Wednesday Bible Study: A public health lesson

Psalm 90 is attributed to Moses. At least David might have existed, although he certainly did not write the psalms attributed to him. Moses is an entirely fictitious character. We know for a fact that the Egyptian captivity and the exodus never happened. But I ' ll give the writer this much credit -- the human lifespan of 70 years was probably pretty accurate at the time, in the sense that it was about the longest people could hope to live. You may recall that in Genesis 6:3 God says the human lifespan will be 120 years, and that many of the characters in Genesis lived for hundreds of years. However, life expectancy -- i.e., the average age at which people died -- throughout all of history right up to the end of the 19th Century was never more than 35 or 40 years. That ' s because lots of babies and children died, but also because the death rate at all ages was higher than it is now. If you got through childhood you had an outside chance of making it to 70, and the psalm even says that a few people made it to 80, but that was about the limit, and it was very rare. Nowadays we take it for granted, and someone who only lives to 70 is actually regarded as unlucky. Just keep in mind that this has never been the human condition until this very brief moment. We ' ll have to see if it lasts.Psalm 91 is just ridiculous. It claims that if you trust in God, you will be invulnerable. Look at verses 5 through 7 -- it will be impossible for you to die of pestilence, or be killed in b...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs