Methuseah and the Flood

[metherion]

From the KJV:

25And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech.

26And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters:

27And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.

28And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son:

29And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.

30And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters:

If we do some math, Methuselah dies in the year of the Flood.

782 (years Methuselah lived after Lamech)-182 (age of Lamech when he begot Noah)=600 (the age of Noah when the Flood started).

Now, assuming the Flood did happen, do you think Methuselah died in it or before it?

Not a trick of theological question, just something fun I ran across. And no "it didn't happen" or even "if it did happen" answers, the line with the bold text precludes the first and includes the second.

I think that Methuselah died in the Flood because Genesis 6:3 is interpreted as saying all living humans will be killed by the Flood in 120 years. Methuselah was alive at the time, so I think he drowned in the Flood rather than dying of old age before it started.

Metherion

 

[Scotishfury09]

Methuselah's name has been speculated to mean "when he dies, judgment."

Whether this was influenced by the belief of a global flood or whether it was actual interpretation of the Hebrew only, I'm not sure. I'm just saying what I had read.

 

[Deamiter]

in it.

I find it absolutely fascinating that Noah was 600 years old when the flood happened. 600 was one of the most perfect numbers in the Assyrian culture, which certainly strongly influenced the writers of the Bible since sacred numbers are used throughout. Noah's age at the time of the flood is an allusion to him being the righteous person left on Earth -- yet another use of sacred numbers to convey more truth than factual counting numbers could ever accomplish.

My thread on geneologies and sacred numbers:
http://www.christianforums.com/t5127988-biblical-age-inflation-passed-over-elsewhere.html

 

[ContentInHim]

I don't believe that Methuselah died in the flood - there's no indication in scripture that he was evil like the population around him was. In fact I've heard teachings that God waited until he died before shutting Noah and family up in the Ark. There's a conspicuous wait of 7 days before God the deluge came. Here's where it's thought that Noah buried Methuselah and mourned for 7 days. Really interesting, isn't it? The more I read, the more I understand that it's all connected.

GE 7:6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. [7] And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. [8] Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, [9] male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. [10] And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

 

[Scotishfury09]

Would it be impossible to think that maybe the reason the number 600 is so sacred is because of Noah?

 

[Deamiter]

Would it be impossible to think that maybe the reason the number 600 is so sacred is because of Noah?

Oh certainly not impossible, but rather improbable. In the Assyrian culture 60 was actually the most sacred number, so if the number was sacred due to noah's age, 600 would be the basic unit, not 60. If you read the article I linked in the other thread (linked in my last post) you will find that it was very common for the sacred 60 to be multiplied by other sacred numbers, and 600 is often used as a sacred number in Assyrian literature, but it's pretty clearly not as important as 60.

Also, if you reject the possibility of the ages representing something meaningful about the ancestors in favor of counting-numbers, you'd have to look at the Assyrian kings list in a whole new light with the kings living for hundreds and then thousands of years. You could argue that the entire Assyrian culture which spanned hundreds of years purposefully lied about the ages for some unknown reason whereas the Bible has incredible ages that were factually reported for another unknown reason (there's certainly no suggestion in Hebrew literature from the time that they split from their surrounding cultures on this issue). Of course, a simple and more plausable explanation would be that like the Assyrian and Egyptian cultures (which had both very integrally affected the Hebrew culture by the time of the writing of the Torah) the Hebrew culture valued expressing truth over simply counting years when they wrote of their ancestors.

 

[Scotishfury09]

I can see some truth to that. Like how Enoch lived to be 365 before being taken away. Possibly a number assigned to "completion" and significant to the fact that a year had 365 days. Unless the calendar didn't have 365 days, in which case I have no clue what I'm talking about.

 

[Scotishfury09]

What about the rest of lineage from Adam to Noah? Is there any significance to Methuselah being 969 or being the oldest? I'm just asking purely about the numbers. Not much is said about him other than his age; his son, Lamech (who died at 777, a significant number by Biblical standards) and that he died in the year of the flood.

 

[Deamiter]

I'd read the article in the thread I linked to. It doesn't seem like any incredibly elaborate code or anything, but it's also pretty clear that the ages in the Bible are not a random distribution.

 

[Scotishfury09]

I read the article.

First, I would like to point out where it said

From Adam to Noah all of the ages end in 0, 5, 7, 2 (5+7=12), or 9 (5 + 7 + 7 = 19) -- a chance probability of one in a billion!

This is not one in a billion... there are 10 possible choices for the last digit. Having a possibility of 5 numbers out of 10 is 1/2. There are 10 people from Adam to Noah. (1/2)^10 = 1/1024 nowhere near one in a billion.

After the flood 4 of the 10 have 1 of the other possible 5 numbers (1,3,4,6, or 8). Why is it so important before the flood and then not afterwards?

In the calculations of the age of death of the patriarchs before the flood the number 7 is used 4 times. In the calculations after the flood 7 isn't used once; however, the number 8 is used once.

The number 12 is never used. You might say that 6 x 2 = 12 and isn't needed, but the number 15 is used in Abraham's calculated age of death. Why is that? Also 40 is used in 7 of the 10 after the flood, but isn't used before it. 40 can be written as 2 x 2 x 10. Why such an emphasis on 40 and not 12? 12 is used many more times in the Bible than 40 is.

When you look at this table, at first glance it looks like a lot of these sacred and preferred numbers, but upon further inspection it doesn't exactly come out to face value.

What I'm saying is that with as many possibilities of numbers (2,3,5,6, and 7) you can come up with any combination of numbers. The only number you can't come up with is 1, but as you see in the table she isn't afraid to add, subtract, multiply or divide numbers.

Yes the table looks pretty, and I don't doubt that the number 60 was relevant, but with as many liberties as was taken I find it a little precarious.

 

[Floodnut]

It seems that Methuselah was godly, in a godly family. My guess is that he did not die with the wicked in the Flood, but rather, "WHEN HE DIED IT WAS SENT FORTH." This comes from one who takes the ages in all of Genesis as simple statements of literal chronology.
The father of Methuselah (Enoch) was a prophet, so it is not unthinkable that he might be presented by the author of Genesis as naming his son prophetically. The son of Methuselah (Lamech) named his son prophetically.
Interestingly, Lamech died YOUNG, at age 777,. which was five years before the Flood. This is also not unthinkable, since the world was "full of violence."