Methuselah

Genesis 5:21-29

Methuselah was a patriarch, the grandfather of Noah, who lived for 969 years (Gen. 5:27).   The Scriptures tell us that Enoch was the father of Methuselah, that Enoch was taken by God at the age of 365 years and that he walked with God.  For many years the father of Methuselah lived an example before his son that would bring blessing and not curses.  Methuselah fathered Lamech, at the age of 187 years and he lived after that for 782 years, making him 969 years before he died.  Lamech lived 182 years and fathered a son he called Noah, and this is what he said about Noah, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” 

We call what Lamech did prophecies; he was prophesying what God had placed on his heart about Noah.  It is of interest to note that Lamech the son of Methuselah, died before his father, and that Methuselah was 369 years old when Noah was born.  If we read ahead in Genesis 6, we see that Noah was 600 years old when the flood came.  This is the account in Genesis 6:11,12, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.  And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”  Genesis 5:27, Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years and he died.” 

Methuselah did not get into the boat, he may have died the same day as the flood or he may have died in the first month of that year, all we know is that the flood happened in that same year as his death.  This is what we know, Enoch walked with God and he did not die, because God took him, and his son Methuselah lived to see God use his great-grandson to save seven people and two of most animals from being destroyed from the earth.  I’ve read other accounts, accounts from the minds of men, men who refuse to live by faith, and it is laughable to see how they attempt to explain away the Bible.  One example is, “Some believe that Methuselah's extreme age is the result of an ancient mistranslation that converted "months" to "years", producing a more credible 969 lunar months, or 78½ years,[7] but the same calculation applied to Enoch would have him fathering Methuselah at the age of 5.”  I’m going with the Bible; it just takes too much faith for me to believe Enoch was a dad at the age of five.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice