5:6-20 Concerning each of these, except Enoch, it is said, and he died. It is well to observe the deaths of others. They all lived very long; not one of them died till he had seen almost eight hundred years, and some of them lived much longer; a great while for an immortal soul to be prisoned in a house of clay. The present life surely was not to them such a burden as it commonly is now, else they would have been weary of it. Nor was the future life so clearly revealed then, as it now under the gospel, else they would have been urgent to remove to it. All the patriarchs that lived before the flood, except Noah, were born before Adam died. From him they might receive a full account of the creation, the fall, the promise, and the Divine precepts about religious worship and a religious life. Thus God kept up in his church the knowledge of his will.
And all the days or Enos were nine hundred and five years, and he died. According to the Arabic writers (n), this man was a very good man, governed his people well, and instructed them in the ways of righteousness, and the fear of God; and when his end drew nigh, his offspring gathered about him for his blessing; and calling them to him, he ordered them by his will to practise holiness, and exhorted them not to mix with the offspring of Cain the murderer; and having appointed Cainan his successor, he died in the year of his age nine hundred and five, A. M. 1340, and was buried in the holy mountain; but according to Bishop Usher it was A. M. 1140.
(n) Elmacinus, apud Hottinger, p. 231.