My grandmother died two weeks short of her 102nd birthday. I’ll tell you more about her in a minute. But Methuselah? He was old. What would he be like to be a 969 year old boy? What would he be like to be Noah’s grandfather? Yes, that Noah. What would it be like to witness the beginning of the flood?
Methuselah was the eighth among the antediluvian patriarchs, the forerunners of our modern type of humanity. They lived long we lived short From the first of our ancestors, Adam, to the tenth, Noah, longevity was what they had and how they lived. Why did Methusela worry when he was, say, middle-aged, at 500? The deluge was yet to come.
Those ten men before the flood
Methuselah lived the longest among the ten, although four others lived, like him, more than 900 years. The shortest lived was Methuselah’s son, Lamech, who died when he was only 777 years old.
All of these ten patriarchs died natural deaths except one. Methuselah’s father, Enoch, did not die. At the age of 365, he “walked with God” and, as he says Genesis 5:23 , “he wasn’t, because God took him.” In other words, Enoch was transferred directly to heaven by God…which God would later do with Elijah as described in 2 Kings 2:11 . Enoch and Elijah are the only two men in Scripture who went to heaven without dying first.
Are we sure, however, about Enoch? We are sure of Elijah: the Biblegive us details of your transport. But Genesis it does not say where God took Enoch, nor does it describe the details, other than to say that Enoch was not. Most Christians, including early commentators, assume that Enoch was taken to heaven, but how?
Saint Ambrose (c. 340-397) in his work Isaac, or the soul , expand the story with dramatic details. Ambrose alludes to Pentecost; he refers to the wings of fire that flew through the mouth of the apostles, those true wings that spoke the pure word. Enoch flew on these wings, Ambrose said, when he was caught up to heaven. Ambrose goes further and comments that Enoch’s transportation shows us something we need to know, something we should apply didactically to ourselves. Those who truly “walk with God” put their hope in God and therefore do not dwell among the sinners of the earth, but are transported, as it were. Join God, so should we.
What does the Bible say about Methuselah?
The fact that Methuselah’s father disappeared makes for an exciting story, and Methuselah’s grandson has an exciting story as well. Most of us learned about it during our childhood. He was Noah, the man from the ark. Our children’s Bibles had pictures of the animals, two by two, marching toward Noah’s ark. I hope many of us have our own set of play animals and an ark of games to go with them.
But what do the Scriptures tell us about Methuselah himself, son of Enoch and grandfather of Noah? Not much.
Among the antediluvian patriarchs, Adam receives much attention from the scriptures, being the first, as Noah, the last. Enoch has the story of transporting him, by spirit fire or otherwise. But the rest of the patriarchs only get three sentences each, and they all get the same sentences, in voiced repetition. read Genesis 5 . Between verse 4 and verse 31 all the patriarchal lives are summed up, and the summations use exactly the same words (with an additional sentence for Enoch). Only the names of the men vary and their number of years.
For example, regarding Methuselah, here are the three sentences. First, we learn how old he was when he fathered his first child: 187 years old. Second, we learn how long he lived after the birth of his first child and that he had other sons and daughters: 782 years, and everybody they had other sons and daughters . Third, his lifespan is summarized in years (969 years) and then there is a final phrase, “and he died”.
The artistic and linguistic elements of history.
We hear the same poetic measure regarding nine of the ten patriarchs: “and he died.” There is literary art in this touch, a chime.
Literary art is deliberate in the Scriptures . God, who is both protagonist and author, is invisible, but he speaks, either as a calm and low voice (for Elijah in 1 Kings 19:12 ) or like a rumbling thunder (commanded by Elihu to be heard by Job in Job 37:2 ). When God speaks, the Hebrew word debar which is used, means word Y action . Both at the same time. The word it is action; The word does not exist idly, on its own merit.
With regard to the antediluvian patriarchs, the repetition of God in Genesis 5 it is deliberate. And he died, and he died, and he died . This repetition is formative . It witnesses the historical progress of time and event in the antediluvian era, while at the same time literary, creative and biblically, it is the progress of time and event.
What can we know about Methuselah himself?
I have stated that we learn nothing about Methuselah in the Bible except for her three prayers. But is there anything we can infer? What about the man’s name? What does his name suggest to us? Most scholars believe that Methuselah’s name is Semitic, so I agree.
Semitic (and Hebrew) existence is rooted in the salvation saga of the Old Testament. God’s act, which is his word, included the following debarim (plural of debar ). He “spoke” to a people of his own, in his image, to inhabit the world he made, to flourish in it, to multiply, and to obey the one commandment he put in his place. Unfortunately, they didn’t. And so hangs a story. In fact, it hangs like this the story of creation, fall, redemption and restoration. But back to Methuselah.
The first half of the man’s name, which is the m ma part, almost certainly the man of. After that, it gets dangerous. I have read that the traditional understanding of this part, as part of a name, is the javelin. If accurate, Methuselah is the Antediluvian Javelin Man, which is a superhero designation that I adore. Other suggestions of meaning include the Shipping or the Shipping,by it therefore, the man sent. EITHER channel of there the channel man. Maybe one of these others is the real right one, but none of them are quite as exciting as Javelin Man!
Personally, (here I consider myself an antediluvian patriarch) I was never very good at the javelin; Instead, the other “patriarchs” called me Shot Put Man. But I had javelin friends, and I remember the way they sent their spears vibrating and singing through the top of the air in the sun, when we were all out in the field. competing during our early twenties. Because of those exciting moments, I love to imagine my antediluvian teammate Methuselah, a young athlete from Hale during his 300-odd years, perhaps at war or more likely competing in the annual Semitic Games, as high as possible!
The oldest men who ever lived and why we are different
The antediluvian era was the period in which the history of mankind descended after the fall. Cast out of the garden, Adam and Eve were cut off from the immediate company of God, in the cool of the day, and forced to make their own way, in a world that required the labor of men in the fields and the labor of women in childbirth. Sickness, evil, death, these were all the consequences of sin…and are still our reality today as heirs to the sinful nature in a fallen world.
In fact, the machinations of the evil one have been so successful since his appearance as the fourth inhabitant of the Garden that, today, we hardly recognize his work for having ruined the universe, it is usually the plague. Today, we continue in our lives feeling, more or less, our urge to sin, doing everything possible to avoid it when we are in a healthy state, trying when we are not too distracted to get closer to Jesus, doing what we can. The best we can But we’re down.
The question has often arisen: how is it that the antediluvian patriarchs lived lives of a duration that is incomprehensible to us? I mentioned my grandmother who was a centenarian (my dad was too: 101). But these contemporary humans, who seemed so old to me, were surpassed by the patriarchs at the rate of seven, eight or nine times! what is it that remember and refer to themselves about when they were surrounded by their first children and their sons and daughters at a birthday party?
Perhaps, that is how his longevity came to be, and then it stopped. Cain killed Abel, as early as possible in the patriarchal age. Adam and Eve had another son, Seth, to replace their good Abel. After that, for centuries the conflict raged between the good Sethites and the bad Cainites (interpreters consider Methuselah to be a Sethite) and all that was good, strong and righteous in the sight of God was beaten until God was mightily angry .
The Spirit of God still dwelled in humanity until the end of the patriarchal age. However, God was fed up with the wickedness of man, who was great on earth. God dictated that his Spirit would not remain in humanity forever. At the end of the age, God determined that “the days shall be 120 years”, as reported in Genesis 6: 3. God’s fury was such that, when he found a righteous man, Methuselah’s grandson, he decided to start over, this time with that righteous man, with Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives, and with seven pairs of all. the clean animals, and a couple of all the unclean animals. And then God unleashed the flood. It was by faith that Noah was found righteous, and it was by faith that he and all the other believing patriarchs were redeemed and saved by grace.
100th birthday of my grandmother
Slender and elegant, my grandmother sat on her sofa in the midst of her extended family of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I am her first grandchild. I sat next to her. He was 42 years old and I would be 43 in two weeks, aging myself. I remember our conversation went something like this.
“How are you, Grandmother?”
“I feel good. I want to see what happens next.”
I have been told that the first century is the most difficult. After that they get easier.
She laughed. “Good to Know.” She smiled to me. “Have you been talking about it with Methuselah?”
“I can’t find it anywhere.”
She thought for a moment and then said, “He’s out there somewhere. All those old ones are. We can still feel them if we try.”
Today, we still live in a fallen world and human beings are still consumed by the sinful nature, but God had a…