As Old as Methuselah

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Chad from Hilliard, Florida.

Oh, what can we do for you, Chad?

I’ve always grown up hearing adults around me saying, oh, that’s oldest Methuselah. And I’m like, where is that from and how old is Methuselah? Old is Methuselah. So what, you’re talking about someone’s great grandma or an old idea? What are we talking about? If they see somebody that is very old and they’re walking, they’d be like, oh, that person is old as Methuselah.

Yeah. Who was a Methuselah and why are we talking? Why are we talking crap about him? Right. Right. I’m trying to figure out who is this person? Is it a man? Is it a woman? Where did it come from? I mean, I’m 47 years old, and I’ve been hearing that saying my entire life.

Well, Chad, there is an answer to that, and I think Grant’s going to let me give it because I’m a preacher’s kid, and Methuselah was a figure in the Bible.

I kind of figured that much.

Did you? Yeah, yeah. He’s a figure in Jewish and Islamic and Christian tradition. And according to the biblical book of Genesis, Methuselah was a really old guy. If you read Genesis, it says that he lived for, get this, 969 years.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, pretty old, right?

Wow.

It was all the Pilates.

Yeah. And so Methuselah, he was the grandfather of Noah. And when he was supposedly, when he was 187 years old, he fathered a guy named Lamech and lived another 782 years after that. Now, you may be wondering, did he really live that long? What’s the deal here? And nobody really knows. Some people think it might be a matter of mistranslation. Or other people think, well, you know, it’s just kind of metaphorical. They measured time differently in that particular time. So nobody really knows for sure.

But what we do know for sure is that if you say somebody’s old as Methuselah, like you said, Chad, they’re really, really old. Old as the hills, older than dirt, old as time, as we say.

Martha, let’s spell that just for people who might not know the name.

Yeah, I was going to say it’s M-E-T-H-U-S-E-L-A-H, Methuselah. Chad, thank you so much for your question. Call us again sometime, all right?

All right, and thank you. And I love the show.

Thank you.

Oh, wonderful.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

You too.

Well, we don’t want to sit around waiting as long as Methuselah. To hear from you, give us a call, 877-929-9673.