The Births of Methuselah and Lemech
The eighth and ninth generations: Methuselah (687), the longest-lived of men at 969 years, and his son Lemech (874), father of Noach.
Methuselah is born to Chanoch in AM 687, when his father was 65, and lives 969 years — longer than any man in the Torah. He dies in 1656, the very year of the Flood: the last living witness of the old world leaves it on the eve of its end. Lemech is born in AM 874 and lives 777 years, dying in 1651, five years before the Flood.
Lemech is the only figure in this list whose words are quoted. Naming his son Noach, he says: «this one will comfort us from our work and the toil of our hands, from the ground which the Lord has cursed.» One hears in it what life felt like then: the ground, cursed since Adam, yielded grudgingly, and hope was pinned on a child. Note the distinction: this Lemech belongs to Shet's line and is not the Lemech of Cain's line in chapter 4, with his two wives and strange song about killing.