by Chuck Missler
This section will begin with a riddle: Methuselah is well known as the oldest man in the Bible; yet he died before his father. How can that be?
Enoch, Methuselah’s father, didn’t die; he was transferred directly to heaven without passing through death. It is interesting that the oldest prophecy in the Bible was uttered by Enoch before the flood of Noah and concerned the Second Coming of Christ. (It is not found here in Genesis but in the next-to-last book of the Bible, Jude).
Another fact about Enoch is that at age sixty-five, something very special happened in his life. From that day on, for over three hundred years, he “walked with God”. It seems that when his son was born, he was told that as long as his son was alive, the forthcoming judgment of the flood (the flood of Noah) would be withheld.
Enoch thus named his son using two Hebrew roots: muth, which means “his death,” and shelac, which is a verb form that means “bring,” or “sent forth.” So the name Methuselah means, “his death shall bring.” The flood of Noah did not come as a surprise; it had been predicted for four generations.
This significance behind the name Methuselah also hints that a message might be hidden behind these other names found in chapter 5. Adam had a son named Seth, Seth had a son named Enoch, and so on. The problem with Genesis 5 is that these proper names are not translated for the reader from their Hebrew meanings, so you have to unravel these by digging into the meaning of the Hebrew roots that make up the names.
- Adam: (adomah) “man”
- Seth: “appointed” (Genesis 4:25)
- Enosh: (from the root anash, “to be incurable”) “mortal,” “frail,” “miserable”
- Kenan: “sorrow,” “dirge,” “elegy”
- Mahalal’el: “the Blessed God”—(mahalal) “blessed”; (El) the name for God
- Jared: (from the verb yaradh) “shall come down”
- Enoch: “commencement” or “teaching”
- Methuselah: “his death shall bring”—muth, a root that means “death”; shalach means “bring” or “send forth”
- Lamech: “despairing” (from which we get “lament” or “lamentation”)
- Noah: (derived from nacham) “comfort” or “rest” (Genesis 5:29)
We now can look at the genealogy with more insight. The sequence—Adam—Seth—Enosh—Kenan—Mahalaleel—Jared—Enoch—Methuselah—Lamech—Noah—reads, in English, “Man [is] appointed mortal sorrow; [but] the blessed God shall come down teaching [that His] death shall bring [the] despairing rest.”
There are several profound lessons here. First, here is a summary of the New Testament Gospel tucked away in a genealogy in the Torah. This demonstrates something we will encounter throughout all the Scripture: every detail is there by design. It also tells us that God’s plan of redemption was not a knee-jerk reaction to chapter 3. God had ordained it before the foundation of the world.