How old is Noah when the flood begins in the Genesis account of Noah's Ark?

Noah is 600 years old when the flood begins in the Genesis account of Noah's Ark.

Genesis 7:6 states that Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came upon the earth. The age appears in the narrative's chronology immediately before Noah, his family, and the animals enter the ark. It is a specific age at the flood's beginning, not Noah's age when he first receives the command to build the vessel.

Genesis also gives Noah's total lifespan as 950 years. That later figure can cause confusion, especially when readers remember it without the separate flood-age detail. Noah's father, Lamech, is described earlier as becoming the father of Noah at age 182 in many translations, but that is a different genealogical number.

The account uses ages to structure its early chronology, as it does for several figures in Genesis. The answer is therefore “600 years old,” not 950 years old: 600 marks the flood, while 950 marks the end of Noah's life according to Genesis 9:28–29.