Who was the oldest man in the Bible?

Noah's grandfather was named Methuselah. Methuselah's father was Enoch, who preached the solemn sermon: "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints, to execute judgment." (Jude 14, 15). The name Methuselah means, "When he is dead it shall be." Enoch gave his son this strange name, so that he might be a sign to all that the judgment was coming. As long as Methuselah lived the judgment would not come: but, when Methuselah died, then all the world should know that judgment was near. Methuselah lived to be the oldest man this world has ever known. Why? Because God was not willing that any should perish, and He waited, and waited, and waited, for men to repent. He waited for men and women and children to come into the ark to be saved. God had warned them that when Methuselah died the judgment must come: so in His loving patience, He waited till Methuselah was the oldest man who ever lived, to give opportunity for the people to be saved.

Genesis 5

When Adam was 130 years old, God gave him another son instead of Abel and he called his name Seth. After that Adam lived 800 years, and had sons and daughters. At the age of 930 years, "he died". In those days men lived to be very old. The oldest of all was Methuselah: he lived 969 years. Today, if a person lives to be 100, we think him very old. But he must die. How about Methuselah? Of him also it is written: "He died." Would you like to live to be 969 years old? Many people would. Would they like to die then? No. Death is man's enemy. Nobody likes to die, but in this world all except two men have died, Enoch and Elijah.

Son of Enoch, and the seventh from Adam: he lived 969 years, longer than any other person, and died in the year of the flood. Gen. 5:21-27; 1 Chr. 1:3. He is called MATHUSALA in Luke 3:37.

"What's in a name?" has become a proverb in our day; but how much there was wrapped up in the name of Enoch's son, to those who had eyes to see and ears to hear. For three hundred years he watched his father's consistent walk, until "he was not, for God took him:" "took him" without seeing death, as we learn in Hebrews 11. But Methuselah lived on down here, and he knew that as long as he lived the judgment could not fall. His own son Lamech was born and lived 777 years (very different to the man in the last Book of the Bible whose number is 666) and he died, but Methuselah his father lived on for another five years. He watched his grandson Noah (meaning "Comfort") through 600 years of life, he heard the solemn announcement of the judgment, and saw the ark being prepared to the saving of the lives of the whole household of his grandson, before at last he, the oldest man who ever lived, passed from this scene and prepared the way for the judgment to come. The 969 years of Methuselah's life are a mighty voice crying aloud to those who have ears to hear, telling us of God's patience and longsuffering; that judgment is His strange work, but proclaiming with equal clearness and precision the certainty of judgment to come.

From Adam to Noah men lived much longer than in the period that followed. Adam lived 930 years, Noah 950, and Methuselah 969, the longest recorded. After the flood, Shem lived 600 years, but no one after him reached 500. In Peleg is another decline, he lived 239 years; Abraham only 175 years. We can easily understand why God caused people in the early age of the earth to live so much longer than afterwards. God said to Adam "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth." Gen. 1:28. He also said the same to Noah after the flood. Gen. 9:1, 7. When the earth became more and more peopled the life of man was shortened. The only intimation of what may perhaps now be called the normal longevity of man is in Ps. 90:10, and yet it is a lament for his short and troubled life: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow: for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." This is remarkable as being, according to the heading "A prayer of Moses the man of God," for of Moses we read that he lived 120 years, and "his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated," Deut. 34:7; but the Psalms were prophetic both for our, and future times, and Moses leads short-lived man to the eternity of God. (Ver. 2.) In the thousand years of the millennium apparently no one will die but the wicked, and one at a hundred years of age will be called a child: the days of God's people will be as the days of a tree, and they will, when the curse is removed, long enjoy the work of their hands. Isa. 65:20-22.

Look, again, at the prophecy of God’s long-suffering involved in the meaning of Methuselah’s name. It meant “when he is dead it shall be sent,” i.e. the deluge. None have lived longer than he. Older than Adam with his 930 years, older than Jared with his 962 years, surviving his own son, Lamech, with his 777 years, Methuselah’s great age was a standing witness of God’s long-suffering compassion, of His unwillingness to judge. What a light is thrown upon His blessed nature when we read in another connection that He “endured with MUCH long-suffering the vessels of wrath” (Rom. 9:22).

If we turn back to 1 Chronicles 1, the opening three verses give us one of the wonderful sentences of Inspiration. It is a sentence containing ten proper names and not a single verb. The names are these: Adam, Sheth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalaleel, Jered, Henoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah. Dr Kitto has pointed out that these ten names literally translated in order form the following most remarkable sentence in English: Man, Appointed [or Replaced], Miserable, Lamenting, The God of Glory, Shall descend, To instruct, His death sends, To the afflicted, Consolation. Thus the very names of the antediluvian patriarchs would be a standing testimony to the world. Methuselah's name in particular was a warning message to the sinners of old. The prophet Enoch, whose own name marked him out as one able "to instruct," named his son in words prophetic of coming judgment that would "descend" after his death. The very year in which Methuselah died, the Flood came. One cannot help noting that after the name of the oldest man this world ever saw, God wrote "and he died."

Life will stretch out to the full thousand years of the reign of Christ. Methuselah, the oldest of the patriarchs, came short of that. He lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years.

In old times people lived long. Methuselah, the longest, 969 years. His son, 777; his grandson, Noah, 950. Noah, a righteous man, walked with God.

For 2,500 years or thereby the world had no Bible — no written word of revelation from God. But it is remarkable that this long space of time was bridged by the lives of but three men. Methuselah, the oldest man that ever lived, is one of the links that connect with Adam on the one side and on the other with Noah, who passed through the Flood and lived for 300 years after it.