The Oldest Recorded man in the Bible–he lived to be 969 years old.
One translation variance–“his death shall send”
That begs the question: what made his death send? Well, we know from retrospect, that Methuselah died in the year before the flood. So it could be interpreted: that his death shall send the flood.
Below is a little background on his name in Hebrew rules for translating it accurately. Take what you can and make your own best decision.
Methuselah
source: https://ancient-hebrew.org/names/Methuselah.htm
This name is pronounced meh-tu-sheh-lahh (the “hh” is pronounced hard like the “ch” in the name “Bach”) in Hebrew. This name is a combination of two words – metu and shelahh. Strong’s dictionary states that this name means “man of the dart”. According to Strong, the root for metu is the word mat (#4962) which means “man” and the word shelach (#7973) means a weapon or missile (hence the translation of dart).
But, there is another possible meaning for this name. The word metu may be derived from the word mot meaning death and the “u” is a suffix that means “their” – “their death”. There is no way to know for certain if the final vowel in metu was an “o” or an “u” as the vowel pointings that make that distinction are of fairly recent origin. If it was originally an “o” then the suffix would change to “his” – “his death”.
The word shelach (missile or weapon) is the noun form of the verb shalach meaning “to send” (a missile or weapon that is sent). Shelach has the more literal meaning of “to send something”.
We know have the possible meaning of “their death sends” or “his death sends”. Sounds like an incomplete sentence doesn’t it? Well, it is interesting to note that the year Methuselah died, something very big was sent – the flood. Methuselah’s name may be a prophecy that on the day of his death “his death will send” the flood.
And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:
And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:
And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech:
And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters:
And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.
Henoch, Methuselah, Lamech,