Does "the six hundredth year of Noah’s life" (Gen 7:11) mean the year during which Noah was 599 years old?

Question

Background

In English and most other languages, positively including Spanish, the year that elapses between the birth and the first birthday of a person, say Noah, during which he is [0 years and] n months old, with n < 12, is called the first year of his life, not the "zeroth" year (or, if using cardinals instead of ordinals, year 1, not year 0).

So, the year during which Noah is 1 year old is the second year (or year 2) of his life, and the year during which Noah is n years old is the (n+1)th year (or year n+1) of his life.

Question

Does the above rule hold in the biblical Hebrew used by the Priestly school in Gen 7:11? Specifically, does Gen 7:11, which I will quote from the NASB...

"In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened." (Gen 7:11)

... mean that the Flood started when Noah was 599 years old?

Note: my question is strictly at the linguistic level about the plain meaning of the Gen 7:11 text in isolation, so please answer it at that level, just ignoring Gen 7:6.

Answer 1

Genesis 1:

5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.”
And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

As OP mentions: the counting starts at 1, not 0. At this point, the earth was 1 day old.

Genesis 2:

2 And by the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on that day He rested from all His work.

Generalize this to count years. There is no Year 0. It starts with Year 1.

Genesis 7:11

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day, based strictly at the linguistic level, Noah was 600 years old according to the usage of the Hebrew language.

I understand your point. My Chinese mother would call me 62 years old but my Canadian children would call me 61 years old. I think the ancient Hebrew count age the way ancient Chinese did, not as modern Westerners. Also, both cultures used the lunar system.

The Flood started when Noah was 599 years old? Yes, in the Western sense of years-old.

Answer 2

No. More context needs to read. The final answer is that Noah was actually 598 years old at the start of the flood.

There was a longstanding enigma due to a mere misinterpretation of the word “life”. It caused a math problem that could not have been solved prior to about 1970 AD, when scientists discovered that human “life” doesn’t start at birth, along with “age” and “years old”. Human “life”/childhood starts at conception. Biologically the mother is needed to keep the child alive, so her motherhood starts when the childhood begins. The fatherhood starts at conception too, not months later.

Applying this view solved the enigma. The 3 verses alone seem to present a 2-year discrepancy at first. (The answer is within them).

Gen 5:32 When Noah was five hundred years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Noah became Shem’s father when Noah was 500 years old, but that was at conception. Shem wouldn’t be born for 9 months. Noah was therefore 501 years older than Shem.

Gen 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month: it was on that day that all the fountains of the great abyss burst forth, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.

When the flood began, the amount of Noah’s “life” that had elapsed was 599 years, 1 month, 16 days. With the first 9 months having been in his mother’s womb, Noah would have been 598 years old when the flood began.

Shem would have been 97 when the flood began. (Noah’s 598 less their age difference of 501).

There are three ways to show the flood lasted just beyond one year, so that everyone’s age changed. The best example is through Noah’s one year ten days (i.e. the difference between his exact ages at the beginning and the end of the flood).

Adding one year to Shem’s 97 at the start of the flood would have him 98 at the end. Two years later he would have been 100, as Gen 11:10 shows.

Gen 11:10 This is the record of the descendants of Shem. When Shem was one hundred years old, he became the father of Arpachshad, two years after the flood.

The math on this and 2 other enigmas will only work when applying the belief that “life”/childhood, fatherhood, and motherhood start simultaneously at conception, and that “age” and “years old” start at birth.

Noah was 598 years old when the flood began.