Genesis 5:27

27 In all, Methuselah lived 969 years, and he died.

Genesis 5:27 Meaning and Commentary

Genesis 5:27

And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and
sixty nine years, and he died
This was the oldest man that ever lived, no man ever lived to a thousand years: the Jews give this as a reason for it, because a thousand years is God's day, according to ( Psalms 90:4 ) and no man is suffered to arrive to that. His name carried in it a prediction of the time of the flood, which was to be quickly after his death, as has been observed, (See Gill on Genesis 5:21). Some say he died in the year of the flood; others, fourteen years after, and was in the garden of Eden with his father, in the days of the flood, and then returned to the world F1; but the eastern writers are unanimous that he died before the flood: the Arabic writers F2 are very particular as to the time in which he died; they say he died in the six hundredth year of Noah, on a Friday, about noon, on the twenty first day of Elul, which is Thout; and Noah and Shem buried him, embalmed in spices, in the double cave, and mourned for him forty days: and some of the Jewish writers say he died but seven days before the flood came, which they gather from ( Genesis 7:10 ) "after seven days"; that is, as they interpret it, after seven days of mourning for Methuselah F3: he died A. M. 1656, the same year the flood came, according to Bishop Usher.


FOOTNOTES:

F1 Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 74. 2.
F2 Apud Hottinger, p. 244.
F3 Bereshit Rabba, sect. 32. fol. 27. 3. Juchasin, fol. 6. 1. Baal Habturim in Gen. vii. 10.

Genesis 5:27 In-Context

25 When Methuselah was 187 years old, he became the father of Lamech.
26 After Lamech's birth, Methuselah lived 782 years; and he had other sons and daughters.
27 In all, Methuselah lived 969 years, and he died.
28 When Lamech was 182 years old, he became the father of a son
29 and named him Noah, saying, "This one will give us relief from our hard work, from the pain in our hands, because of the fertile land that the LORD cursed."
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