Methuselah: The Longest Life in the Bible

During our October Prayer and Fasting Week, one of the speakers talked about Enoch, whom Hebrews 11:5 lists among the heroes of faith. Enoch never died, because God took him to Himself. She mentioned that Enoch was the father of Methuselah, the person who lived longer than anyone else in the Bible, and that made me curious, so I went to look him up. I thought he might have lived about 300 years, so I was surprised to find out he lived almost 1,000 years.

Genesis 5:27 tells us exactly how long he lived: "So all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years; and he died."

He was the son of Enoch, the man who walked with God. Methuselah was 187 years old when his son Lamech was born, and after that he lived another 782 years and had more sons and daughters. Lamech later became the father of Noah, which makes Methuselah Noah's grandfather.

Who was Lamech?

Lamech sits right in the middle of the family line that runs from Adam to the Flood, between his father Methuselah and his son Noah, and he gave Noah a name full of hope. Genesis 5:29 says, "And he called his name Noah, saying, 'This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD has cursed.'" The name Noah sounds like the Hebrew word for rest or comfort, and Lamech was hoping his son would bring some relief from the hard work of farming ground that had been under a curse since Adam (Genesis 3:17).

Lamech was 182 years old when Noah was born, and after that he lived another 595 years and had more sons and daughters. Genesis 5:31 says, "So all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years, and he died." If we add 182 and 595, we get 777, so Lamech died when Noah was 595 years old. Noah was 600 when the Flood came, so Lamech died just five years before it and didn't live to see it. As we'll see below, his father Methuselah was still alive, so Methuselah outlived his own son.

There's also another Lamech in Genesis, and it's easy to mix the two up. The other Lamech came from the family of Cain, the son of Adam who killed his brother Abel (Genesis 4:18-24). He was the first man in the Bible to take two wives, Adah and Zillah, and he boasted to them about killing a man. He even said he would be avenged "seventy-sevenfold" (Genesis 4:24), while our Lamech, who came from the family of Adam's son Seth, lived 777 years and named his son with hope in his heart.

When did Methuselah die?

Many people believe Methuselah died in the Flood, and when we add up the numbers the Bible gives us, we can see why.

As we saw, Lamech was 182 years old when Noah was born (Genesis 5:28-29), so if we add 187 and 182, we find that Noah was born when Methuselah was 369 years old. Genesis 7:6 says, "Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters were on the earth." Add 369 and 600, and we get 969, which is exactly how old Methuselah was when he died.

So if we go by the numbers in our Bibles, which come from the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, Methuselah died in the same year the Flood came.

How did Methuselah die?

The Bible doesn't tell us how he died. Some people think he drowned along with everyone else, while others believe he died just before the waters rose, during the seven days Noah waited before the Flood began (Genesis 7:10). Jewish tradition leans toward the second view, but all the text really tells us is the year.

In the movie Noah (2014), Methuselah is Noah's grandfather, a wise old man played by Anthony Hopkins who lives alone in a cave on a mountain. Noah goes to him for help when he starts having dreams about a great flood, and Methuselah gives him a seed from the Garden of Eden that grows into a whole forest, so Noah has the wood he needs to build the ark. The movie also gives Methuselah a funny side, because every time we see him, he is craving berries.  

Later in the movie, Noah's wife Naameh goes to Methuselah with a family problem. Years earlier, on the way to see him, the family had found and adopted a young girl named Ila, who had a bad wound in her stomach, and Naameh knew Ila would never be able to have children. Ila grew up and fell in love with Noah's son Shem, so Naameh asked Methuselah for help. One day Ila meets him in the forest while he is looking for berries, and he blesses her by touching her stomach. After that she is able to have children, and later, on the ark, she gives birth to twin girls.

Methuselah's last scene comes when the rain starts. Everyone else goes into the ark, but he stays behind in the forest, still looking for those berries. As the floodwaters rise, he finds one and eats it with a big smile on his face, and then the water sweeps over him. Most of this comes from the filmmakers and not from the Bible, because Genesis never mentions Ila or the berries, but I enjoyed it. I remember watching it on Netflix, but I can't find it there anymore, and it's well worth watching if you get the chance.

Methuselah lived 969 years, yet these days we think 69 is old and 100 is very old. My boys sing a song whenever I tell them my age, and when I asked what it meant, they told me it comes from a movie about dinosaurs.