![]() Between verse 4 and verse 31 all the patriarchal lives are summed up, and the summations use exactly the same words (with one extra sentence for Enoch). ![]() But all the rest of the patriarchs get only three sentences each, and they all get the same sentences, in sonorous repetition. Enoch has his transport story, by means of spiritual fire or otherwise. I expect many of us had our own set of play animals and a play ark to go with them.īut what does Scripture tell us about Methuselah himself, son of Enoch and grandfather of Noah? Not much.Īmong the antediluvian patriarchs, Adam gets a lot of scriptural attention-he being the first-as does Noah, the last. Our children’s Bibles had illustrations of the animals-two by two-marching into Noah’s ark. Most of us learned about him during our childhoods. The fact that Methuselah’s dad vanished makes an exciting tale, and Methuselah’s grandson also has an exciting tale. What Does the Bible Say about Methuselah? Those who truly “walk with God” place their hope in God and so do not dwell among the sinful of earth but are transported, so to speak. Ambrose goes farther and comments that Enoch’s transport shows us something we need to know, something we should apply didactically to ourselves. Enoch flew on these wings, avers Ambrose, when he was snatched up to heaven. Ambrose alludes to Pentecost he refers to the wings of fire that flew through the mouths of the Apostles, those true wings which spoke the pure word. 340-397) in his work Isaac, or the Soul, fleshes out the story with dramatic detail. Most Christians, including the earliest commentators, assume Enoch was taken up to heaven, but how? But Genesis does not say where God took Enoch, nor does it describe the details other than to say that Enoch was not. Enoch and Elijah are the only two men in Scripture who went to heaven without dying first.Īre we certain, though, about Enoch? We’re certain about Elijah-the Bible tells us details of his transport. At age 365, he “walked with God” and, as Genesis 5:23 puts it, “he was not, for God took him.” In other words, Enoch was transferred directly into heaven by God…which God would later do with Elijah as described in 2 Kings 2:11. The shortest-lived was Methuselah’s son Lamech, who died when he was a me re 777-year-old.Īll these ten patriarchs died natural deaths except one. Methuselah was the longest-lived among the 10, although four others lived, as he did, longer than 900 years. What did Methuselah worry about when he was, say, middle-aged, at 500? The Flood was still to come. From the first of our ancestors, Adam, and through to the tenth, Noah, longevity was what they had and how they lived. Methuselah was the eighth among the 10 antediluvian patriarchs, those precursors of our modern type of humanity. What would it be like to witness the beginning of the Flood? Who Was Methuselah? But Methuselah? He was OLD. What would it be like to be a 969-year-old? What would it be like to be the grandfather of Noah? Yes, that Noah. I’ll tell you more about her in a minute. My grandmother died two weeks short of her 102 nd birthday.
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