Methuselah מתושלח
the longest-lived man in the Torah, grandfather of Noach
Metushelach was born in the year 687 and died in 1656—the very year the Flood began. His 969 years are unmatched in the Torah, and his name became a byword for great age in many languages.
The Torah marks the seven days between his death and the first rain. The sages explain that God delayed the Flood for a week of mourning over a righteous man: the waters did not come while he was being mourned. Midrash pictures him urging his contemporaries to repent to the very end, and holds that the decree was suspended as long as he lived.
His place in the chronology matters as much as his piety. His life overlapped Adam's by 243 years, and he lived until Noach was 600. Through a single man, the memory of Eden reaches the builder of the ark—exactly the kind of overlapping lives on which Seder Olam builds its count.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereishit 5:21–27 — 969 years — the longest life in the Torah
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bereishit Rabbah 32 — his merits held back the decree
- Sanhedrin 108b — the seven days of mourning for him before the Flood
- Seder Olam Rabbah 1 — his death in the very year of the Flood
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.