Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
Noah was the oldest person in the Bible
Methuselah, not Noah, holds that number: 969 years to Noah's 950.
Genesis 5:27, in every translation this tool compares.
Genesis 5:27 gives Methuselah's total lifespan as 969 years, the longest of anyone named in the Bible and, as far as the text records, the longest of anyone period. Noah himself lived a long life by any other standard, 950 years (Genesis 9:29), but that's 19 years short of his own great-grandfather's number.
The genealogy in Genesis 5 lines up in a way that's struck readers for centuries: Methuselah was Noah's grandfather (not great-grandfather: Lamech, Methuselah's son, is Noah's father), and by the ages given in the chapter, Methuselah's death lands in the same year the flood begins. His name has long been read as carrying that meaning built in (one common rendering is "his death shall bring"); whether or not that etymology is airtight, the arithmetic in the text lines up with it exactly.
