Methuselah

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Methuselah (or Metuschelach , Hebrew מְתוּשֶׁלַח"Spear thrower") is in the Old Testament ( Gen 5,21-27  EU ) a forefather before the flood , son of Enoch and grandfather of Noah (Noah).

In the Bible

According to the Bible , he fathered Lamech at the age of 187 , after which he lived for 782 years (“... and fathered sons and daughters”). According to the Bible report, Methuselah lived to be 969 years old, making it the oldest person ever mentioned in the Bible. The numbers given here are found in the Hebrew Bible. Both the Masoretic text and the Greek Septuagint and the Eastern Christian Bibles derived from it give a total age of 969 years. Deviating from this, the Samaritanus (a special Hebrew version of the Torah) comes to only 720 years of life in Methusalem.

If one takes the age of Methusalem and his descendant Lamech literally according to the Hebrew text and compares them with the dates of Noah's life and the Flood, Methuselah died shortly before or during the Flood (782 years after Lamech's birth corresponds to 600 years after Noach's birth and the year the Flood).

Methuselah- Metuschelach is a descendant of Set and not to be confused with the Metuschael mentioned in Gen 4,18  EU , a descendant of Cain , although both fathered a son named Lamech and both names are given in the Septuagint as Mathusalah (μαθουσαλα).

In current usage

Methuselah, for example, is also used figuratively in contemporary German for a very old man or the oldest man in a group. "X is Methuselah with us" means "he is the oldest man with us". A popular cartoon character is Methusalix , the village elder in the Asterix comics.

Discussion about the age of Methuselah

→ Main article: Biblical age

See also