Week 1 Genesis 5
This chapter is a list of family names: Adam Seth Enosh Kenan Mahalel Jared Enoch Methuselah Lamech Noah. From Adam to Noah.
One (secondary) thing about the list is that the age of each man is given and one surprising thing is how old these guys were (Enoch was the youngest and he lived for 365 years!) There’s likely quite a few people who think these ages are a bunch of cockamamie exaggerations. I think that idea is based on the fact that the numbers don’t reflect contemporary life expectancy (for instance in 2023 in Canada it’s about 83 years). If the Rule is: If It Can’t Happen Now It Couldn’t Happen Then that means it’s impossible to live 900 years. Personally I think a smarter approach might be “I don’t know for sure”. Another one would be “I think it’s possible that some things could have been different then”.
Anyway Methuselah is the oldest man on the list: 969 years. The fact that Methuselah was only two generations before Noah got me thinking. So I ran a couple of numbers on Methuselah-Lamech-Noah.
Methuselah was 187 years old when Lamech was born.
Lamech was 182 years old when Noah was born.
So Methuselah was 369 years old (187 + 182) when Noah was born.
Noah was 600 years old at the time of the flood. Which means Methuselah was 969 years old (369 + 600) when the flood came.
And so that means Methuselah died in the Year of the Flood.
Note: don’t take my numbers to the bank. Check Genesis 5:25-32 and 7:5.