Who was the Oldest Man in the Bible?
The person with the longest recorded life in the Bible was a man named Methuselah who lived for 969 years (Genesis 5:27). You can read about Methuselah in Genesis chapter 5, which contains a genealogy (family tree) of Adam, the first man.
Coming in at 2nd place, just 4 years short of Methuselah, was a man named Jared, who lived 962 years (Genesis 5:20).
A person living nearly 1,000 years sounds crazy to modern readers, but this extreme age was not uncommon for people who lived before the global flood of Noah’s day (Genesis 6). God allowed early humans to live a long time, in part because they were responsible for reproducing and filling the world with inhabitants. Ancient environmental and genetic factors may have also played a role in the length of life. If you read the genealogy found in Genesis 5, you’ll read about several individuals who lived to be 800-1000 years old.
What we can’t say for certain is that Methuselah was the oldest man who EVER lived. The Bible doesn’t contain a list of the ages of all the people who lived before the flood. Methuselah is the oldest man we know about, but its possible someone else lived longer.
In the generations after the flood, the lifespan decreased rapidly until it eventually shrank to lengths similar to those of the modern day.
After the time of David (roughly 1,000 B.C.) the longest living person I’m aware of, who is documented in the Bible, is Jehoiada the priest. Jehoiada lived 130 years (2 Chronicles 24:15). Jehoiada was a priest in God’s Temple in Jerusalem and an advisor to King Joash of Judah.
