Exodus 7:7

7. Moses was fourscore years old Here, at the close of the recapitulation, we have the ages of the great actors in this drama set before us . Aaron, it seems, was three years older than Moses; and as we hear nothing of any special apprehensions of danger at the time of his birth, it is possible, though not certain, that the cruel edict which endangered the life of Moses had not then been promulgated. Miriam is not here mentioned, but she is generally supposed to be the sister, older than Moses and Aaron, mentioned in the second chapter. Moses entered on his great mission at fourscore, but as his ancestors Amram, Levi, and Jacob lived beyond the third of their second century, and he himself reached the one hundred and twentieth year, we may regard him as now having the vigour of a man of forty-five. There are nearly contemporary Egyptian records which show similar instances of Egyptian longevity. Stuart Poole gives (in Smith’s Dict.) a translation of a hieratic papyrus containing a discourse of a king’s son of the fifteenth dynasty of Shepherd Kings at Memphis, wherein the author speaks of himself as one hundred and ten years of age, and of his father as still reigning, who must then have been older than Moses, and probably as old as Levi. Yet these must be regarded as exceptional instances, for the ninetieth Psalm, entitled “A prayer of Moses, the man of God,” speaks of seventy or eighty years as the usual length of human life. And in harmony with this, Caleb, the contemporary of Moses, says of himself at eighty-five, “Behold, the Lord hath kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, even since the Lord spake this word unto Moses, while Israel wandered in the wilderness: and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old. As yet I am strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me.” Joshua 14:10-11. Caleb evidently regards himself as vigorous at eighty-five by God’s special blessing .