The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.

Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.

Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

Genesis 5:25-32

²⁵ When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech. ²⁶ After he became the father of Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years and had other sons and daughters. ²⁷ Altogether, Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died.

²⁸ When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. ²⁹ He named him Noah^[a] and said, ‘He will comfort us in the labour and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.’ ³⁰ After Noah was born, Lamech lived 595 years and had other sons and daughters. ³¹ Altogether, Lamech lived a total of 777 years, and then he died.

³² After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.

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Last week’s post discussed the genealogy of Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch and Methuselah. For those who missed it, it is worth noting that Enoch, who walked with God — a fact mentioned twice in those verses — ‘was no more, because God took him away’ (Genesis 5:24). He went to join the Lord with no earthly death, he was that holy. He was the first person God took in that way, Elijah being the second.

Moving on to today’s passage, when Methuselah lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech (verse 25), no doubt a God-fearing man, not the bigamist Lamech we encountered earlier. Afterwards, Methuselah lived 782 years and sired more children, both sons and daughters (verse 26). Methuselah died when he was 969 years old (verse 27), the longest living human ever.

Our commentators look at the meaning of Methuselah as a name.

Matthew Henry’s commentary says (emphases mine):

Concerning Methuselah observe, 1. The signification of his name, which some think was prophetical, his father Enoch being a prophet. Methuselah signifies, he dies, or there is a dart, or, a sending forth, namely, of the deluge, which came the very year that Methuselah died. If indeed his name was so intended and so explained, it was fair warning to a careless world, a long time before the judgment came.

John MacArthur has more and directs our attention to Jude:

Now, Methuselah has a very interesting name. You’ve got to grab this one. The Hebrew means, “man of the shoot” or “man of the shot out” or “man of the sending forth.” One commentator called him “Missile Man.” I suppose you could call him “Bullet Man.” Man identified with something that is sent out, something that is shot out, so his name signifies that he will not die until judgment is shot out, judgment has come.

Almost every commentary you read on that clearly indicates that Methuselah dies in the year of the flood. He is the man who will live until the shooting out of the judgment of God. And certainly the initial fulfillment of Enoch’s prophecy was the flood. He looked at the flood. But the warning is picked up by Jude because it really was a message for those who live today, that there’s another judgment when the Lord comes again to judge – not with water but with fire. The world will not perish until the judgment was sent forth.

MacArthur believes that Enoch knew exactly what to name his son, as inspired by God:

I think the Lord probably told him to name him “man of the shooting forth,” and he must have known that this son was going to signify the judgment because it says in verse 22, “Then Enoch walked with God three hundred years after he became the father of Methuselah.” Maybe when the Lord told him to name him, he really knew what he was naming him. He was naming him and connecting him with the coming judgment, and it may have shaken up Enoch enough that he began to really walk with God, and that’s when he became the preacher and the prophet who warned people of judgment.

Both commentators discuss Methuselah’s extraordinary age.

Henry discusses it and speculates on whether Methuselah died in the flood:

His age: he lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, the longest we read of that ever any man lived on earth … It is commonly supposed that Methuselah died a little before the flood; the Jewish writers say, “seven days before,” referring to ch. 7 10, and that he was taken away from the evil to come, which goes upon this presumption, which is generally received, that all the patriarchs mentioned in this chapter were holy good men. I am loth to offer any surmise to the contrary; and yet I see not that this can be any more inferred from their enrollment here among the ancestors of Christ than that all those kings of Judah were so whose names are recorded in his genealogy, many of whom, we are sure, were much otherwise: and, if this be questioned, it may be suggested as probable that Methuselah was himself drowned with the rest of the world; for it is certain that he died that year.

I disagree with Henry and go with the Jewish writers, although we have no way of knowing.

MacArthur implies that God spared Methuselah:

When Methuselah dies, down in verse 27, after nine hundred and sixty-nine years, the flood shoots forth to drown the world. Judgment wouldn’t come until he died. And guess what – he lived longer than anybody else in this entire genealogy. Isn’t that the grace of God? A son was born – maybe his father, Enoch, got the message, “I better get my life together because when this son dies, there’s going to be judgment” – and from that time on, he walked with God, and he began to preach and prophesy of the coming judgment and tell people that the judgment of God was going to fall upon them.

And he preached that judgment, and God graciously allowed that man to live nine hundred and sixty-nine years – longer than anybody else. God is gracious, even in the fact of judgment. In the year of his death, the flood came.

When Lamech was 182 years old, he had a son (verse 28). Lamech named the boy Noah and said, ‘He will comfort us in the labour and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed‘ (verse 29). After Noah was born, Lamech lived 595 years and had more children, both sons and daughters (verse 30). Lamech died when he was 777 years old (verse 31).

Henry gives us this analysis of Lamech and the reason for naming his first born Noah:

Noah signifies rest; his parents gave him that name, with a prospect of his being a more than ordinary blessing to his generation: This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed. Here is, 1. Lamech’s complaint of the calamitous state of human life. By the entrance of sin, and the entail of the curse for sin, our condition has become very miserable: our whole life is spent in labour, and our time filled up with continual toil. God having cursed the ground, it is as much as some can do, with the utmost care and pains, to fetch a hard livelihood out of it. He speaks as one fatigued with the business of this life, and grudging that so many thoughts and precious minutes, which otherwise might have been much better employed, are unavoidably spent for the support of the body. 2. His comfortable hopes of some relief by the birth of this son: This same shall comfort us, which denotes not only the desire and expectation which parents generally have concerning their children (that, when they grow up, they will be comforts to them and helpers in their business, though they often prove otherwise), but an apprehension and prospect of something more. Very probably there were some prophecies that went before of him, as a person that should be wonderfully serviceable to his generation, which they so understood as to conclude that he was the promised seed, the Messiah that should come; and then it intimates that a covenant-interest in Christ as ours, and the believing expectation of his coming, furnish us with the best and surest comforts, both in reference to the wrath and curse of God which we have deserved and to the toils and troubles of this present time of which we are often complaining. “Is Christ ours? Is heaven ours? This same shall comfort us.“

MacArthur tells us:

Lamech … called his name Noah, saying – and here again, the pattern is broken, this one shall give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands, arising from the ground, which the Lord has cursed. Then Lamech lived five hundred and ninety-five years after he became the father of Noah. He had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years, and he died.

Now, what about this prophecy here or this naming in verse 29? He names his son Noah. He names his son Noah, which means rest or comfort. It comes from a Hebrew word which means to breathe again or to catch your breath. You know how you’re working and you’re going and you’re doing whatever you’re doing, and you rest in order to catch your breath? Noah brought a breath of fresh air in a world of multiplied wickedness, where the line of Cain had already apostatized and the line of Seth was going corrupt.

Noah, because of chapter 6, verse 9, he was a righteous man, he was a blameless man, he was a man who walked with God. Verse 8, he was a man who found favor in the eyes of the Lord, and because of that, he brought into the world a breath of fresh air. Second Peter 2:5 says he was a preacher of righteousness. In chapter 8, verses 20 and 21, we find him acting not only as a preacher but as a priest. He builds an altar to the Lord. And he actually was a king because he was the ruler of a new humanity after the flood, it was just he and his family.

But God brought Noah along as a breath of fresh air, a righteous man in an unrighteous world. He allowed humanity to catch its breath, even if it was only a small gasp of air. But it was a breath we can be glad for because if there hadn’t been one righteous man, all of humanity would have been permanently destroyed. But there was one man who allowed the human race to catch its breath and survive the wretchedness of that era – one man and his children.

It is interesting that Lamech lived 777 years. The number seven is a biblical one denoting completion.

The chapter concludes with Noah’s sons. When Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth (verse 32).

Both Henry and MacArthur say not to read those births in chronological order.

Henry explains:

It should seem that Japheth was the eldest (ch. 10 21), but Shem is put first because on him the covenant was entailed, as appears by ch. 9 26, where God is called the Lord God of Shem. To him, it is probable, the birth-right was given, and from him, it is certain, both Christ the head, and the church the body, were to descend. Therefore he is called Shem, which signifies a name, because in his posterity the name of God should always remain, till he should come out of his loins whose name is above every name; so that in putting Shem first Christ was, in effect, put first, who in all things must have the pre-eminence.

MacArthur says similarly:

Shem is mentioned first because he was the line of Messiah. Shem means “a name,” and out of him came a name that is above every name. When the sons were born, Noah was five hundred; flood came when he was six hundred. Apparently, his sons got married. We know that because their wives were saved. They, too, were righteous. But there were no children, no grandchildren. God spared only eight.

But the righteousness of Noah was passed on to his wife and his children and their spouses. He was, for the human race, a breath. He allowed humanity to catch a breath, to stay alive. To survive the judgment of God.

MacArthur concludes from the early chapters of Genesis up to this point:

Three men, then, mark this genealogy in a very special way. Adam, he shows us the reign of sin and death. And Enoch, he shows us the hope of conquering death. And Noah, he tells us of a new day and a new creation that will come after the judgment. And that, folks, is the history of redemption. The fall, salvation, and the new creation – all pictured in that genealogy.

Next week we find out what happened to Noah’s sons after the flood.

Next time — Genesis 9:18-23