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 of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years, and he died. The Arabic writers (o) also commend him as a good ruler of his people; and at his death he charged them not to desert the holy mountain, and join themselves with Cain's posterity; and having appointed Mahalaleel, who they say was his eldest son, his successor, he died on the fourth day of the week, and the thirteenth of the month Cheziran, A. M. 1535, and was buried in the double cave, and they mourned for him, according to custom, forty days: according to Bishop Usher it was in A. M. 1235.
(o) Elmacinus, apud Hottinger, p. 233.