Back to Question of the Week Back to Archives Q: I know that Methuselah was the oldest man in the Bible. What I want to know is, what did he do with all that time? Maybe he would have something to teach us about how to use our more limited time. Ed
		A: Well, Ed, I was surprised to discover that the Rabbis seem to hardly have noticed that among all those long-lived ante-deluvians, Methuselah was the record-holder, having hung in there for an astounding nine hundred sixty nine years. As far as I can find, everything they had to say about him is found in the following passage from a collection of Midrash called Yalkut Shim'oni (="Simeon's Collection"): There are seven individuals who span all eternity: Adam, Methuselah, Shem, Jacob, Amram, Ahiyah the Shilonite, and Eliyahu, who is still living. .... They said: Methuselah was a complete Tsadik (righteous person). And every single statement that would come out of his mouth was a wise saying (a "mashal") , i.e. wisdom in praise of the Holy Blessed One. And he would teach nine hundred Orders/Books of Mishnah. When he died, a terrific noise was heard from heaven, for they were giving him a eulogy and tears were falling from the eyes of animals [i.e. the holy beings from Ezekiel's vision] onto the place where he expired. When they saw this below [on earth], they gave him a eulogy and God gave them time beyond the time of the generation of the flood as a reward for eulogizing him for seven days. So Methuselah used his time to become very wise and learned. Our rabbis of blessed memory bequeathed to us only six Orders of Mishnah, so Methuselah's nine hundred was quite a lot. And he apparently, for all those years, was very careful with his speech. Everything he said was wise and brought glory to God. Ed's right; we can learn from his example. I'm a little troubled by one piece of this story, though. What was the tachlis result of all that wisdom? Maimonides tells us that no one caught on to any of it except Noah; Methuselah's more untaught contemporaries believed that stones and statues were gods, while the philosophers among them believed that the stars and zodiacs that the statues represented were gods. And when people saw how upset heaven was that Methuselah had died and took on the mitsvah of eulogizing him, it saved them from the flood for only seven days, as it is said (Genesis 7:10): "And after seven days, the floodwaters were upon the earth." Nine hundred sixty nine years of righteousness saved the world from the flood for seven days! What a rabbinic Sisyphus Methuselah was. Some readers may still have their minds stuck back at the first mention of all those years of life. "Am I supposed to believe that they lived that long? Oh, I remember in religious school, Rabbi so-and-so said that a year in the pre-flood genealogies equals a month in our time, and a day in the creation story is 2 billion years of astro-physics time and a dog-year is seven human years...." The classic commentators also noticed that these guys lived an extraordinarily long time. In general, their explanations take two main forms: Better air or good deeds. Some argue that the air was better before the flood, promoting better health and longer life even among the wicked, which most of the people then were. The other opinion is that most people lived normal life spans, but the people who are mentioned--the ones who lived hundreds and hundreds of years--were saintly people whose extraordinary learning and good deeds protected them from all harm. If our illustrious ancestors couldn't answer this problem, who are we to meddle in things we know not? written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz
		last update: August 1999 Got a question for Reb on the Web? Visit our Archived Questions SHOOT*! ("SHOOT" is the Hebrew acronym for SHe'elot OOTeshuvot (Questions and Answers), the centuries-old dialogue between Jews and their rabbis.)

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