many, are seventy years, and, if he is strong, eighty years, and those evil, and there is no peace in the days of this evil generation.' 16 And in that generation the sons shall convict their fathers and their elders of sin and unrighteousness, and of the words of their mouth and the great wickednesses which they perpetrate, and concerning their abandoning the covenant which the Lord made between them and Him, that they should observe and do all His commandments and His ordinances and all His instructions, without departing either to the right or the left.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The author of Jubilees is especially fond of Abraham, Jacob and Levi. He therefore expanded their narratives. Abraham’s death at a relative short age of 175 years, however, presented a problem to the author. Compared to the long lives of the ancestors in Genesis 5 (referred to in Jubilees 23:9 and 27) the short life of Abraham does not make sense. Psalm 90:10 presented the solution to the author’s problem. In Psalm 90 the brevity of man’s life is linked to his sin and to God’s wrath. Although his jubilees scheme indicated the order of history, the author has to amend his scheme by acknowledging the effect sin has on history. Psalm 90 links sin to longevity and Abraham’s relative short live must be understood in those terms. The antediluvian ancestors mostly lived for more than 900 years according to Genesis 5. This is recalculated in Jubilees 23:9 in heptadic terms as 19 jubilees of years (931 years). The age of the generations then started to decline ..."
Pieter M Venter, “Intertextuality in the Book of Jubilees,” HvTSt 63.2 (2007): 463–480.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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Jubilees 23:19
Jubilees 23:19Where in the Christian Bible?
Where in the Christian Bible?