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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XXIV: Quomodo intellegendum sit, quod de eis, qui diluuio perdendi erant, dominus dixerit: erunt dies eorum centum uiginti anni.

Quod autem dixit deus: erunt dies eorum centum uiginti anni, non sic accipiendum est, quasi praenuntiatum sit post haec homines centum uiginti annos uiuendo non transgredi, cum et post diluuium etiam quingentos excessisse inueniamus; sed intellegendum est hoc deum dixisse, cum circa finem quingentorum annorum esset Noe, id est quadringentos octoginta uitae annos ageret, quos more suo scriptura quingentos uocat, nomine totius maximam partem plerumque significans; sescentensimo quippe anno uitae Noe, secundo mense factum est diluuium; ac sic centum uiginti anni praedicti sunt futuri uitae hominum periturorum, quibus transactis diluuio delerentur. nec frustra creditur sic factum esse diluuium, iam non inuentis in terra qui non erant digni tali morte defungi, qua in inpios uindicatum est; non quo quicquam bonis quandoque morituris tale genus mortis faciat aliquid, quod eis possit obesse post mortem; uerumtamen nullus eorum diluuio mortuus est, quos de semine Seth propagatos sancta scriptura commemorat. sic autem diuinitus diluuii causa narratur: uidens, inquit, dominus deus, quia multiplicatae sunt malitiae hominum super terram, et omnis quisque cogitat in corde suo diligenter super maligna omnes dies, et cogitauit deus, quia fecit hominem super terram, et recogitauit, et dixit deus: deleam hominem, quem feci, a facie terrae, ab homine usque ad pecus et a repentibus usque ad uolatilia caeli, quia iratus sum, quoniam feci eos.

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The City of God

Chapter 24.--How We are to Understand This Which the Lord Said to Those Who Were to Perish in the Flood: "Their Days Shall Be 120 Years."

But that which God said, "Their days shall be a hundred and twenty years," is not to be understood as a prediction that henceforth men should not live longer than 120 years,--for even after the deluge we find that they lived more than 500 years,--but we are to understand that God said this when Noah had nearly completed his fifth century, that is, had lived 480 years, which Scripture, as it frequently uses the name of the whole of the largest part, calls 500 years. Now the deluge came in the 600th year of Noah's life, the second month; and thus 120 years were predicted as being the remaining span of those who were doomed, which years being spent, they should be destroyed by the deluge. And it is not unreasonably believed that the deluge came as it did, because already there were not found upon earth any who were not worthy of sharing a death so manifestly judicial,--not that a good man, who must die some time, would be a jot the worse of such a death after it was past. Nevertheless there died in the deluge none of those mentioned in the sacred Scripture as descended from Seth. But here is the divine account of the cause of the deluge: "The Lord God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented ¹ the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air: for I am angry that I have made them." ²