21Enoch lived sixty-five years, then became the father of Methuselah.22After Methuselah’s birth, Enoch walked with God for three hundred years, and became the father of more sons and daughters.23All the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty-five years.24Enoch walked with God, and he was not found, for God took him.
25Methuselah lived one hundred eighty-seven years, then became the father of Lamech.26Methuselah lived after he became the father of Lamech seven hundred eighty-two years, and became the father of other sons and daughters.27All the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty-nine years, then he died.
Did Enoch die?Hebrews 11:13 lists Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah and says "these all died." Eight verses earlier the same chapter, Hebrews 11:5, explicitly says Enoch…
Hebrews 11:5-6(vv22, 24)By faith, Enoch was taken away, so that he wouldn’t see death, and he was not found, because God translated him. For he has had testimony…
1 John 1:7(vv22, 24)But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses…
1 Thessalonians 2:12(v22)to the end that you should walk worthily of God, who calls you into his own Kingdom and glory.
Genesis 5:22(v24)After Methuselah’s birth, Enoch walked with God for three hundred years, and became the father of more sons and daughters.
Genesis 17:1(v22)When Abram was ninety-nine years old, Yahweh appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless.
Show all 46 cross-references
Genesis 6:9(v22)This is the history of the generations of Noah: Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Noah walked with God.
Malachi 2:6(v22)The law of truth was in his mouth, and unrighteousness was not found in his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned…
Luke 1:6(v22)They were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord.
Luke 23:43(v24)Jesus said to him, “Assuredly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
2 Kings 2:11(v24)As they continued on and talked, behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated them, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.
Psalms 116:9(v22)I will walk before Yahweh in the land of the living.
Micah 6:8(v22)He has shown you, O man, what is good. What does Yahweh require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?
Leviticus 26:12(v22)I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you will be my people.
Genesis 42:36(v24)Jacob, their father, said to them, “You have bereaved me of my children! Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take…
Colossians 1:10(v22)that you may walk worthily of the Lord, to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of…
Genesis 24:40(v22)He said to me, ‘Yahweh, before whom I walk, will send his angel with you, and prosper your way. You shall take a wife for my son from my…
Genesis 48:15(v22)He blessed Joseph, and said, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has fed me all my life long to this day,
Ephesians 5:15(v22)Therefore watch carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise,
1 Thessalonians 4:1(v22)Finally then, brothers, we beg and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, that…
Genesis 5:24(v22)Enoch walked with God, and he was not found, for God took him.
Genesis 37:30(v24)He returned to his brothers, and said, “The child is no more; and I, where will I go?”
Exodus 16:4(v22)Then Yahweh said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from the sky for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every…
Deuteronomy 5:33(v22)You shall walk in all the way which Yahweh your God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may be well with you, and that you may…
Deuteronomy 13:4(v22)You shall walk after Yahweh your God, fear him, keep his commandments, and obey his voice. You shall serve him, and cling to him.
Deuteronomy 28:9(v22)Yahweh will establish you for a holy people to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you shall keep the commandments of Yahweh your God, and…
1 Kings 2:4(v22)Then Yahweh may establish his word which he spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your children are careful of their way, to walk before me in…
2 Kings 20:3(v22)“Remember now, Yahweh, I beg you, how I have walked before you in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in your…
Psalms 16:8(v22)I have set Yahweh always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Psalms 26:11(v22)But as for me, I will walk in my integrity. Redeem me, and be merciful to me.
Psalms 56:13(v22)For you have delivered my soul from death, and prevented my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living.
Psalms 86:11(v22)Teach me your way, Yahweh. I will walk in your truth. Make my heart undivided to fear your name.
Psalms 128:1(v22)Blessed is everyone who fears Yahweh, who walks in his ways.
Song of Solomon 1:4(v22)Take me away with you. Let’s hurry. The king has brought me into his rooms. We will be glad and rejoice in you. We will praise your love…
Jeremiah 31:15(v24)Yahweh says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for…
Hosea 14:9(v22)Who is wise, that he may understand these things? Who is prudent, that he may know them? For the ways of Yahweh are right, and the…
Amos 3:3(v22)Do two walk together, unless they have agreed?
Micah 4:5(v22)Indeed all the nations may walk in the name of their gods; but we will walk in the name of Yahweh our God forever and ever.
Acts 9:31(v22)So the assemblies throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace, and were built up. They were multiplied, walking in the fear of the…
Romans 8:1(v22)There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don’t walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 6:16(v22)What agreement does a temple of God have with idols? For you are a temple of the living God. Even as God said, “I will dwell in them and…
Colossians 4:5(v22)Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time.
Genesis 4:18(v25)Irad was born to Enoch. Irad became the father of Mehujael. Mehujael became the father of Methushael. Methushael became the father of…
2 Kings 2:1(v24)When Yahweh was about to take Elijah up by a whirlwind into heaven, Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal.
Matthew 2:18(v24)“A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; she wouldn’t be comforted, because…
Luke 3:37(v21)the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan,
1 Corinthians 7:17(v22)Only, as the Lord has distributed to each man, as God has called each, so let him walk. So I command in all the assemblies.
46 distinct cross-references across this passage (48 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (21 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
John Calvin1540 · Public DomainOn vv22, 2422. And Enoch walked with God. Undoubtedly Enoch is…
22. And Enoch walked with God. Undoubtedly Enoch is honored with peculiar praise among the men of his own age, when it is said that he walked with God. Yet both Seth and Enoch, and Cainan, and Mahalaleel, and Jared, were then living, whose piety was celebrated in the former part of the chapter. As that age could not be ruder or barbarous, which had so many most excellent teachers; we hence infer, that the probity of this holy man, whom the Holy Spirit exempted from the common order, was rare and almost singular. Meanwhile, a method is here pointed out of guarding against being carried away by the perverse manners of those with whom we are conversant. For public custom is as a violent tempest; both because we easily suffer ourselves to be led hither and thither by the multitude, and because every one thinks what is commonly received must be right and lawful; just as swine contract an itching from each other; nor is there any contagion worse, and more loathsome than that of evil examples. Hence we ought the more diligently to notice the brief description of a holy life, contained in the words, “Enoch walked with God.” Let those, then, who please, glory in living according to the custom of others; yet the Spirit of God has established a rule of living well and rightly, by which we depart from the examples of men who do not form their life and manners according to the law of God. For he who, pouring contempt upon the word of God, yields himself up to the imitation of the world, must be regarded as living to the devil. Moreover, (as I have just now hinted,) all the rest of the patriarchs are not deprived of the praise of righteousness; but a remarkable example is set before us in the person of one man, who stood firmly in the season of most dreadful dissipation; in order that, if we wish to live rightly and orderly, we may learn to regard God more than men. For the language which Moses uses is of the same force as if he had said, that Enoch, lest he should be drawn aside by the corruptions of men, had respect to God alone; so that with a pure conscience, as under his eyes, he might cultivate uprightness.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv22, 24That is, he led an upright and godly life.
That is, he led an upright and godly life.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv21–27Gen 5:21 And Enoch lived sixty and five years,…
Gen 5:21 And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:
Ver. 21. And begat Methuselah,] that is, Death’s dart, or piercing death (death is a skilful archer, that never misseth the mark it shoots at); or, He once dead, in comes the dart, i.e., the deluge: and so it did, even in the very year of his death: though the Septuagint miscounts, and make him to live fourteen years after the flood.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv21, 22, 24, 27Whose name is thought by some learned men to…
Whose name is thought by some learned men to contain a prophecy of the flood, which was to come a thousand years after; for it signifies: He dies, and the dart or arrow of God’s vengeance comes; or, He dies, and the sending forth of the waters comes.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry1710 · Public DomainOn vv21, 25The accounts here run on for several generations without…
The accounts here run on for several generations without any thing remarkable, or any variation but of the names and numbers; but at length there comes in one that must not be passed over so, of whom special notice must be taken, and that is Enoch, the seventh from Adam: the rest, we may suppose, did virtuously, but he excelled them all, and was the brightest star of the patriarchal age. It is but little that is recorded concerning him; but this little is enough to make his name great, greater than the name of the other Enoch, who had a city called by his name. Here are two things concerning him: -
I. His gracious conversation in this world, which is twice spoken of: Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah (Gen 5:22), and again, Enoch walked with God, Gen 5:24. Observe,
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1. The nature of his religion and the scope and tenour of his conversation: he walked with God, which denotes, (1.) True religion; what is godliness, but walking with God? The ungodly and profane are without God in the world, they walk contrary to him: but the godly walk with God, which presupposes reconciliation to God, for two cannot walk together except they be agreed (Amo 3:3), and includes all the parts and instances of a godly, righteous, and sober life. To walk with God is to set God always before us, and to act as those that are always under his eye. It is to live a life of communion with God both in ordinances and providences. It is to make God's word our rule and his glory our end in all our actions. It is to make it our constant care and endeavour in every thing to please God, and nothing to offend him. It is to comply with his will, to concur with his designs, and to be workers together with him. It is to be followers of him as dear children. (2.) Eminent religion. He was entirely dead to this world, and did not only walk after God, as all good men do, but he walked with God, as if he were in heaven already. He lived above the rate, not only of other men, but of other saints: not only good in bad times, but the best in good times. (3.) Activity in promoting religion among others. Executing the priest's office is called walking before God, Sa1 2:30, Sa1 2:35, and see Zac 3:7. Enoch, it should seem, was a priest of the most high God, and like Noah, who is likewise said to walk with God, he was a preacher of righteousness, and prophesied of Christ's second coming. Jde 1:14, Behold, the Lord cometh with his holy myriads. Now the Holy Spirit, instead of saying, Enoch lived, says, Enoch walked with God; for it is the life of a good man to walk with God. This was, [1.] The business of Enoch's life, his constant care and work; while others lived to themselves and the world, he lived to God. [2.] It was the joy and support of his life. Communion with God was to him better than life itself. To me to live is Christ, Phi 1:21.
2. The date of his religion. It is said (Gen 5:21), he lived sixty-five years, and begat Methuselah; but (Gen 5:22) he walked with God after he begat Methuselah, which intimates that he did not begin to be eminent for piety till about that time; at first he walked but as other men. Great saints arrive at their eminence by degrees.
3. The continuance of his religion: he walked with God three hundred years, as long as he continued in this world. The hypocrite will not pray always; but the real saint that acts from a principle, and makes religion his choice, will persevere to the end, and walk with God while he lives, as one that hopes to live for ever with him, Psa 104:33.
II. His glorious removal to a better world. As he did not live like the rest, so he did not die like the rest (Gen 5:24): He was not, for God took him; that is, as it is explained (Heb 11:5), He was translated that he should not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him. Observe,
1. When he was thus translated. (1.) What time of his life. It was when he had lived but three hundred and sixty-five years (a year of years), which, as men's ages went then, was in the midst of his days; for there was none of the patriarchs before the flood that did not more than double that age. But why did God take him so soon? Surely, because the world, which had now grown corrupt, was not worthy of him, or because he was so much above the world, and so weary of it, as to desire a speedy removal out of it, or because his work was done, and done the sooner for his minding it so closely. Note, God often takes those soonest whom he loves best, and the time they lose on earth is gained in heaven, to their unspeakable advantage. (2.) What time of the world. It was when all the patriarchs mentioned in this chapter were living, except Adam, who died fifty-seven years before, and Noah, who was born sixty-nine years after; those two had sensible confirmations to their faith other ways, but to all the rest, who were or might have been witnesses of Enoch's translation, it was a sensible encouragement to their faith and hope concerning a future state.
2. How his removal is expressed: He was not, for God took him. (1.) He was not any longer in this world; it was not the period of his being, but of his being here: he was not found, so the apostle explains it from the Septuagint; not found by his friends, who sought him as the sons of the prophets sought Elijah (Kg2 2:17); not found by his enemies, who, some think, were in quest of him, to put him to death in their rage against him for his eminent piety. It appears by his prophecy that there were then many ungodly sinners, who spoke hard speeches, and probably did hard things too, against God's people (Jde 1:15), but God hid Enoch from them, not under heaven, but in heaven. (2.) God took him body and soul to himself in the heavenly paradise, by the ministry of angels, as afterwards he took Elijah. He was changed, as those saints will be that shall be found alive at Christ's second coming. Whenever a good man dies God takes him, fetches him hence, and receives him to himself. The apostle adds concerning Enoch that, before his translation, he had this testimony, that he pleased God, and this was the good report he obtained. Note, [1.] Walking with God pleases God. [2.] We cannot walk with God so as to please him, but by faith. [3.] God himself will put an honour upon those that by faith walk with him so as to please him. He will own them now, and witness for them before angels and men at the great day. Those that have not this testimony before the translation, yet shall have it afterwards. [4.] Those whose conversation in the world is truly holy shall find their removal out of it truly happy. Enoch's translation was not only an evidence to faith of the reality of a future state, and of the possibility of the body's existing in glory in that state; but it was an encouragement to the hope of all that walk with God that they shall be for ever with him: signal piety shall be crowned with signal honours.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv21–25And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred…
And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty nine years, and he died,.... This was the oldest man that ever lived, no man ever lived to a thousand years: the Jews give this as a reason for it, because a thousand years is God's day, according to Psa 90:4 and no man is suffered to arrive to that. His name carried in it a prediction of the time of the flood, which was to be quickly after his death, as has been observed; see Gill on Gen 5:21. Some say he died in the year of the flood; others, fourteen years after, and was in the garden of Eden with his father, in the days of the flood, and then returned to the world (a); but the eastern writers are unanimous that he died before the flood: the Arabic writers (b) are very particular as to the time in which he died; they say he died in the six hundredth year of Noah, on a Friday, about noon, on the twenty first day of Elul, which is Thout; and Noah and Shem buried him, embalmed in spices, in the double cave, and mourned for him forty days: and some of the Jewish writers say he died but seven days before the flood came, which they gather from Gen 7:10 "after seven days"; that is, as they interpret it, after seven days of mourning for Methuselah (c): he died A. M. 1656, the same year the flood came, according to Bishop Usher.
(a) Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 74. 2. (b) Apud Hottinger, p. 244. (c) Bereshit Rabba, sect. 32. fol. 27. 3. Juchasin, fol. 6. 1. Baal Habturim in Gen. vii. 10.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv22, 24, 25And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah…
And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah - To walk with God, is to set God always before us, and to act as those that are always under his eye. It is to live a life of communion with God, both in ordinances and providences; it is to make God's word our rule, and his glory our end, in all our actions; it is to make it our constant care and endeavour in every thing to please God, and in nothing to offend him; it is to comply with his will, to concur with his designs, and to be workers together with him. He walked with God after he begat Methuselah, which intimates, that he did not begin to be eminent for piety 'till about that time.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv22, 27Verse 22. And Enoch walked with God - three…
Verse 22. And Enoch walked with God - three hundred years] There are several things worthy of our most particular notice in this account:
1. The name of this patriarch; Enoch, from חנך chanack, which signifies to instruct, to initiate, to dedicate. From his subsequent conduct we are authorized to believe he was early instructed in the things of God, initiated into the worship of his Maker, and dedicated to his service. By these means, under the influence of the Divine Spirit, which will ever attend pious parental instructions, his mind got that sacred bias which led him to act a part so distinguished through the course of a long life.
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2. His religious conduct. He walked with God; יתהלך yithhallech, he set himself to walk, he was fixedly purposed and determined to live to God. Those who are acquainted with the original will at once see that it has this force. A verb in the conjugation called hithpael signifies a reciprocal act, that which a man does upon himself: here we may consider Enoch receiving a pious education, and the Divine influence through it; in consequence of which he determines to be a worker with God, and therefore takes up the resolution to walk with his Maker, that he might not receive the grace of God in vain.
3. The circumstances in which he was placed. He was a patriarch; the king, the priest, and the prophet of a numerous family, to whom he was to administer justice, among whom he was to perform all the rites and ceremonies of religion, and teach, both by precept and example, the way of truth and righteousness. Add to this, he was a married man, he had a numerous family of his own, independently of the collateral branches over which he was obliged, as patriarch, to preside; he walked three hundred years with God, and begat sons and daughters; therefore marriage is no hinderance even to the perfection of piety; much less inconsistent with it, as some have injudiciously taught.
4. The astonishing height of piety to which he had arrived; being cleansed from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, and having perfected holiness in the fear of God, we find not only his soul but his body purified, so that, without being obliged to visit the empire of death, he was capable of immediate translation to the paradise of God. There are few cases of this kind on record; but probably there might be more, many more, were the followers of God more faithful to the grace they receive.
5. Enoch attained this state of religious and spiritual excellence in a time when, comparatively speaking, there were few helps, and no written revelation. Here then we cannot but see and admire how mighty the grace of God is, and what wonders it works in the behalf of those who are faithful, who set themselves to walk with God. It is not the want of grace nor of the means of grace that is the cause of the decay of this primitive piety, but the want of faithfulness in those who have the light, and yet will not walk as children of the light.
6. If the grace of God could work such a mighty change in those primitive times, when life and immortality were not brought to light by the Gospel, what may we not expect in these times, in which the Son of God tabernacles among men, in which God gives the Holy Spirit to them who ask him, in which all things are possible to him who believes? No man can prove that Enoch had greater spiritual advantages than any of the other patriarchs, though it seems pretty evident that he made a better use of those that were common to all than any of the rest did; and it would be absurd to say that he had greater spiritual helps and advantages than Christians can now expect, for he lived under a dispensation much less perfect than that of the LAW, and yet the law itself was only the shadow of the glorious substance of Gospel blessings and Gospel privileges.
7. It is said that Enoch not only walked with God, setting him always before his eyes, beginning, continuing, and ending every work to his glory, but also that he pleased God, and had the testimony that he did please God, Heb 11:5. Hence we learn that it was then possible to live so as not to offend God, consequently so as not to commit sin against him; and to have the continual evidence or testimony that all that a man did and purposed was pleasing in the sight of Him who searches the heart, and by whom devices are weighed: and if it was possible then, it is surely, through the same grace, possible now; for God, and Christ, and faith, are still the same.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn vv22, 24Gen 5:22. Enoch walked with God — A Scriptural…
Gen 5:22. Enoch walked with God — A Scriptural phrase for eminent piety. He set God always before him, and acted as one that considered he was always under his eye. He lived a life of communion and intercourse with God in his ordinances and providences. He made God’s will his rule, and God’s glory his end, in all his actions. He made it his constant care to please God in every thing, and to offend him in nothing, and was a worker together with him. Reader, go thou, and do likewise. He walked with God after he begat Methuselah — Which seems to intimate that he did not begin to be eminent for piety till about that time. And he begat sons and daughters — A state of matrimony, and the cares and duties incumbent on the master of a family, are not inconsistent with the strictest holiness, or with the office of a prophet, or preacher of righteousness. For, according to Jdg 1:14-15, such was Enoch.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary1859 · Public DomainOn v24Walked with God. Septuagint, "was pleasing to God," by…
Walked with God. Septuagint, "was pleasing to God," by continual recollection and watchfulness over himself. Thus he became perfect. --- Was seen no more; or, as St. Paul reads, after the Septuagint, he was not found. (Hebrews xi. 5.) --- God took him alive to some place unknown, which is commonly supposed to be Paradise, conformably to Ecclesiasticus xliv. 16, though in Greek we do not read Paradise. Henoch pleased God, and was translated [into Paradise], that he may give repentance to the nations. To him, that of Wisdom iv. 10, may be applied: He...was beloved, and living among sinners, he was translated. He will come again, when the charity of many of his children, (for we all spring from him) shall have grown cold; and shall at last suffer death for opposing Antichrist. (Apocalypse xi.) (Haydock) --- "Though it be not an article of faith, whether Henoch be now in that Paradise, from which Adam and Eve were driven, or in some other delightful place; yet the holy Scriptures affirm, that God translated him alive, that he might not experience death," St. Chrysostom, hom. 21, with whom the other fathers agree, cited in the Douay Bible; so that it is a matter of surprise, how any Protestant can call it in question. He is the other witness, who will come with Elias, before the great day of the Lord, to perform the same office to the nations, as the latter will to the Jews. (Malachias iv.) God preserves these two alive, perhaps to give us a striking proof how he could have treated Adam and his posterity, if they had not sinned; and also to confirm our hopes of immortality, when we shall have paid the debt of nature. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv21, 24, 26Enoch . . . begat Methuselah--This name signifies, "He…
Enoch . . . begat Methuselah--This name signifies, "He dieth, and the sending forth," so that Enoch gave it as prophetical of the flood. It is computed that Methuselah died in the year of that catastrophe.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv22, 24, 2722. And Enoch walked with God — ויתהלךְ חנוךְ…
22. And Enoch walked with God — ויתהלךְ חנוךְ את האלהיםNot before God, as a messenger, or a workman beneath his eye: nor after him, as a servant; but with him, as a friend. A remarkable expression, occurring but twice in Scripture: in the text as applied to Enoch, and in Gen_6:9, to Noah. In Mal_2:6, it is, in our translation, applied to the faithful priest, but the Hebrew verb in this passage is in Kal, not reaching the high spiritual idea of the text. The verb as applied to Enoch and Noah is in Hithpael implying a voluntary and delightful walk. The passages which speak of walking before God (Gen_24:40, etc.,) and walking after him do not rise to the high conception of this text. The article is here, for the first time, used with Elohim, the one only God. The LXX translates Και ευηρεστησεν ‘Ενωχ τω Θεω, and Enoch pleased God, which version Paul uses in Heb_11:5 : “He had this testimony, that he pleased God.” Intimate and confidential communication, such as exists between the nearest friends, is suggested by this peculiar language. This single example of eminent piety stands forth sublimely solitary in the antediluvian waste. While the patriarchs from Seth to Enoch, and from Enoch to Lamech, are but a series of Hebrew names, we see Enoch’s face as it shines in his godly walk, and hear him, as a prophet, testify against the sin of his age, and proclaim a coming judgment. Jud_1:14-15. The Jews have manifold traditions concerning Enoch, most of which are gathered in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, written, probably, in the last century B.C. There is a heathen tradition of the same wonderful history in the Phrygian legend of Annacus, a pious king, who lived and prophesied three hundred years, predicting the deluge of Deucalion.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv21–2521. Methuselah] Possibly = “the man of Shelah”; and,…
21. Methuselah] Possibly = “the man of Shelah”; and, if so, Shelah may indicate the name of a deity; cf. Methushael (Gen_4:18) = “the man of God.”
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn v24(24) Enoch walked with God.—This is translated in the…
(24) Enoch walked with God.—This is translated in the LXX., “Enoch pleased God,” whence comes the “testimony” quoted in Heb_11:5. Really it gives the cause of which the Greek phrase is the effect; for it denotes a steady continuance in well-doing, and a life spent in the immediate presence of and in constant communion with God. (See Note on Gen_4:18.)
God took him.—Instead of the mournful refrain and he died, coming like a surprise at the end of each of these protracted lives, we have here an early removal into another world, suggesting already that long life was not the highest form of blessing; and this removal is without pain, decay, or death into the immediate presence of God. Thus one of Adam’s posterity after the fall succeeded in doing, though, doubtless, not without special help and blessing from the Almighty, that wherein Adam in Paradise had failed. We learn, too, from Jud_1:14-15, that Enoch’s was a removal from prevailing evil to happiness secured. Already, probably, the intermarriages between the Cainites and Sethites had begun and with it the corruption of mankind. Philippson, while regarding the phrase “God took him” as a euphemism for an early death, yet finds in it an indication of there being another life besides this upon earth. We may further add that Enoch’s translation took place about the middle of the antediluvian period, and that his age was 365, the number of the days of the year. As, however, the Hebrew year consisted of only 354 days, and the Chaldean of 360, the conclusion that Enoch was a solar deity has no solid foundation to rest upon. But see Note on Gen_8:14.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv21, 22, 24, 25The dedicated and initiated child grew up, like an…
The dedicated and initiated child grew up, like an Old Testament Timothy let us hope, to possess, illustrate, and proclaim the piety which was the distinguishing characteristic of the holy line. At the comparatively early age of sixty-five he begat ("forbidding to marry" being unknown then) Methuselah. Man of a dart (Gesenius), man of military arms (Furst), man of the missile (Murphy), man of the sending forth sc. of water (Wordsworth), man of growth (Delitzsch). And Enoch walked with God (Elohim). The phrase, used also of Noah,, (Gen_6:9) and by Micah (Gen_6:8. Cf. the similar expressions, "to walk before Gen_17:1; Psa_116:9, and "to walk after God," Deu_13:4; Eph_5:1) portrays a life of singularly elevated piety; not merely a constant realization of the Divine presence, or even a perpetual effort at holy obedience, but also "a maintenance of the most confidential intercourse with the personal God (Keil). It implies a situation of nearness to God, if not in place at least in spirit; a character of likeness to God, (Amo_3:3) and a life of converse with God. Following the LXX (eujhresthse de jEnwc tw qew), the writer to the Hebrews describes it as a life that was "pleasing to God," as springing from the root of faith. (Heb_11:5) Yet though pre-eminently spiritual and contemplative, Jude tells us (vers. 14, 15) the patriarch s life had its active and aggressive outlook towards the evil times in which he lived. After he begat Methuselah. "Which intimates that he did not begin to be eminent for piety till about that time; at first he walked as other men" (Henry). Procopius Gazeus goes beyond this, and thinks that before his son"s birth Enoch was "a wicked liver," but then repented. The historian"s language, however, does not necessarily imply that his piety was so late in commencing and it is more pleasing to think that from his youth upwards he was "as a shining star for virtue and holiness (Willet). Three hundred years. As his piety began early, so likewise did it continue long; it was not intermittent and fluctuating, but steadfast and persevering (cf. Job_17:9; Pro_4:18; 1Co_15:58) And begat sons and daughters. "Hence it is undeniably evident that the stats and use of matrimony doth very well agree with the severest course of holiness, and with the office of a prophet or preacher" (Peele). And all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. "A year of years" (Henry); "the same period as that of the revolution of the earth round the sun. After he had finished his course, revolving round him who is the true light, which is God, in the orbit of duty, he was approved by God, and taken to him" (Wordsworth). Modern critics have discovered in the age of Enoch traces of a mythical origin. They conclude the entire list of names to be not older than the time of the Babylonian Nabonassar, and believe it to be not improbable that "the Babylonians regulated the calendar with the assistance of an Indian astrologer or ganaka (arithmetician) of the town of Chanoge" (Von Bohlen). But "it would be strange indeed if just in the life of Enoch, which represents the purest and sublimest unity with God, a heathen and astrological element were intentionally introduced;" and, besides, "it is almost generally admitted that our list contains no astronomical numbers that the years which it specifies refer to the lives of individuals, not to periods of the world; and that none of all these figures is in any way reducible "to a chronological, system" (Kalisch). And Enoch walked with God. Non otiosa tautologia," but an emphatic repetition, indicative of the ground of what follows. And he was not. Literally, and not he. (cf. Gen_12:3-6; Jer_31:15; kaisketo LXX) "Not absolutely he was not, but relatively he was not extant in the sphere of sense." Non amplius inter mortales apparuit" (Rosenm "If this phrase does not denote annihilation, much less does the phrase "and he died." The one denotes absence from the world of sense, and the other indicates the ordinary way in which the soul departs from this world" (Murphy). For God (Elohim) took him. (Cf. 2Ki_2:3, 2Ki_2:5, 2Ki_2:9, 2Ki_2:10, where the same word jql; is used of Elijah"s translation; oJti meteqhken aujtoov, LXX) Though the writer to the Hebrews (Gen_11:5) adopts the paraphrase of the LXX, yet his language must be accepted as conveying the exact sense of the words of Moses. Analyzed, it teaches
(1) that the patriarch Enoch did not see death, as did all the other worthies in the catalogue; and
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(2) that in some mysterious way "he was taken up from this temporal life and transfigured into life eternal, as those of the faithful will be who shall be alive at the coming of Christ to judgment" (Keil). The case of Elijah, who was also taken up, and who afterwards appeared in glory on the mount of transfiguration, (Mt 17 Mr 9 Lu 9) appears to determine the locality into which Enoch was translated (which Kaliseh willingly leaves to antiquaries to decide) to be neither the terrestrial Eden (certain Popish writers) nor the heavenly paradise where the pious dead are now assembled sheol (Delitzsch and Lange), but the realm of celestial glory (Keil). That the departure of the good man was witnessed by his contemporaries we may infer from what occurred in the case of Elijah; and, indeed, unless it had been so it is difficult to see how it could have served the end for which apparently it was designed, which was not solely to reward Enoch"s piety, but to demonstrate the certainty and to stimulate the hope of immortality. That the memory of an event so remarkable should have survived not merely in Jewish (Ecc 44:16) and Christian tradition (Jud_1:15), but also in heathen fable, is nothing marvelous. The Book of Enoch, compiled probably by a Jew in the days of Herod the Great, describes the patriarch as exhorting, his son Methuselah and all his contemporaries to reform their evil ways; as penetrating with his prophetic eye into the remote future, and exploring all mysteries in earth and heaven; as passing a retired life after the birth of his eldest son in intercourse with the angels and in meditation on Divine matters; and as at length being translated to heaven in order to reappear in the time of the Messiah, leaving behind him a number, of writings on religion and morality. The Book of Jubilees relates that he was carried into paradise, where he writes down the judgment of all men, their wickedness and eternal punishment" (Kalisch). Arabic legend declares him to have been the inventor of writing and arithmetic. The Phrygian sagsAnnacus (jAnakov: "nomen detortum ab Chanoch") is said by Stephanus Byzantinus, and Suidas, who corrupts the name into Nannacus, to have lived before the flood of Deucalion, to have attained an age of more than 300 years, to have foreseen the flood, gathered all the people into a temple and made supplication to God, and finally to have been translated into heaven. "Classical writers also mention such translations into heaven; they assign this distinction among others to Hercules, to Ganymede, and to Romutus (54:1:16: "nec deinde in terris fuit"). But it was awarded to them either for their valor or their physical beauty, and not, as the translation of Enoch, for "a pious and religious life." Nor is the idea of a translation to heaven limited to the old world; it was familiar to the tribes of Central America; the chronicles of Guatemala record four progenitors of mankind who were suddenly raised to heaven; and the documents add that those first men came to Guatemala from the other side of the sea, from the East" (cf. Rosenm and Kalisch, in loco ).
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn vv24, 27Enoch walked with God
Gen_5:24
Enoch walked with God
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The life and translation of Enoch
I.
Consider THE LIFE OF ENOCH. He walked with God. These words seem to imply that Enoch possessed a remarkable resemblance to God in moral excellence; that he realized Gods presence, and enjoyed His communion in an extraordinary measure, and that he publicly avowed himself to be on Gods side, and stood almost alone in doing so. We notice especially the quietness and unconsciousness of his walk with God. The life of David or of Job resembled a stormy spring day, made up of sweeping tempest, angry glooms, and sudden bursts of windy sunshine; that of Enoch is a soft grey autumn noon, with one mild haze of brightness covering earth and heaven.
II. Notice ENOCHS PUBLIC WORK OF PROTEST AND PROPHECY. The Epistle of Jude supplies us with new information about Enochs public work. He not only characterized and by implication condemned his age, but predicted the coming of the last great judgment of God. He announced it
(1) as a glorious and overpowering event;
(2) as one of conclusive judgment and convincing demonstration.
III. Look now at ENOCHS TRANSLATION. How striking in its simplicity is the phrase, He was not, for God took him! The circumstances of his translation are advisedly concealed: translated that he should not see death. Many a hero has gathered fame because he stood face to face with death, and has outfaced the old enemy; but death never so much as dared to look into Enochs eye as it kindled into immortality. The reasons why this honour was conferred on him were probably--
(1) to show his transcendent excellence;
(2) to abash an infidel world;
(3) to prove that there was another state of being, and to give a pledge of this to all future ages. (G. Gilfillan.)
Enochs life
Few words are needed to describe the salient features of the majority of human lives. It is not needful to write a volume to tell whether a man has spent a noble or a wasted life. One stroke of the pen, one solitary word, may be enough.
I. HERE IS A LIFE SUDDENLY AND PREMATURELY CUT SHORT; for, although Enoch lived 365 years, it Was not half the usual age of the men of his day.
II. A LIFE SPENT AMID SURROUNDING WICKEDNESS.
III. A LIFE SPENT IN FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD. In the expression walked with God, there is the idea of--
(1) strong persistence and determination;
(2) progress.
IV. A LIFE OF NOBLE TESTIMONY. V. A LIFE CROWNED BY TRANSLATION. His translation was--
(1) A reminder to the men of his day that there was another state above and beyond the present;
(2) an intimation of the final reward of the saints. (J. W. Atkinson.)
Enoch, one of the worlds great teachers
Three strange things in connection with Enochs history:
(1) That so little is said about him;
(2) the comparative shortness of his stay on earth;
(3) the manifest singularity of the life he lived.
I. HE TAUGHT THE WORLD BY HIS LIFE.
1. He walked with God.
2. He had the testimony that he pleased God.
II. HE TAUGHT THE WORLD BY HIS TRANSLATION.
1. That death is not a necessity of human nature.
2. That there is a sphere of human existence beyond this.
3. That there is a God in the universe who approves of goodness.
4. That the mastering of sin is the way to a grand destiny.
III. HE TAUGHT THE WORLD BY HIS PREACHING (Jud_1:14-15).
(1) The advent of the Judge.
(2) The gathering of the saints.
(3) The conversion of sinners. (Homilist.)
The heavenly walk
I. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED NOTWITHSTANDING THE PREVALENCY OF SIN AROUND.
II. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED IN THE VERY PRIME OF BUSY MANHOOD.
III. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED IN THE VERY MIDST OF DOMESTIC ANXIETY AND CARE. Many people have lost their religion through the increase of domestic cares. But a godly soul can walk with God in family life, and take all its offspring in the same holy path. Enoch would instruct his children in the right way. He would pray for them. He would commend them to his Divine friend. Happy the home where such a godly parent is at its head.
IV. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED INTO THE VERY PORTALS OF HEAVEN AND ETERNAL BLISS. Enoch walked with God, and one day walked right into heaven with Him. Heaven is but the continuation of the holy walk of earth. (J. S.Exell, M. A.)
Enoch: accounting for mens disappearance from the earth
God took him.
I. WE SHOULD TAKE AN INTEREST IN THE DESTINY OF MEN.
II. WE SHOULD RECOGNIZE THE HAND OF GOD IN THE REMOVAL OF MEN.
III. WE SHOULD BELIEVE IN THE PARTICULARITY OF GODS OVERSIGHT OF MEN. When God takes a good man--
(1) He takes that man to a higher blessing,
(2) He will fill that mans place as a Christian worker upon earth.
(3) He trains survivors towards self-reliance and emulous work. Or thus:
1. God took him the assertion of a sovereign right.
2. God took him--an illustration of Divine regard.
3. God took him--an assurance of eternal blessedness.
4. God took him--a pledge that all like him will be associated. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Enoch
I. ENOCH AS TO HIS AGE.
1. It Was an age of longevity.
2. It was an ungodly age.
II. ENOCH AS TO HIS RELIGION.
1. He was independent.
2. Practical.
III. ENOCH AS TO HIS DEPARTURE.
1. His departure implies a future state.
(1) Analogy says so.
(2) The state of the world shows that there is a hereafter to square the accounts.
(3) Revelation proves it.
2. His departure shows that there is a reward to the faithful.
(1) Present satisfaction.
(2) Future felicity. Heb_4:9. (W. Griffiths.)
Enoch
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY ENOCHS WALKING WITH GOD?
1. That he was well-pleasing to God (Heb_11:5). Amity, friendship, intimacy, love.
2. That he realized the Divine presence (Heb_11:6). God was to him a living Friend, in whom he confided, and by whom he was loved.
3. That he had very familiar intercourse with the Most High.
4. That his intercourse with God was continuous. He did not take a turn or two with God and then leave His company, but walked with God for hundreds of years. He did not commune with God by fits and starts, but abode in the conscious love of God.
5. That his life was progressive. At the end of two hundred years he was not where he began; he was not in the same company, but he had gone forward in the right way.
II. WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES WERE CONNECTED WITH ENOCHS WALKING WITH GOD?
1. The details of his life are very few. Quite enough for us to know that he walked with God.
2. It is a mistake to suppose that he was placed in very advantageous circumstances for piety.
(1) A public man.
(2) A family man.
(3) Living in a very evil age. Still he bore his witness for God.
III. WHAT WAS THE CLOSE OF ENOCHS WALK?
1. He finished his work early.
2. He was missed. Not found (Heb_11:5).
3. His departure was a testimony. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Enochs walk with God
In Kittos Daily Bible Readings there is an exceedingly pleasing piece, illustrating what it must be to walk with God by the figure of a fathers taking his little son by the hand and walking forth with him upon the breezy Dills. He says, As that child walks with thee, so do thou walk with God. That child loves thee now. The world--the cold cruel world--has not yet come between his heart and thine. His love now is the purest and most beautiful he will ever feel, or thou wilt ever receive. Cherish it well, and as that child walks lovingly with thee, so do thou walk lovingly with God. It is a delight to such children to be with their father. The roughness of the way or of the weather is nothing to them: it is joy enough to go for a walk with father. There is a warm, tender, affectionate grip of the hand and a beaming smile of the eye as they look up to father while he conducts them over hill and dale. Such a walk is humble too, for the child looks upon its father as the greatest and wisest man that ever lived. He considers him to be the incarnation of everything that is strong and wise, and all that his father says or does he admires. As he walks along he feels for his father the utmost affection, but his reverence is equally strong: he is very near his father, but yet he is only a child, and looks up to his father as his king. Moreover, such a walk is one of perfect confidence. The boy is not afraid of missing his way, he trusts implicitly his fathers guidance. His fathers arm will screen him from all danger, and therefore he does not so much as give it a thought--why should he? If care is needed as to the road, it is his fathers business to see to it, and the child, therefore, never dreams of anxiety--why should he? If any difficult place is to be passed, the father will have to lift the boy ever it, or help him through it; the child meanwhile is merry as a bird--why should he not be? Thus should the believer walk with God, resting on eternal tenderness and rejoicing in undoubted lave. What an instructive walk a child has with a wise, communicative parent! How many of his little puzzles are explained to him, how everything about him is illuminated by the fathers wisdom. The boy, every step he takes, becomes the wiser for such companionship. Oh, happy children of God, who have been taught of their Father while they have walked with Him! Enoch must have been a man of profound knowledge and great wisdom as to Divine things. He must have dived into the deep things of God beyond most men. His life must also have been a holy life, because he walked with God, and God never walks out of the way of holiness. If we walk with God, we must walk according to truth, justice, and love. The Lord has no company with the unjust and rebellious, and therefore we know that he who walked with God must have been an upright and holy man. Enochs life must, moreover, have been a happy one. Who could be unhappy with such a companion! With God himself to be with us the way can never be dreary. Did Enoch walk with God? Then his pilgrimage must have been safe. Nothing can harm the man who is walking with the Lord God at his right hand. And oh, what an honourable thing it is to walk with the Eternal! Many a man would give thousands to walk with a king. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
High ground
I. WHAT IS IT TO WALK WITH GOD?
1. Reconciliation with God.
2. Spiritual life (Gal_5:25).
3. None walk with God closely but those who love Him supremely.
4. Those with whom we walk, and whom we love, we are desirous to please and oblige. And those who walk with God delight to do His will.
5. Communion with God.
6. Similarity of disposition and feeling.
II. THE ADVANTAGES ARISING FROM SUCH A WALK.
1. It gives a real enjoyment, for which we are not at all dependent on external things, and of which nothing in this world can deprive us.
2. It sweetens all earthly pleasures and pains.
3. The man who walks with God learns much of the will of God.
4. Such a walk is a preparation for the enjoyment of God in heaven. (Benson Bailey.)
Enoch
I. ENOCHS PIETY.
1. Walking with God includes--
(1) A true knowledge of God--of His character and laws; of His will concerning us, etc.
(2) Reconciliation to God (Amo_3:3). In Jesus alone can this be effected.
(3) Cheerful obedience to the commands of God (1Jn_2:3).
(4) Devotional intercourse with God. Meditation. Prayer. Praise.
(5) Assimilation to the holy image of God (2Co_3:18).
(6) Advancement in all the things of God.
2. Walking with God is associated with--
(1) True dignity.
(2) Real pleasure.
(3) Permanent security. And
(4) eternal advantages.
II. HiS DISTINGUISHED REMOVAL.
1. He was not. No more among men.
(1) He was not allowed to remain in a troublesome and ungodly world.
(2) He was not subjected to the, otherwise, universal stroke of mortality. Exempted from disease, death, and corruption.
2. God took him.
(1) In a peculiar way. Body and soul unseparated.
(2) God took him to Himself--to His own immediate presence, where is fulness of joy, etc.
(3) God took him; and thus signalized and honoured distinguished piety.
Application: Learn--
1. The nature of true piety. To walk with God.
2. The reward of true piety. Interested in Gods gracious care; and ultimately raised to His own Divine presence.
3. Removal of Enoch teaches immortality of soul. (J. Burns, D. D.)
Enochs walk with God
I. EXPLAIN THE VIEW GIVEN OF ENOCHS LIFE AND CHARACTER.
II. THE SINGULAR CLOSE OF HIS PIOUS COURSE.
1. It was a sudden change.
2. It was a miraculous change.
3. It was a happy change. (The Evangelical Preacher.)
Walking with God
I. HIS GENERAL CHARACTER. He walked with God.
1. What walking with God supposes.
2. Some advantages which result from walking with God.
(1) Guidance in difficulties (Pro_3:6). He shall direct. Psa_32:8).
(2) Preservation from falling (Psa_16:8).
(3) Assistance in weakness (Isa_41:10).
(4) Comfort in afflictions (Psa_46:1; Psa_94:19).
(5) Improvement in piety (Pro_4:18).
II. SOME PECULIAR CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH IT. Particularly--
1. The period of its commencement, and the time of its continuance. It commenced in what may be considered his early youth; when he had not lived the twelfth part of the then usual age of man. This shows us that early piety is acceptable to God (Pro_8:17). Seek it (Ecc_12:1); for early habits are most easily formed, and most lasting Lam_3:27). It continued at least three hundred years. This teaches us that the pleasures of religion never cloy (Psa_63:3-4); and that Gods grace is sufficient for the longest pilgrimage (2Co_12:9).
2. The relations under which it was sustained.
(1) The relation of a family governor. Hence, we see the falsehood of three common suppositions. First, That solitude is necessary to piety. This is an error of superstition; as Christians we are called to sociability Mat_5:14-16). Secondly, That religion is injurious to social duties and comforts. This is an error of prejudice, which is confuted by many living characters (Pro_12:26). Thirdly, That we serve God only when we engage in acts of devotion. This is an error of ignorance; for we also serve God acceptably when we serve mankind in obedience to Act_13:36; Gal_5:14; Gal_6:2; Gal_6:10).
(2) This character was also sustained by Enoch, under the relation of a public teacher. From this example we learn that teachers of others should be careful to walk with God themselves; in domestic life, that they may engage their families in Gods service (Jos_24:15); in public life, that their labours may be blessed by God (Psa_51:12-13; Mal_2:6).
3. The scenes amidst which it was preserved. These were examples of prevailing ungodliness, when piety was generally reproached. Thus, when iniquity is general, it is our duty to be singular (Exo_23:2); for we are called by God to be a peculiar people (Tit_2:14; Rom_12:2). A resolute confession of God in the face of an opposing world, is highly pleasing to Him (Heb_11:5). He pleased God Num_14:24). Those who honour God are honoured by Him (1Sa_2:30).
4. The glorious event which succeeded this holy walk: God took him. He was translated body and soul to heaven, without seeing death.
(1) This removal was gainful to him; it perfected his felicity. So the death of all true believers is followed by the eternal consummation of all their happiness (Php_1:21; Php_1:23; Luk_23:43).
(2) It was honourable to God. To His wisdom in discriminating characters; to His goodness, in rewarding the faithful; and to His truth, in fulfilling His promises. So is the death of all His saints (Psa_116:15; Psa_58:11).
(3) It was beneficial to mankind. It teaches mankind in all ages--
(a) That there is another and better world reserved for the righteous, as the ascension of Elijah and our Lord did afterwards (Heb 1Pe_1:3-5);
(b) that piety is extensively profitable, being evidently conducive to our eternal, as well as to our present welfare (1Ti_4:8);
(c) that the redemption of our bodies as well as our souls is certain. For we see God able and faithful to fulfil His engagements (Ho Php_3:21);
(d) that an early removal is no loss to the righteous. For what is taken from time is added to a blissful eternity (Rev_7:14-17);
(e) that a sudden removal, when God appoints it, is no cause of terror to those who die in Him, for to all such characters sudden death becomes sudden glory. (Sketches of Sermons.)
Walking with God
I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN THE TERM.
II. I SHALL PRESCRIBE SOME MEANS, IN THE LAWFUL USE OF WHICH BELIEVERS ARE ENABLED TO KEEP UP THEIR WALK WITH GOD.
1. By studying the Scriptures.
2. By constant and earnest prayer.
3. By watching the dealings of God without.
4. The motions of God within.
5. Walking in ordinances.
6. Walking in providences.
7. In the communion of saints.
8. And by meditation.
III. I SHALL OFFER SOME MOTIVES TO STIR US UP TO THIS HOLY PRACTICE. It is most honourable: most pleasing: and abundantly beneficial to the souls of men.
1. This walking is by faith in Christ (2Co_5:7).
2. Looking to the promises of God (1Ti_4:8).
3. Trusting to the wisdom of God (Rom_8:28). (T. B. Baker.)
Enoch
I. ENOCHS CHARACTER. He walked with God.
II. ENOCHS END. He was not any longer subject to pain, sickness, infirmity, sorrow; all of which are still the portion even of those who walk with God in this vale of tears. He was not any longer tempted by Satan, by the world, by his own fallen nature, to sin against his kind Friend and Saviour; and thus his heaviest burden is removed. He was not any more vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked, with the dishonour cast on his God, with the triumphing of the wicked. He was not spared to see their ungodliness proceeding to that gigantic pitch, which at length brought upon them the flood of waters to destroy all the earth. (J. Jowett, M. A.)
Enoch; or, the earthly walk and heavenly home
I. HE WALKED WITH GOD--A BRIEF AND SIMPLE STATEMENT OF A MOMENTOUS FACT. Of course the meaning is, that he was a good man, that he lived religiously. True religion is, walking with God. We are meant to walk with someone. We are social as well as active. Solitary journeying is sorrowful journeying. Company gives safety as well as cheer, beguiles the long hours and goads the flagging spirits. Most men have fellowships in their journey through life--companions of their moral ways, walking with the wise, or going with the evil. But the highest of all fellowships is with God: and if we all walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. We walk with God. What does it include? Unquestionably realization. God is with us wherever we are, but we are with Him only as we recognize and feel Him to be present. God is invisible, and only faith can realize; and by faith Enoch was translated. In the dark night, a stranger perhaps might place himself by our side, or just behind us, for a time, but we should not walk with him. In the dark night of sin, God is not far from every one of us, but only one here and there are with Him. To see God, to be aware of His solemn nearness, to act as if this thought were ever in our mind, Thou, God, seest me, doing His will as that of a present Master, rejoicing in His favour as that of a present Friend, and trusting in His succour as that of a present Protector--to go on thus divinely right, and brave, and happy, is to walk with God. It includes intercourse. But truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.
II. Enoch walked with God, AFTER THE BIRTH OF METHUSELAH. It was then, so far as appears, that he began to do so. It is not said that he did so before. Until then it is said that he lived, as it is said of the rest. Does it not imply that he had not walked with God for sixty-five years? Or, supposing the expression, in his case, refers to eminence in religion, does it not imply that at that time his religion received a new start?
III. Be this as it may, the fact is clear that Enoch did walk with God after the birth of Methuselah and the births of other children. One of the two men who have had the honours of translation in this world for pleasing God was a man who LIVED IN THE MIDST OF SOCIETY, and was surrounded with children; he was not a recluse or a celibate. He lived in that condition in which there are natural and necessary distractions and temptations. It would be saying very little for religion if such a case were impossible. It would be queer theology which taught that man must denude himself of a portion of himself, ignore some of his capabilities and propensities, in order to know and possess much, or most, of God. When it is said that Enoch walked with God, it is meant that he attained to special religious excellence. His religion did not merely come into contact with his secular life; his spiritual humanity did not merely touch his social humanity, but, like the prophet upon the dead child, stretched itself upon it, mouth on mouth, eyes on eyes, hands on hands, and made it live. His religion was life, an active life. He walked with God.
IV. We see Enochs eminent godliness attaining A STRANGE AND SIGNAL HONOUR. He was not, for God took him. Paul says of Enoch, he did not see death. Christ says of every disciple that he does not taste death. I know not how it strikes you, but I always feel when reading this passage as if there was a beautiful fitness in this exit, a fitness of course and end. God took him who had walked with Him, bore him away to another sphere. The very silence of the historian aids the impression: there is no breach between the earthly and the heavenly life, no defined horizon--clouds, and sky, fields, hills, and wood, meet together, and this worlds beauty and the glory of the world above melt into each other, and one unbroken scene fills and satisfies the eye. He was with God here, he is with God there. He became more and more Divine in the lower and harder conditions of life, and now he has reached a state where nothing exists to check or disappoint his Godward aspirations. There is no translation now for the righteous, but there is better, transformation, the being changed from glory to glory now, and the bearing of the image of the heavenly hereafter. (A. J. Morris.)
Enochs character and translation
Observe, Be the times never so bad, it is mens own fault they are bad too. Eminent holiness, and intimate communion with God, may be attained in the worst of times. The reasons are--
1. Because, however men grow worse and worse, heaven is still as good and bountiful as ever (Isa_59:1-2).
2. Because those that mind for heaven must row against the stream always; and if they do not, they will be called down the stream in the best of times; for, says our Lord (Mat_11:12).
3. The badness of the times affords matter to excite Gods people the more to their duty and close walking with God. The profaneness and formality of those they live among, and the dishonour done to God thereby, should be like oil to the flame of their holy love and zeal, as it was to David Psa_119:126-127).
4. Because, as the Lord shows Himself most concerned for the welfare of those who are most concerned for His honour, so the worse the times are, they that cleave to Him closely may expect to fare the better.
I. Let us consider Enochs holy life in this world; Enoch walked with God. The Spirit of God puts a special remark on this. It is Enochs honour, that he did not walk as others did, after their lusts. Observe,
1. God takes special notice of those who are best when others are worst Gen_6:9).
(1) To be thus argues an ingenuous spirit, a love to the Lord for Himself, and a love to His way for its likeness to Himself; that the soul is carried thus to it against the stream of the corruption of the age.
(2) It argues not only grace, but the strength of grace. It must be strong faith, love, etc., that so much bear out against the strong temptation to apostasy, arising from the combination of a generation against God and His way. To be holy when the helps to a holy life are least in the world, argues the vigour of grace in the heart. Labour ye then to be best while others are worst, to confront the impiety of the generation wherein ye live. Do they indulge themselves in licentiousness? be ye the more strict and holy in your walk. Do they take up with mere externals in religion? strive ye the rather to get into the inner court, to taste and see, and here to have communion with God. Observe,
2. It is the honour of a professor of religion to outgo others in the matter of close walking with God. In the first part of the words we have--
(1) The person characterized; and that is Enoch. There was another of this name descended from Cain, who had a city called after his name Gen_4:17). Immortality is desired of all; and because men cannot stave off death, they follow after a shadow of immortality, that at least their name may live when they are gone. Therefore that has been an ancient custom, for men to call their lands after their own names (Psa_49:11). How much better was it with this Enoch, that took that course to get on him the name of the city of God, which Christ promises to write on all his people (Rev_3:12)? The city called by the name of the other Enoch was destroyed by the deluge, and is now unknown; but the city of God lasts still, and will last forever. Observe, True piety is the best way to honour, even to true honour. For the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance, when the memory of the wicked shall rot. Observe, They that live near God are most likely to be put upon His secrets, and to know most of His mind (Psa_25:14).
II. His character; he walked with God. He lived like a man of another world; a life of close communion with God. It imports--
(1) That he was really religious; not only religious before men, but before God. Religion lies inwardly. We are that really which we are before the Lord; He is a Jew which is one inwardly. See, here, what he was: a spiritual traveller through the world; he walked. He walked with God. He looked on himself as a pilgrim and stranger in this present world Heb_11:13). (T. Boston, D. D.)
Of walking with God
I. First, I am to consider walking with God in the foundation thereof, with respect to our state.
II. Secondly, I shall consider walking with God in the matter of it, in respect of our frame and conversation. And, indeed, this duty goes as broad as the whole law. If we would have the life of religion in our walk, we must not walk at random.
1. We must walk with God in the way of habitual eyeing of Him in all things.
2. We must walk with God in the way of the hearts going along with Him in all things, as the shadow goes with the body. Walking with God is no bodily motion, but a spiritual motion, a moving of the heart and affections; and so it must import necessarily the hearts going along with Him.
3. We must walk with God in ordinances (Luk_1:6). The ordinances are the banqueting house of Christ wherein He feasts His people (Son_2:4), the galleries wherein the king is held by those that walk with him there (Son_7:5).
4. We must walk with God in the stations and relations wherein He hath placed us. These are the sphere that God hath given us to move in, in the world. There are two pieces of work which a Christian has to do.
(1) One for himself, and that is his salvation work (Php_2:12). This lies in his personal walk.
(2) One for God, and that is his generation work (Act_13:36). This lies in his relative walk.
5. We must walk with God in all our actions, whether natural, civil, or religious. Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God (1Co_10:31).
III. Thirdly, I shall consider walking with God in the properties thereof. Walking with God is religion; and it is--
1. Practical religion, religion in deed, not in word only; and there is no other sort of religion that will bring us to heaven; hence says our Lord Joh_13:17).
2. It is inward and heart religion (1Pe_3:4). They that have no religion but what is visible to the world, have no true religion; for God is the invisible God, and walking with Him must be so too (Rom_2:28-29).
3. It is heavenly religion (Php_3:20). According to mens state and their nature, so will their actions be; for as is the tree, so will the fruit be. The heart of man, according as grace or corruption reigns in it, will tincture everything that comes through it.
4. It is lively and active religion, being a walking with the living God, wherein there is not only grace, but grace in exercise (Son_1:12).
5. It is regular religion, and uniform; for he that walks with God must needs walk by a constant rule, eyeing Him not in some things only, but in Gal_6:16; Psa_16:8). He gives one rule of walking, extending to mans whole conversation; and so he that walks with Him, walks regularly, aiming at a holy niceness, preciseness, and exactness, in conformity to that rule in all things (Eph_5:15).
6. It is laborious and painful religion; for it is no easy life they have whose trade it is to walk on their feet (Heb_6:10). And it is no easy religion to walk with God. Religion is not a business of saying, but doing; not of doing carelessly, but carefully, painfully, and diligently.
7. It is a self-denied religion (Mat_16:24).
8. It is a humble religion (Mic_6:8).
9. It is constant religion. Walking is not a rising up and sitting down again, but a continued action, like that of a traveller going on till he come to his journeys end. Enoch walked on through the world, till he was not.
10. It is progressive religion; religion that is going forward (Pro_4:18). (T. Boston, D. D.)
Walking with God
I. First and chiefest, because it will secure the rest, walk CONFIDENTLY with God. Rest upon His faithfulness. Entertain no suspicions of His love.
II. Walk OBEDIENTLY with God; i.e., be diligent in keeping His commandments. And let your obedience be an unreserved, warm-hearted, zealous, faithful obedience, an obedience of love which is ready at all times, as love is ready. Walk, then, unreservedly, in the love of the Lord with all its glorious consequences. And walk obediently with God in the second commandment as well as the first. Oh! then, let your walk with God be obedient; unreserved, without fear of excess; universal, without exception or partiality; and persevering, without yielding to monotony.
III. Walk HUMBLY with your God. He is a Father, and we are children. What does that relationship call for? Reverence--filial reverence, it is true, but still reverence, or honour--the honour of the father and the mother. If I be a Father, He says, where is My honour? and if I be a Master, where is My fear? Further, He is the Creator, and we are the creatures of His hands; and this relationship calls for real subjection and prostration.
IV. Walk PATIENTLY with God. For however confiding your walk may be; however obedient with all the great characteristics of obedience; however humble, still you will suffer, and must be prepared for endurance. The Lord chastens every son whom He receiveth; and you must not expect to walk through this world exempt from trouble. Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as though some strange thing happened unto you. It is not a strange thing, it is the common case of the Lords children. (H. McNeile, D. D.)
Enochs walk and translation
I. THE CHARACTER OF ENOCH, WITH HIS DECIDED RELIGIOUS WORTH.
II. ENOCHS GLORIOUS TRANSLATION FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN.
1. A sign of Gods love.
2. It is remarkable that three eminent translations distinguished three dispensations of Gods mercy to men--the last the most glorious.
(1) Enochs translation in the patriarchal age.
(2) Elijahs translation in the prophetic age.
(3) Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended, was translated to heaven, in the Christian dispensation, when, after His triumphant resurrection and sojourn on earth for forty days, He ascended on a cloud of glory before His own disciples. Now, these three most memorable instances of translation to heaven clearly prove a separate state--a glorified humanity and an immortal life.
III. A FEW PRACTICAL REFLECTIONS MAY PROFITABLY CONCLUDE THIS SERMON: especially when a solemn event fills the minds of so many with deep thoughts.
1. We may all copy the living sermon of a holy life dedicated to Christ.
2. How sweet and blessed is the death of the Christian! His soul is taken away to the Saviour whom he loved; and his body rests in hopes of resurrection glory. His soul is gone; he is not on earth; God has taken him to heaven! No more shall sin or sorrow cloud the soul; no more shall trial, suffering, or death affect the body; no more shall the gloom of life intercept or darken the eye of faith, or the streaming light of heaven. (J. G.Angley, M. A.)
The piety and translation of Enoch
I. ENOCH WALKED WITH GOD.
II. THE TRANSLATION OF ENOCH.
1. As a work of omnipotence.
(1) A suspension of the order of nature in this particular case, arresting the arm of death.
(2) There was also a miraculous removal of the body of Enoch.
2. As a work of mercy. The wings of heavenly mercy overshadowed him, to protect him from the penalties of a violated law.
3. The translation of Enoch eminently displays the glory and honour of God. His love of the righteous was strikingly shown. His moral government was manifested, and His entire command over the present and the future so fully exemplified, that we cannot contemplate it without profound adoration of the Most High.
4. It was calculated to be beneficial to mankind, and to serve in that early stage of society the interests of truth and piety. (Essex Remembrancer.)
The character and translation of Enoch
I. HISTORY OF ENOCH.
II. CHARACTER OF ENOCH.
III. CONDUCT OF ENOCH. The conduct of this antediluvian saint was the piety of intelligence; he understood Gods claim and his own obligations, and it was not a mere custom. It was the piety of deliberate design and choice; he was not, so to speak, thrown accidentally into Gods company, but chose to go to Him, and with fixed, determinate purpose, sought His friendship. It was the piety also of a minister of religion; and what is any minister of religion, without personal godliness, but an actor in the most dreadful tragedy ever performed on the stage of this world, since it ends not in the feigned, but the real, death and destruction of the performer? It was the piety of one who had few of those helps and advantages of divine revelation and ordinances which we enjoy, and therefore shows how God can, and will, help those in the Divine life, who are, by Providence, deprived of the assistance which others possess. It was piety, maintained during a long period of severe trial, a profession consistently upheld amidst all conceivable opposition for nearly four centuries, thus exhibiting a sublime instance of endurance, perseverance, and victorious faith.
IV. TRANSLATION OF ENOCH. Enochs translation was a testimony to that generation of which he was a member, and to the whole world from that time to this, of Gods approval of his conduct. (J. A. James.)
Walking with God
I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN WALKING WITH GOD.
II. THAT GOD WILL MANIFEST SOME PECULIAR TOKENS OF HIS FAVOUR TO THOSE WHO WALK WITH HIM.
1. God will guard them against the favours of the world.
2. God graciously guards his friends while they walk with Him, from their invisible as well as visible enemies.
3. God will give those who walk with Him peculiar evidence of their interest in His special grace. He loves those who walk with Him, and will manifest His love to them. He expressly called Abraham His friend when he offered up his son upon the altar. He sent a messenger from heaven to declare that Daniel was greatly beloved. And He manifested His special love to David by lifting the light of His countenance upon him.
4. God will manifest His peculiar favour to those who walk with Him, by giving them not only inward light, and joy, and peace, and the full assurance of hope, but by granting them outward prosperity.
5. Those who walk with God have ground to hope for another great and peculiar favour; that is, His gracious and comforting presence when they leave the world.
IMPROVEMENT.
1. We may learn from the nature and effects of walking with God how all true believers may attain to the full assurance of hope. If saints would prevent or remove darkness, doubts, and distress from their minds, let them walk closely with God, who will give them peculiar tokens of their displeasing Him, and standing high in His favour.
2. If God manifests peculiar tokens of His favour to those who walk with Him, then they have more to gain than to lose by walking with Him.
3. If God be highly pleased with His friends while they walk with Him, then He must be highly displeased when they depart from Him.
4. It appears from the nature of walking with God, that those who walk with Him in a day of degeneracy do peculiar service and honour to religion.
5. This subject calls upon all who have professed to walk with God to inquire whether they have walked worthy of the vocation wherewith they are called.
6. This subject exhorts all who have not hitherto walked with God to walk with Him. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
Walking with God
Other notable men existed in that ancient time, to whom we are apparently more indebted than we are to Enoch; men who were the fathers of arts and sciences, and the founders of political institutions--pioneers in the onward march of civilization. But what are Jabal, and Jubal, and Tubal-Cain to us but so many cyphers associated in our minds with certain objects? We know something of these mens work; of themselves we know absolutely nothing. Here, on the contrary, nothing is told us of any outward work that the man did; we only have the brief and summarized story of an inner life. But more than this. Enoch was the first saint, in the full sense of the word, of whom we hear anything in human history, as Abel was the first righteous for justified] man. He stands, perhaps, historically speaking, at the head of the great master roll of heavens nobility; and it is the brotherhood of saints that makes the ages one. We are more indebted to the first pioneer upon the highway of holiness than to the earliest discoverers in science and in art. Holiness is, above everything else, the reproduction of the Divine. As I said a moment ago, very little has been told us about Enoch, where our curiosity would fain have heard a great deal; but the little that has been told us is suggestive, and every point seems to carry its own lesson. To begin with his name. Enoch has the double meaning of consecration and initiation, suggesting first the thought that he who bore that name was to be one of Gods consecrated ones, a priest unto God, and next that, as a priest, he was to be introduced into the spiritual temple, to be allowed to see and know what the outer world knows nothing of, and to be initiated into the deeper mysteries of the spiritual life. And in this name we have the clue not only to his career, but to that of every other saint who, like him, walks with God. The life of fellowship must needs be the product of a state of consecration. God consecrates us His spiritual priests that our whole manhood may be set apart and our whole lives dedicated to His service. We may be occupied, as Enoch was, in the ordinary duties of life; our hands and our heads may be busy, yet may we find Gods temple everywhere, and His service in everything. For there is nothing secular, all is a sanctity, where all is given to God. Further, our attention is specially called by a New Testament writer to the fact that Enoch was the seventh from Adam. His was the Sabbath life in that genealogical record. As the Sabbath days to the other days of the week, so must his life have seemed as compared with the lives of others in those troublous and tumultuous days. And there is a rest even here for the people of God. We need not defer the Sabbath keeping of the soul to that glorious future which awaits Gods faithful ones yonder. It may seem, perhaps, fanciful to call attention to another fact mentioned in this brief notice, but I cannot bring myself to pass it over. We read that all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years. That is to say, he lived a perfect year of years; as many days as there are in the year, so many years there were in his life; he fulfilled his year. Perhaps when we reach the other side we shall make some strange discoveries with respect to the term of our existence here in the house of our discipline. Perhaps we may find that some lives have been lengthened out to extreme old age, just because lifes lessons were being learned indeed, but learned wondrous slowly by very dull scholars; and that some lives were cut short just because Divine Omniscience saw no probability of these lessons ever being learned at all by scholars who positively refused to learn. But to every man is appointed his own proper year; and blessed are they who so live that the year completes the life in every sense of the word! Blessed are they who so walk with God that when their appointed life period draws to a close their life lesson may be learnt, and they themselves be ready for the call to higher knowledge and more perfect service, while it is said of them, He was not; for God took him. Enochs life was not a long one as lives went in those days; he was only in what would be then regarded as early middle life when his call came, but had fulfilled his year. His life was complete in Gods sight, his days work done, and there was no necessity that he should tarry in the house of discipline through the long ages which measured the life of a Methuselah. But it is time that we looked more closely at this pregnant phrase, which tells us all that we historically know of the religious life of this ancient servant of God, Enoch walked with God. What is it, let us ask, to walk with God? More than a single idea would seem to be suggested by this familiar expression. As the words stand in the original they suggest primarily the idea of walking with reference to God. It is the idea that the Psalmist expresses when he says, I foresaw God always before mine eyes. In the practical issues of life, and in all its complete details, everything turns upon our choice of our centre of reference. He whose central idea in life is, How shall I please myself? can never walk with God, because God is not his centre of reference. Or again, this life of reference to God stands contrasted with the life of reference to the world, that conventional life which so many people condescend to lead. With such the question is, What is expected of me? or, What is the correct thing? or, What do others do? or, Will people like it? What will people say if I adopt this course, or do not adopt the other? Do not aim at singularity, but, on the other hand, do not shrink from it. You needs must be singular if you serve God in a world that serves Him not; you needs must be singular if you put the good before the fashionable in a world that puts the fashionable before the good; you needs must be singular if you put duty before worldly expediency, and the love of God and man before both in a selfish, shallow world, where all men seek their own. But there is nothing to be ashamed at in such singularity, and he who plays the poltroon, and is afraid to face reproach, would indeed be very singular in heaven if he were ever to get there. Better surely to be singular in this perishing world than hopelessly out of harmony with the spirit and genius of heaven. But this leads us to consider another thought suggested by the words of our text, closely connected with what we have just been considering, and yet distinct from it. To walk with God is not only to walk with reference to God, but to move, so to speak, on the same moral plane as belongs to God--seeing things from His point of view, entering into His designs, and drinking ever more and more deeply of His Spirit. There is a unity of heart and mind, of thought and feeling, that is usually a feature of close association amongst ourselves; and something of this kind would seem to be implied by the words, Enoch walked with God, Listen to the words quoted by St. Jude, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. The man that uttered those words was clearly looking at things from the Divine standpoint. With him sinners are regarded specially as ungodly, and sins are ungodly deeds; the habit of life that induces them is an ungodly habit of life, and the very words that such sinners are wont to speak are ungodly words. And the reason of this way of viewing things is that the man is walking with God. He takes measure of evil and of good, according as it affects that Divine Being with whom his life is hid. His standpoint is no longer merely ethical; he is conversant rather with She very heart of God than with moral principles. He is jealous for Gods glory with a godly jealousy, and is fired with a holy indignation at all that militates against this. And oh, with what a heart full of yearning love does he who thus walks with God gaze upon a God-dishonouring world! God loved the world, and loves it, and he who is in fellowship with the mind of God must needs love it too. The more He hates sin, the more does He long for the salvation of the sinner. But let us take the words of our text in the meaning which they most naturally bear, and which suggests perhaps the most important lesson of all. Enoch walked with God; that is to say, he lived in the society of God. In all his life an invisible but ever-present Friend was his Companion. He lived in His society, he consulted Him about everything, he was in communion with Him everywhere. So he lived out his allotted life, his year of years, until he passed from the triumphs of the walk of faith to the glories of the Land of Vision; for there is no death for such. The presence of God makes earth heaven, and brings heaven down to earth. The presence of God turns the shadow of death into the morning, and invests him who enjoys it with immortality. I am the resurrection, and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and he that liveth and believeth on Me shall never die. By-and-by, when the last of the three hundred and sixty five days of his year had arrived and was reaching its close, the call came, Friend, come up higher: and he was not; for God took him. For as to walk with God is the secret of perfection here on earth, so to walk with God will be the crowning glory of that higher world. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)
Enoch, the model walker
I. A SAFE WALK. During a sudden freshet, a labouring man and his child, living in a cottage that stood by itself, were obliged to walk at midnight for more than a mile through water reaching to the little boys waist before they could reach a place of safety. After they had changed their clothes, and were feeling comfortable, the friend in whose cottage they had found shelter said to the little boy, And wasnt you afraid, Jack, while walking through the water? No, not at all, said the little fellow, who was but seven years old: I was walking along with father, you know. And I knew he wouldnt let the water drown me. This was very sweet. And if, like Enoch, we are walking with God, let us remember that we are walking with our heavenly Father. And He promises us expressly, When thou passest through the waters, they shall not overflow thee (Isa_43:2). One morning a teacher found many empty seats in her schoolroom. Two little scholars lay dead at their homes, and others were sick. The few children present gathered around her, and said, Oh! what shall we do? Do you think we shall be sick, and die too? The teacher gently touched the bell, and said, Children, you are all afraid of this disease. You grieve for the death of your little friends, and you fear that you also may be taken. I only know of one thing for us to do, and that is to hide. Listen whale I read to you about a hiding place. Then she read the 91st Psalm, which begins thus: He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. They were all hushed by the sweet words, and then the morning lesson went on as usual. At recess, a dear little girl came up to the desk, and said, Teacher, arent you afraid of the diphtheria? No, my child, she answered. Well, wouldnt you be if you thought you would be sick, and die? No, dear, I trust not. The child gazed wonderingly at her for a moment; and then her face lightened up as she said, Oh! I know! You are hidden under Gods wings. What a nice safe place that is to hide in!
II. WALKING WITH GOD IS A USEFUL WALK. Suppose that you and I were taking a walk through the wards of a hospital. It is full of people who are suffering from accidents, and diseases of different kinds. There are some people there with broken limbs. Some are blind, others are deaf; and some are sick with various fevers, and consumption. And suppose that, like our blessed Lord, we had the power, as we went from one bed to another, to heal the sick and suffering people in that hospital. Here is a lame man. We make his limbs straight and strong, so that he can walk. Here is a blind man. We touch his eyes with our fingers; they open, and he can see. We speak to those who are suffering from diseases of different kinds, and make them well. Then we might well say that our walk through that hospital was a useful walk. But we have no such power as this to cure the diseases from which the bodies of men are suffering. Yet this may afford us a good illustration of what we can do for the souls that are suffering around us, when we become Christians, and walk with God. Some years ago a gentleman from England brought a letter of introduction to a merchant in this country. The stranger was an intelligent man with very pleasant manners, but he was an infidel. The gentleman to whom he brought the letter of introduction, and his wife, were earnest Christian people. They invited the stranger to make their house his home during his stay, and treated him with the greatest possible kindness. On the evening of his arrival, before the hour of retiring, the gentleman of the house, knowing what the views of his guest were on the subject of religion, told him they were in the habit of having family worship every evening; that they would be happy to have him join with them; or, if he preferred, he could retire to his room. He said it would give him pleasure to remain. Then a chapter of the Bible was read, and the family knelt in prayer, the stranger with them. After spending a few days in that pleasant Christian home, the stranger embarked on board a ship, and sailed to a foreign land. In the course of three or four years he returned, and stayed with the same family. But what a change there was in him! His infidelity was all gone. He was now an humble, earnest Christian. In speaking to his friend of this change, he said: Sir, I owe it all to you. When I knelt down with you at family prayers on my former visit, it was the first time for years that I had ever bowed my knees before God. It brought back to me the memory of my pious mother, now in heaven, and all the teaching she had given me when a boy. I was so occupied with these thoughts that I did not hear a word of your prayer. But this led me to give up my infidelity, and seek the blessing of my mothers God. And now I am as happy as the day is long in His service. Here again we see how true it is that walking with God is a useful walk.
III. A PLEASANT WALK. When we are taking a walk there are several things that will help to make up the pleasure to be found in that walk. If we have a guide to show us the road; if we have a pleasant companion to talk with as we go on our way; if we have plenty of refreshments--nice things to eat and drink; if there are bright and cheerful prospects around and before us; and especially, if we are sure of a nice comfortable home to rest in when our walk is ended, these will help to make it pleasant. But when we walk with God, as Enoch did, we have all these things, and more too.
And these are sure to make it a pleasant walk. Solomon is speaking of this walk when he says: Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace. I visited a poor old woman belonging to my congregation, said a minister. She was entirely dependent on the church for her support. Her home was a very small cottage. The moment I entered it I saw how neat and clean everything was. She had just been gathering some sticks from the lane with which to cook her evening meal. Her face was one of the sweetest I ever saw. It was surrounded by the strings of her snow-white cap. On the table lay a well-worn copy of the Word of God. I looked around for a daughter or friend to be her companion and caretaker, but saw none. I said: Mother Ansel, you dont live here alone, do you? Live alone! Live alone! she exclaimed in surprise, and then, as a sweet smile lighted up her face, she added, No, sir, the blessed Lord lives with me, and that makes it pleasant living! Certainly she found walking with God a pleasant walk. A Christian lady was visiting among the poor one day. She called, among others, on a little sick girl. Her home was a dreary looking one. The room she occupied was on the north side of the house. There was nothing bright or pleasant about it. Everything looked dark and cheerless. I am sorry you have no sun on this side of the house, said the lady. Not a ray of sunshine gets in here. This is a misfortune, for sunshine is everything. Oh, maam! you are mistaken, said the sick girl, as a sweet smile lighted up her pale face. My sun pours in at every window, and through all the cracks. But how can the sun get round on this side of the house? asked the visitor. It is Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, that shines in here, was the reply, and He makes the best sunshine. That sick girl found walking with God a pleasant walk.
IV. A PROFITABLE WALK. We see a good deal of walking done without much profit. But sometimes we hear of people who are able to make their walking pay. There was a walking match in New York not long ago. A number of persons were engaged in it, and the man who won the prize secured twenty-five thousand dollars. That was profitable walking, so far as money was concerned; but walking with God is more profitable than this. Suppose there was a savings bank half a mile from your house, and you were told that if you walked to that bank every week, and put a penny in the treasury, for every penny you put in you would get a dollar at the end of the year. A penny a week would make fifty-two pennies by the end of the year, and if for these fifty-two pennies you were to receive fifty-two dollars, that would make your walk to the bank profitable walking. It would be getting what we call a hundredfold for the money invested there.
There is no such savings bank as this. But, when we learn to walk with God, we find that serving Him is just like putting money in such a bank. Jesus says that if we give a cup of cold water to one of His disciples, or if we suffer for Him, or do any work for Him, we shall receive a manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting. And if such rewards are given to those who walk with Him, then we may well say that that is profitable walking. An infidel was one day laughing at a plain farmer because he believed the Bible. The farmer surprised him by saying, Well, you see, we plain country people like to have two strings to our bow. And pray what do you mean by that? asked the infidel. Only this, was the farmers answer, that believing the Bible, and acting up to it, is like having two strings to ones bow; for, if the Bible is not true, still I shall be a better and happier man for living according to its teachings, and so it will be profitable for me in this life; this is one string to my bow, and a good one, too. And, if the Bible should prove true, as I know it will, it will be profitable for me in the next world, and that is another string, and a pretty strong one, too. But, sir, if you do not believe the Bible, and do not live as it requires, you have no string to your bow in this world. And, oh, sir! if the tremendous threatenings of the Bible prove true--as they surely will--you will have no string to your bow for the next world, and what will become of you then? This shows us that walking with God is profitable walking. (R. Newton, D. D.)
Known by his walk
That mans been in the army, said a gentleman to his friend the other day, as a stranger passed them in the street; I know a soldier by his walk. Men ought to know Christs soldiers by their walk.
The biography of Enoch; or, a glorious life and a glorious end
Enoch is one of the few excellent men mentioned in the Bible, of whom nothing bad is recorded. Abraham is described as the father of the faithful; and yet there are instances on record in which his mighty faith gave way. Who ever thinks of the flaws on the face of beauty? Who ever thinks of the spots which deface the sun? They exist, you may find them by minute observation; but they do not make a deep impression upon your mind. Thus the character of Enoch, in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation, seemed to be one mass of light, in which there was no darkness at all. Enoch is one of these men who owe their immortality to the brightness of their characters. Let us then consider the text as--
I. A SIMPLE RECORD OF A GLORIOUS LIFE. What does a glorious life consist in? The poet thinks it a glorious thing to produce burning thoughts, to master the powers of language, to command brilliant imagery; to revel in imagination through the ethereal regions of the lovely, the grand, the eternal; and then descend from those lofty heights to the lowly regions of real life, to enlighten its gloom, to soothe its sorrows, to strengthen its hopes. The orator thinks it a glorious thing to rivet the attention of assembled multitudes. The warrior thinks it a glorious thing to be entrusted with the command of a powerful army. Here is a simple record of a glorious life; let us now endeavour to analyse it. The words point to--
1. A life of absolute devotedness. It is not a selfish existence, but an existence linked to another existence, subordinate to another existence, devoted to another existence. With God.
2. A life of steady progress. This is clearly suggested by the term walking. Man is never more dignified than when he walks with a regular, firm, steady step; it is then that he looks every inch the lord of creation; you wonder not that other creatures should submit to his sway. But let him loiter about as if he had nothing to do, or let him run as if he were pursued, and he falls at once in your estimation. There is a touch of manliness about the very act of walking, which indicates a definite purpose, a reasonable aim, a complete mastery over ones self. You have only to conceive of a man walking and a man running, and compare these two conceptions together, in order to be impressed with the superiority of the one over the other. But the expression employed here has a wider meaning than this. Enoch walked with God. This indicates progress. It is progress in knowledge, progress in holiness, progress in good works. It is an upward struggle, a heavenward course, a climbing up to the mount of God.
3. A life of blessed companionship. With God. Now, the blessed companionship of Enoch with God, which was a type of all true companionship, implied faith in God. Enochs companionship implied also a certain degree of familiarity with God. Just think of it. Gods friend must become a God-like character. The moon which is bathed in the transforming light of the sun, becomes itself a luminous body, and lightens up the sombre blackness of the night with its pale, beautiful, silvery rays. And so the man who walks in the light of Gods countenance must necessarily catch some of the glory and reflect it upon the world around him. Besides this, Gods friend needs fear no enemy.
II. A SIMPLE RECORD OF A GLORIOUS END. And he was not, for God took him. A good man is never lost; long after his body has mouldered in the dust, the influence of his holy example will remain, will remain as a mighty power; a power which will not diminish, but grow with the flight of ages. (D. Rowlands, B. A.)
Enochs walking with God
I. As the first acceptable worshipper of God was Abel, so the first acceptable walker with God was Enoch, in Scripture record. Here are two remarks upon Enoch recorded in Scripture. The first is, his appearance in the world. The second is, his disappearance from the world.
1. His appearance is attended with sundry considerable circumstances. As
(1) his name.
(2) His time.
(3) His Age.
(4) His office or employ. Concerning his name Enoch, which has a double signification.
Enoch signifies dedicated; his father Jared (which signifies meek) being a lowly and a holy man, did dedicate this son to God, as soon as he had received him from God.
II. Enoch signifies catechized or instructed; well knowing, also, that the care of the means was committed to the father, though he had committed the care of the end to the Lord. The paternal instruction must promote the dedication. As Jared had marred him by propagation (begetting a son in his own, the fallen image), so he must mend him by instruction. God is so exact in Scripture record, stating him the seventh patriarch, not only to declare the genealogy of Christ in a more distinct chronology of succession than can be found in any of the best human histories, but also to show both His great care of His Church and His great delight in His Church.
1. His great care of it in upholding it by seven descents of holy patriarchs.
2. His great delight in His Church above all other His concerns in the world, being only, all of them, in order to His Church.
3. The age of life that Enoch lived. The years that he lived in this lower world were exactly answerable to the days of a year, to wit, 365. What he wanted in the silver of a life natural, he had well paid him in the gold of a life eternal; so that not only the shortness of the fathers life was made up in the long life of his son, but also, God took him from a worse place to plant him into a better. His translation was but transplantation, as it were, out of Gods kitchen garden into His heavenly paradise. Thus we see here on earth, those northern plants which are transplanted out of their cold climate into a warmer southern soil, find no detriment, but advantage thereby, and thrive the better. How much more was it no loss, but gain, to Enoch to be translated out of the vale of tears into Gods garden of celestial pleasures! There are many talkers and but few walkers; many talkers of God, few walkers with God. Their lives give the lie to their lips or tongues, as not running relatively in parallel lines together with the heart. A mans conversation is the most conspicuous comment upon all that the heart believeth and the mouth expresseth (Rom_10:9-10).
I. WHAT IS THIS WALKING WITH GOD?
1. Negatively. It is not as if a man should desert the society of mankind, and run into a desert or cloister; or as if a man should depart out of the world, and fly up into heaven. Neither does this phrase import only Enochs public capacity, as if it were proper solely to such as serve God in some high office. There are three Scripture phrases--
(1) Walking with God, as here.
(2) Walking before God (Gen_17:1).
(3) Walking after God (Deu_13:4).
2. Showing what it is to walk with God positively; that is, he did serve God in his generation according to his will, as is said of David (Act_13:3; Act_13:6).
II. HOW THIS WALKING WITH GOD IS MANS DUTY. Upon a threefold respect.
1. It is the principal end why God created man, that man should walk with God his Creator.
2. It is the creatures homage and fealty to his creator, God, to walk with Him, not with Satan, or with sin and sinners.
3. This walking with God is the very badge and character whereby saints are distinguished from sinners, believers from unbelievers, and the children of God from the children of the World.
III. HOW THIS WALKING WITH GOD IS MANS DIGNITY AS WELL AS DUTY. It is not only mans homage, but it is also his honour to walk with God. It is accounted honourable to be but a follower of a mortal king. Inferences hence are--
1. It is our duty to walk with God, though the whole world walk contrary to God. The worse that times are, the better should we be, that the times may not be worse, but better by us. We should all strive to be the most holy persons, even in the most unholy times.
2. Therefore we should all strive to walk with God, upon these three following motives; besides the reasons of the duty, as also of the dignity.
(1) Safety.
(2) Solace.
(3) Satiety.
Having done with Enochs first grand concern, to wit, concerning his appearance in the world--all which he managed in a constant walking with God--I come now to discourse upon his second grand concern, concerning his DISAPPEARANCE FROM THE WORLD; to wit, his translation from earth to heaven. (C. Ness.)
The memorial of Enoch
Could we but hope that, even in a limited sense, these words might be inscribed as the motto on our tomb, then we need not envy either the mausoleums of the Pharaohs, the tomb of Alexander or Napoleon, or the sepulchres of the Caesars! Our record would be on high, and our memorial would live when the scroll of fame should be scattered by the winds of heaven, and perish forever in the conflagration of the world; for they who walk with God on earth shall reign with Christ in heaven.
I. CONTEMPLATE THE CHARACTER HERE GIVEN OF ENOCH--HE WALKED WITH GOD. Let none suppose that, whatever this may imply, it was the exclusive privilege of Enoch, and, therefore, is not to be sought after by others; for of Noah it is written--he found grace in the eyes of the Lord; for he was a just man, and perfect in his generation. And Noah walked with God. To Abraham, also, it was commanded--Walk before Me; and this the father of the faithful actually described himself as doing, when he said, The Lord, before whom I walk, will send His angel with thee, and prosper thy way.
1. It must imply the true knowledge of each other; for familiar intercourse is founded on knowledge. On the part of God, the knowledge is perfect and infinite. Well, then, might the Psalmist exclaim--O Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising; thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compasseth my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo! O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether. But man is naturally ignorant of God. He knows Him not, nor desires to know Him; for God is not in all his thoughts. How, then, shall he understand His being and perfections, His works and His ways? Such knowledge is too wonderful for him; it is high, he cannot attain unto it. For who by searching can find out God? who can find out the Almighty to perfection? But He has graciously revealed Himself to us by His Spirit, in His Holy Word.
2. The most sincere friendship.
3. The strongest proofs of devoted attachment. Without these, friendship itself is only a name; but with them, the very balm of life.
4. But, in one word, to walk with God includes a community of interests. Their aim is one. Now, as God necessarily exists for His own glory, and delights in its manifestation in the happiness of His creatures; so man, regenerated and sanctified, supremely seeks the glory of God in all things.
II. CONTEMPLATE HIS SPECIAL PRIVILEGE. He was removed to heaven, without tasting the bitterness of death. It might be sooner than he expected; for he had not attained to half the years of the life of his father--but he rejoiced to depart, and to be with God, his exceeding joy, forever and ever! And was not this the richest boon he could possibly receive? Classic story has told us of two lovely youths that were found dead in their bed, soon after the prayer had been offered for them, that they might possess the best blessing heaven could bestow. And the Christian well knows, that to depart, and to be with Christ, is far better than anything here. Such was the privilege of Enoch--but as to the mode of his translation we know nothing. Yet, it must have been eminently gracious. Whatever was the manner of his translation, it was evidently supernatural--the doing of the Lord, and marvellous in the eyes of all. No rude stormof chaos, no fortuitous blast of atoms hurled him on high. But the Lord did it, in His own most gracious way. He had frequently conferred on him many distinguished favours--but then, to crown all, he took him as a special friend to Himself, to be forever with Him in heaven, in joys unutterable and full of glory. But do not expect the same kind of dismissal as Enoch. Only Elijah and he ever entered the eternal kingdom, without passing through the gate of death. (J. Clunie, LL. D.)
Enochs holiness and its reward
His mind was pure; his spirit rose above the turmoil of worldliness; he delighted in calm communion with God; once more the familiar intercourse between God and man, which had existed in the time of paradise, was restored; the path commenced by Seth was continued by Enoch; the former addressed God by the medium of the word; the latter approached Him by the still more spiritual medium of thought: the highest form of religious life was gained. But, unfortunately, Enoch alone walked with God; his contemporaries were sunk in iniquity and depravation; but the measure of their wickedness was not yet complete; three generations more were required to mature their destruction; and God, in order to rescue Enoch, took him to Himself, delivering him from the contamination of his time at a comparatively early period of his life. Was this early death a punishment? But the piety of Enoch is repeatedly stated. Was it a misfortune? It was this as little as the full length of Noahs life; both cases were analogous; in the one, the pious man left the wicked generation; in the other, he was by a catastrophe freed from it; and in both instances, the deliverance was miraculous and supernatural, by the immediate agency of God. If this is the clear internal meaning of Enochs history, who can doubt that he was called away from the earth, not to cease his life abruptly, but to continue it in a better sphere, and in still more perfect virtue? We are convinced that the taking away of Enoch is one of the strongest proofs of the belief in a future state prevailing among the Hebrews; without this belief, the history of Enoch is a perfect mystery, a hieroglyph without a clue, a commencement without an end. If, then, pious men could hope to continue a brighter existence after their transitory sojourn upon earth, the books of the Old Testament are not enveloped in the gloomy clouds of despair; they radiate in the beams of hope; and, if a long life on earth was also gratefully accepted as a high, though not the highest, boon, this may have sprung from the just feeling, that man is born to enjoy and to work, to receive much and to give more; and that he does not deserve the blessing of eternal rest before he has toiled to extend the empire of truth and piety (comp. Gen_4:7-10.) God took Enoch as He took Elijah (2Ki_2:9), or he was translated by faith, that he should not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him (Heb_11:5). The notion seems to be, that Enoch passed from earth to heaven without the intermediate state of decrepitude and dissolution; he suffered no bodily infirmity; his eye grew not dim, nor did his natural strength abate, as it is stated with regard to Moses, who also disappeared, so that no mortal knew his grave. For the pious Enoch, death lost its pang and its sting; though the descendant of a sinful race, he was delivered from the real punishment which sin inflicted upon the human family; his existence was uninterrupted; he was undying, as man was originally intended to be; for he passed from this life into a future state both without fear and without struggle. God took him as a loving father to His eternal home. The history of Enoch has ever been regarded as embodying profound truths; and, we think, there are few so strongly affecting the very root of religious life as those which we have just briefly indicated. And, as the virtuous are thus translated into heaven, the wicked are devoured alive in the gulf of the earth (Num_16:1-50). It is known that the classical writers also mention such translations into heaven; they assign this distinction among others to Hercules, to Ganymede, and to Romulus. But it was awarded to them either for their valour, or for mere physical beauty, which advantages, though valued among the Hebrews, were not considered by them as sublime or godlike; a pious and religious life alone deserved and obtained the crown of immortal glory. In no single feature can the Scriptures conceal their high spiritual character. However, the idea of a translation to heaven is not limited to the old world; it was familiar to the tribes of Central America; the chronicles of Guatemala record four progenitors of mankind who were suddenly raised to heaven; and the documents add that those first men came to Guatemala from the other side of the sea, from the east. This is, then, apparently, a rather remarkable connection of the primitive traditions of the most different nations. (M. M. Kalisch, Ph. D.)
My ministry
On the 22nd of February 1880 Dr. Raleigh preached for the last time. His text was, And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. Had he known that he would never preach again, he could not have chosen a more appropriate text, or have spoken with more impressiveness and pathos. One of the members of the congregation said, on returning home, I have heard today what I never expect to hear again in this world. Dr. Raleigh was compelled to rest; weeks passed away, but there was no amendment in his health, and at length he had to be told that there was an hope of his recovery. When he received the intelligence he said, Then my ministry is ended. There was a pause, and then he added, My ministry!--It is dearer than my life. On the Tuesday before his death, he was visited by the Rev. Joshua Harrison, to whom he freely expressed his confidence in the glorious work of the Saviour, and said, in any case I may well be content and thankful. I am not an old man, yet I have lived long and worked hard. I have had, on the whole, a most happy, and I think I may say successful, ministry. God has blessed my work, and has always given me true friends. If I have finished my work, I am ready to go. Indeed, I should have no regrets but for these dear ones (his wife and children). When reminded of the prayers which were being offered on his behalf, he replied, Yes, my peoples prayers make me sometimes think I may have a little more work to do, but it not, I shall calmly march up to the gates. Still trusting in Christ, he went through the gate, April 1880. In the presence of a sorrowing multitude, his coffin was lowered into a grave in Abney Park Cemetery. (Old Testament Anecdotes.)
Gathering flowers to compose him in the hour of death
We know it to be a Scripture fact that men have walked with God in closest intimacy, and that God hath held converse with them, even as a man converseth with his friend. Such was the case with Enoch, Abraham, Moses, and all that luminous cloud of witnesses so brightly and clearly revealed in the Bible. The Church of God, even down to our own time, furnishes innumerable witnesses to this truth, which we will establish by the mouth of two of them. John Holland was an old Puritan minister, who died two hundred and fifty years ago. Little is known of him, except what relates to his deathbed. Perceiving that he was near his end, he said, Come, oh, come; death approaches. Let us gather some flowers to comfort this hour. He requested that the eighth chapter of Romans might be read to him. But at every verse he stopped the reading, while he expounded it to the comfort of his soul, and to the joy and wonder of his friends. Having thus continued his meditations above two hours, he suddenly cried out, Oh, stay your reading. What brightness is this I see? Have you lighted any candles? They told him No; it is the sunshine. Sunshine? said he; nay, my Saviours shine! Now farewell, world--welcome, heaven. The day star from on high hath visited my heart. Oh! speak when I am gone, and preach it at my funeral, God dealeth familiarly with man. In such transports his soul soared towards heaven. His last words, after repeating the declaration that God doth and will deal familiarly with man, were these: And now, thou fiery chariot, that camest down to fetch up Elijah, carry me to my happy home. And, all ye blessed angels, who attended the soul of Lazarus to bring it to heaven, bear me, oh! bear me to the bosom of my best beloved. Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! One other present witness is Gilbert Tennent, who was a main instrument, with Whitefield and Edwards, of the great revival in New England one hundred years ago. In one of his letters to his brother, the holy William Tennent, he says, Brother, shall I tell you an astonishing instance of the glorious grace of the Lord Jesus Christ? It is this, that one of the meanest of His servants has had His presence every day, in some degree, for above eleven weeks, Nor is the great, good Master yet gone. Oh, brother, it is heaven upon earth to live near to God! Verily, our comfort does not depend so much upon our outward situation as is generally supposed. No, a Saviours love is all in all. Oh, this will make any situation sweet, and turn the thickest darkness into day! (Old Testament Anecdotes.)
Preparation for death necessary
I have read of a gentleman who died very suddenly, and his jester ran to the other servants, and having told them that their master was dead, he, with much gravity, said, And where is he gone? The servants replied, Why, to heaven, to be sure! No, said the jester, he is not gone to heaven, I am certain. The servants with much warmth asked him how he knew that his master was not gone to heaven? The jester then replied, Because heaven is a great way off, and I never knew my master take a long journey in his life but he always talked of it some time beforehand, and also made preparations for it; but I never heard him talk about heaven, nor ever saw him making preparations for death, and therefore I am sure he is not gone to heaven. (H. G. Salter.)
Enochs translation
This moment Enoch is surrounded by antediluvian sinners, transformed by evil passions into demons; the next, he is in the society of angels, of the general assembly of the firstborn, of God Himself: this moment he is in a humble tent; the next, he is in the city and palace of the King: this moment he is in imminent danger; the next, his is quietness and assurance forever: this moment he is in earth--an earth reeling with wickedness, and ripening fast for ruin; the next, he summers high in bliss upon the hills of God: this moment he is almost a solitary protester against evil; the next, he has outsoared the shadow of sin, and is one of a holy company that no man can number, standing before the throne: this moment his body is frail and corrupt, a body of death, even as others; the next, his body has become a glorious body, winged, radiant, immortal: this moment he is like all men, subject to, and in danger of, death; the next, he has evaded the grim king of terrors, escaped not only the feeling, but the sight, of death. (G. Gilfillan.)
A singular saint is a precious saint
As the morning star in the midst of the clouds, and as the moon when it is at full; as the flower of the roses in the spring of the year, and as the lilies by the springs of waters; as the branches of the frankincense in the time of summer, and as a vessel of massy gold, set with all manner of precious stones, and as the fat that is taken from the peace offering;--so is one Enoch, that walketh with God when others walk from Him; one Rahab, in Jericho; one Elias, that boweth not his knee to Baal; one David, in Mesech; one Esther, in Shushan; one Judith, in Bethulia; one Joseph, in the Sanhedrim of the Jews; one Gamaliel, in the council of the Pharisees; one innocent and righteous man, in the midst of a crooked and froward generation. (J. Spencer.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren1905 · Public DomainOn vv22, 24‘Enoch walked with God,’- Gen 5:22.
Genesis
WITH, BEFORE, AFTER
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‘Enoch walked with God,’- Gen 5:22.
‘Walk before Me.’- Gen 17:1.
‘Ye shall walk after the Lord your God.’- Deu 13:4.
You will have anticipated, I suppose, my purpose in doing what I very seldom do-cutting little snippets out of different verses and putting them together. You see that these three fragments, in their resemblances and in their differences, are equally significant and instructive. They concur in regarding life as a walk-a metaphor which expresses continuity, so that every man’s life is a whole, which expresses progress, which expresses change, and which implies a goal. They agree in saying that God must he brought into a life somehow, and in some aspect, if that life is to be anything else but an aimless wandering, if it is to tend to the point to which every human life should attain. But then they diverge, and, if we put them together, they say to us that there are three different ways in which we ought to bring God into our life. We should ‘walk with Him,’ like Enoch; we should ‘walk before’ Him, as Abraham was bade to do; and we should ‘walk after’ Him, as the command to do was given to all Israel. And these three prepositions, with, before, after, attached to the general idea of life as a walk, give us a triple aspect-which yet is, of course, fundamentally, one-of the way in which life may be ennobled, dignified, calmed, hallowed, focussed, and concentrated by the various relations into which we enter with Him. So I take the three of them.
1. ‘Enoch walked with God.’
That is a sweet, simple, easily intelligible, and yet lofty way of putting the notion which we bring into a more abstract and less impressive shape when we talk about communion with God. Two men travelling along a road keep each other company. ‘How can two walk together except they be agreed?’ The companion is at our side all the same, though the mists may have come down and we cannot see Him. We can hear His voice, we can grasp His hand, we can catch the echoes of His steps. We know He is there, and that is enough. Enoch and God walked together, by the simple exercise of the faith that fills the Invisible with one great, loving Face. By a continuous, definite effort, as we are going through the bustle of daily life, and amid all the pettiness and perplexities and monotonies that make up our often weary and always heavy days, we can realise to ourselves that He is of a truth at our sides, and by purity of life and heart we can bring Him nearer, and can make ourselves more conscious of His nearness. For, brethren, the one thing that parts a man from God, and makes it impossible for a heart to expatiate in the thought of His presence, is the contrariety to His will in our conduct. The slightest invisible film of mist that comes across the blue abyss of the mighty sky will blot out the brightest of the stars, and we may sometimes not be able to see the mist, and only know that it is there because we do not see the planet. So unconscious sin may steal in between us and God, and we shall no longer be able to say, ‘I walk with Him.’
The Roman Catholics talk, in their mechanical way, of bringing down all the spiritual into the material and formal, about the ‘practice of the presence of God.’ It is an ugly phrase, but it means a great thing, that Christian people ought, very much more than they do, to aim, day by day, and amidst their daily duties, at realising that most elementary thought which, like a great many other elementary thoughts, is impotent because we believe it so utterly, that wherever we are, we may have Him with us. It is the secret of blessedness, of tranquillity, of power, of everything good and noble.
‘I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were,’ said the Psalmist of old. If he had left out these two little words, ‘with Thee,’ he would have been uttering a tragic complaint; but when they come in, all that is painful, all that is solitary, all that is transient, bitterly transient, in the long succession of the generations that have passed across earth’s scene, and have not been kindred to it, is cleared away and changed into gladness. Never mind, though you are a stranger, if you have that companion. Never mind, though you are only a sojourner; if you have Him with you, whatever passes He will not pass; and though we dwell here in a system to which we do not belong, and its transiency and our transiency bring with them many sorrows, when we can say, ‘Lord! Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations,’ we are at home, and that eternal home will never pass.
Enoch ‘walked with God,’ and, of course, ‘God took him,’ There was nothing else for it, and there could be no other end, for a life of communion with God here has in it the prophecy and the pledge of a life of eternal union hereafter. So, then, ‘practise the presence of God.’ An old mystic says: ‘If I can tell how many times to-day I have thought about God, I have not thought about Him often enough.’ Walk with Him by faith, by effort, by purity.
2. And now take the other aspect suggested by the other word God spoke to Abraham: ‘I am the Almighty God, walk before Me and be thou perfect.’
That suggests, as I suppose I do not need to point out, the idea not only of communion, which the former phrase brought to our minds, but that of the inspection of our conduct. ‘As ever in the great Taskmaster’s eye,’ says the stern Puritan poet, and although one may object to that word ‘Taskmaster,’ yet the idea conveyed is the correct expansion of the commandment given to Abraham. Observe how ‘walk before Me’ is dovetailed, as it were, between the revelation ‘I am the Almighty God’ and the injunction ‘Be thou perfect.’ The realisation of that presence of the Almighty which is implied in the expression ‘Walk before Me,’ the assurance that we are in His sight, will lead straight to the fulfilment of the injunction that bears upon the moral conduct. The same connection of thought underlies Peter’s injunction, ‘Like as He . . .is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation,’ followed immediately as it is by, ‘If ye call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons judgeth’-as a present estimate-’according to every mail’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear’-that reverential awe which will lead you to be ‘holy even as I am holy.’
This thought that we are in that divine presence, and that there is silently, but most really, a divine opinion being formed of us, consolidated, as it were, moment by moment through our lives, is only tolerable if we have been walking with God. If we are sure, by the power of our communion with Him, of His loving heart as well as of His righteous judgment, then we can spread ourselves out before Him, as a woman will lay out her webs of cloth on the green grass for the sun to blaze down upon them, and bleach the ingrained filth out of them. We must first walk ‘with God’ before the consciousness that we are walking ‘before’ Him becomes one that we can entertain and not go mad. When we are sure of the ‘with’ we can bear the ‘before.’
Did you ever see how on a review day, as each successive battalion and company nears the saluting-point where the General inspecting sits, they straighten themselves up and dress their ranks, and pull themselves together as they pass beneath his critical eye. A master’s eye makes diligent servants. If we, in the strength of God, would only realise, day by day and act by act of our lives, that we are before Him, what a revolution could be effected on our characters and what a transformation on all our conduct!
‘Walk before Me’ and you will be perfect. For the Hebrew words on which I am now commenting may be read, in accordance with the usage of the language, as being not only a commandment but a promise, or, rather, not as two commandments, but a commandment with an appended promise, and so as equivalent to ‘If you will walk before Me you will be perfect.’ And if we realise that we are under ‘the pure eyes and perfect judgment of’ God, we shall thereby be strongly urged and mightily helped to be perfect as He is perfect.
3. Lastly, take the other relation, which is suggested by the third of my texts, where Israel as a whole is commanded to ‘walk after the Lord’ their God.
In harmony with the very frequent expression of the Old Testament about ‘going after idols’ so Israel here is to ‘go after God.’ What does that mean? Communion, the consciousness of being judged by God, will lead on to aspiration and loving, longing effort to get nearer and nearer to Him. ‘My soul followeth hard after Thee,’ said the Psalmist, ‘Thy right hand upholdeth me.’ That element of yearning aspiration, of eager desire to be closer and closer, and liker and liker, to God must be in all true religion. And unless we have it in some measure, it is useless to talk about being Christian people. To press onwards, not as though we had already attained, but following after, if that we may apprehend that for which also we are apprehended, is the attitude of every true follower of Christ. The very crown of the excellence of the Christian life is that it never can reach its goal, and therefore an immortal youth of aspiration and growth is guaranteed to it. Christian people, are you following after God? Are you any nearer to Him than you were ten years ago? ‘Walk with Me, walk before Me, walk after Me.’
I need not do more than remind you of another meaning involved in this same expression. If I walk after God, then I let Him go before me and show me my road. Do you remember how, when the ark was to cross Jordan, the commandment was given to the Israelites to let it go well on in front, so that there should be no mistake about the course, ‘for ye have not passed this way heretofore.’ Do not be in too great a hurry to press upon the heels of God, if I may so say. Do not let your decisions outrun His providence. Keep back the impatience that would hurry on, and wait for His ripening purposes to ripen and His counsels to develop themselves. Walk after God, and be sure you do not go in front of your Guide, or you will lose both your way and your Guide.
I need not say more than a word about the highest aspect which this third of our commandments takes, ‘His sheep follow Him’-’leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps,’ that is the culmination of the walking ‘with,’ and ‘before,’ and ‘after’ God which these Old Testament saints were partially practising. All is gathered into the one great word, ‘He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield1917 · Public DomainOn v22Enoch, "translated that he should not see death" Heb…
Enoch
Enoch, "translated that he should not see death" Heb 11:5 before the judgment of the Flood, is a type of those saints who are to be translated before the apocalyptic judgments 1Th 4:14-17. Noah, left on the earth, but preserved through the judgment of the Flood, is a type of the Jewish people, who will be kept through the apocalyptic judgments; Jer 30:5-9; Rev 12:13-16 and brought as an earthly people to the new heaven and new earth; Isa 65:17-19; Isa 66:20-22; Rev 21:1.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann1924 · Public DomainOn v21From Enoch to Shem, Ham, and Japheth
From Enoch to Shem, Ham, and Japheth
v. 21. And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah.
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v. 22. And Enoch walked with God, after he begat Methuselah, three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
v. 23. And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years.
v. 24. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not; for God took him. Here we have the short account of Enoch and the praise in which the New Testament joins, Heb 11:5-6. He walked with God: he was in the most intimate intercourse, in the most confidential relation with God. He clung to the invisible God and walked before Him at all times as though He were present and saw every act, heard every word. To such a degree of perfection did he attain in the course of the three centuries after the birth of Methuselah that God chose to take him from this world with its manifold misery. Without seeing death, he was translated into heaven, according to both body and soul. Although a ripe old age, also in our days, may be considered a gift of God, and is to be accepted with all thanksgiving, yet it is also a great kindness on the parts of God if He takes some of His children home in the bloom of their youth or in the fullness of their strength and usefulness. He always knows the best time.
v. 25. And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech.
v. 26. And Methuselah lived, after he begat Lamech, seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters.
v. 27. And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years; and he died. Methuselah thus enjoys the distinction of having reached the greatest age recorded for any human being.
v. 28. And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son.
v. 29. And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed. It is seen here that even the patriarchs felt the misery of this earthly life in all its burdensomeness. But incidentally Lamech, in explaining the name Noah which he gave to his son, showed that the Messianic hope was alive in him and in his family. Like Eve, he thought that this son of his was the promised Savior, he that would bring rest. Thus the faith and the hope of the fathers before the Flood were directed toward Christ, and herein they agree with the believers of all times.
v. 30. And Lamech lived, after he begat Noah, five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters.
v. 31. And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years; and he died.
v. 32. And Noah was five hundred years old; and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth. With Noah the genealogical table closes; he was the last patriarch before the Flood. His three sons are mentioned because each of them became the ancestor of a separate branch of the human family after the Flood.
The following list will aid in giving a correct idea of the time of the patriarchs before the Flood.
Adam
created
1,
died
930
Seth
born
130,
died
1042
Enos
born
235,
died
1140
Cainan
born
325,
died
1235
Mahalaleel
born
395,
died
1290
Jared
born
460,
died
1422
Enoch
born
622,
taken away
987
Methuselah
born
687,
died
1656
Lamech
born
874,
died
1651
Noah
born
1056,
died
2006
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv21, 25he became the father of Methuselah
he became the father of Methuselah
"he had his son Methuselah"
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Methuselah
This is the name of a man. (See: How to Translate Names)
Enoch walked with God
To walk with someone is a metaphor for being in a close relationship with him. AT: "Enoch had a close relationship with God" or "Enoch lived in union with God" (See: Metaphor)
He became the father of more sons and daughters
"He had more sons and daughters"
Enoch lived 365 years
"Enoch lived three hundred and sixty-five years." Enoch lived a total of 365 years. (See: Numbers)
then he was gone
The word "he" refers to Enoch. He was no longer on earth.
for God took him
This means that God took Enoch to be with himself (God).
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv22, 24, 275:22 Enoch lived in close fellowship with God (literally…
5:22 Enoch lived in close fellowship with God (literally Enoch walked with God; also in 5:24): Enoch’s position as seventh from Adam in the genealogy strikes a contrast with Lamech, the seventh from Adam in the line of Cain (see study note on 4:17–5:32).
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv22, 24 22. And Enoch walked with God. Undoubtedly Enoch is…
22. And Enoch walked with God. Undoubtedly Enoch is honored with peculiar praise among the men of his own age, when it is said that he walked with God. Yet both Seth and Enoch, and Cainan, and Mahalaleel, and Jared, were then living, whose piety was celebrated in the former part of the chapter. As that age could not be ruder or barbarous, which had so many most excellent teachers; we hence infer, that the probity of this holy man, whom the Holy Spirit exempted from the common order, was rare and almost singular. Meanwhile, a method is here pointed out of guarding against being carried away by the perverse manners of those with whom we are conversant. For public custom is as a violent tempest; both because we easily suffer ourselves to be led hither and thither by the multitude, and because every one thinks what is commonly received must be right and lawful; just as swine contract an itching from each other; nor is there any contagion worse, and more loathsome than that of evil examples. Hence we ought the more diligently to notice the brief description of a holy life, contained in the words, “Enoch walked with God.” Let those, then, who please, glory in living according to the custom of others; yet the Spirit of God has established a rule of living well and rightly, by which we depart from the examples of men who do not form their life and manners according to the law of God. For he who, pouring contempt upon the word of God, yields himself up to the imitation of the world, must be regarded as living to the devil. Moreover, (as I have just now hinted,) all the rest of the patriarchs are not deprived of the praise of righteousness; but a remarkable example is set before us in the person of one man, who stood firmly in the season of most dreadful dissipation; in order that, if we wish to live rightly and orderly, we may learn to regard God more than men. For the language which Moses uses is of the same force as if he had said, that Enoch, lest he should be drawn aside by the corruptions of men, had respect to God alone; so that with a pure conscience, as under his eyes, he might cultivate uprightness.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv22, 24 That is, he led an upright and godly life.
That is, he led an upright and godly life.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv21–27 Gen 5:21 And Enoch lived sixty and five years,…
Gen 5:21 And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:
Ver. 21. And begat Methuselah,] that is, Death’s dart, or piercing death (death is a skilful archer, that never misseth the mark it shoots at); or, He once dead, in comes the dart, i.e., the deluge: and so it did, even in the very year of his death: though the Septuagint miscounts, and make him to live fourteen years after the flood.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv21, 22, 24, 27 Whose name is thought by some learned men to…
Whose name is thought by some learned men to contain a prophecy of the flood, which was to come a thousand years after; for it signifies: He dies, and the dart or arrow of God’s vengeance comes; or, He dies, and the sending forth of the waters comes.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv21, 25 The accounts here run on for several generations without…
The accounts here run on for several generations without any thing remarkable, or any variation but of the names and numbers; but at length there comes in one that must not be passed over so, of whom special notice must be taken, and that is Enoch, the seventh from Adam: the rest, we may suppose, did virtuously, but he excelled them all, and was the brightest star of the patriarchal age. It is but little that is recorded concerning him; but this little is enough to make his name great, greater than the name of the other Enoch, who had a city called by his name. Here are two things concerning him: -
I. His gracious conversation in this world, which is twice spoken of: Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah (Gen 5:22), and again, Enoch walked with God, Gen 5:24. Observe,
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1. The nature of his religion and the scope and tenour of his conversation: he walked with God, which denotes, (1.) True religion; what is godliness, but walking with God? The ungodly and profane are without God in the world, they walk contrary to him: but the godly walk with God, which presupposes reconciliation to God, for two cannot walk together except they be agreed (Amo 3:3), and includes all the parts and instances of a godly, righteous, and sober life. To walk with God is to set God always before us, and to act as those that are always under his eye. It is to live a life of communion with God both in ordinances and providences. It is to make God's word our rule and his glory our end in all our actions. It is to make it our constant care and endeavour in every thing to please God, and nothing to offend him. It is to comply with his will, to concur with his designs, and to be workers together with him. It is to be followers of him as dear children. (2.) Eminent religion. He was entirely dead to this world, and did not only walk after God, as all good men do, but he walked with God, as if he were in heaven already. He lived above the rate, not only of other men, but of other saints: not only good in bad times, but the best in good times. (3.) Activity in promoting religion among others. Executing the priest's office is called walking before God, Sa1 2:30, Sa1 2:35, and see Zac 3:7. Enoch, it should seem, was a priest of the most high God, and like Noah, who is likewise said to walk with God, he was a preacher of righteousness, and prophesied of Christ's second coming. Jde 1:14, Behold, the Lord cometh with his holy myriads. Now the Holy Spirit, instead of saying, Enoch lived, says, Enoch walked with God; for it is the life of a good man to walk with God. This was, [1.] The business of Enoch's life, his constant care and work; while others lived to themselves and the world, he lived to God. [2.] It was the joy and support of his life. Communion with God was to him better than life itself. To me to live is Christ, Phi 1:21.
2. The date of his religion. It is said (Gen 5:21), he lived sixty-five years, and begat Methuselah; but (Gen 5:22) he walked with God after he begat Methuselah, which intimates that he did not begin to be eminent for piety till about that time; at first he walked but as other men. Great saints arrive at their eminence by degrees.
3. The continuance of his religion: he walked with God three hundred years, as long as he continued in this world. The hypocrite will not pray always; but the real saint that acts from a principle, and makes religion his choice, will persevere to the end, and walk with God while he lives, as one that hopes to live for ever with him, Psa 104:33.
II. His glorious removal to a better world. As he did not live like the rest, so he did not die like the rest (Gen 5:24): He was not, for God took him; that is, as it is explained (Heb 11:5), He was translated that he should not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him. Observe,
1. When he was thus translated. (1.) What time of his life. It was when he had lived but three hundred and sixty-five years (a year of years), which, as men's ages went then, was in the midst of his days; for there was none of the patriarchs before the flood that did not more than double that age. But why did God take him so soon? Surely, because the world, which had now grown corrupt, was not worthy of him, or because he was so much above the world, and so weary of it, as to desire a speedy removal out of it, or because his work was done, and done the sooner for his minding it so closely. Note, God often takes those soonest whom he loves best, and the time they lose on earth is gained in heaven, to their unspeakable advantage. (2.) What time of the world. It was when all the patriarchs mentioned in this chapter were living, except Adam, who died fifty-seven years before, and Noah, who was born sixty-nine years after; those two had sensible confirmations to their faith other ways, but to all the rest, who were or might have been witnesses of Enoch's translation, it was a sensible encouragement to their faith and hope concerning a future state.
2. How his removal is expressed: He was not, for God took him. (1.) He was not any longer in this world; it was not the period of his being, but of his being here: he was not found, so the apostle explains it from the Septuagint; not found by his friends, who sought him as the sons of the prophets sought Elijah (Kg2 2:17); not found by his enemies, who, some think, were in quest of him, to put him to death in their rage against him for his eminent piety. It appears by his prophecy that there were then many ungodly sinners, who spoke hard speeches, and probably did hard things too, against God's people (Jde 1:15), but God hid Enoch from them, not under heaven, but in heaven. (2.) God took him body and soul to himself in the heavenly paradise, by the ministry of angels, as afterwards he took Elijah. He was changed, as those saints will be that shall be found alive at Christ's second coming. Whenever a good man dies God takes him, fetches him hence, and receives him to himself. The apostle adds concerning Enoch that, before his translation, he had this testimony, that he pleased God, and this was the good report he obtained. Note, [1.] Walking with God pleases God. [2.] We cannot walk with God so as to please him, but by faith. [3.] God himself will put an honour upon those that by faith walk with him so as to please him. He will own them now, and witness for them before angels and men at the great day. Those that have not this testimony before the translation, yet shall have it afterwards. [4.] Those whose conversation in the world is truly holy shall find their removal out of it truly happy. Enoch's translation was not only an evidence to faith of the reality of a future state, and of the possibility of the body's existing in glory in that state; but it was an encouragement to the hope of all that walk with God that they shall be for ever with him: signal piety shall be crowned with signal honours.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv21–25 And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred…
And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty nine years, and he died,.... This was the oldest man that ever lived, no man ever lived to a thousand years: the Jews give this as a reason for it, because a thousand years is God's day, according to Psa 90:4 and no man is suffered to arrive to that. His name carried in it a prediction of the time of the flood, which was to be quickly after his death, as has been observed; see Gill on Gen 5:21. Some say he died in the year of the flood; others, fourteen years after, and was in the garden of Eden with his father, in the days of the flood, and then returned to the world (a); but the eastern writers are unanimous that he died before the flood: the Arabic writers (b) are very particular as to the time in which he died; they say he died in the six hundredth year of Noah, on a Friday, about noon, on the twenty first day of Elul, which is Thout; and Noah and Shem buried him, embalmed in spices, in the double cave, and mourned for him forty days: and some of the Jewish writers say he died but seven days before the flood came, which they gather from Gen 7:10 "after seven days"; that is, as they interpret it, after seven days of mourning for Methuselah (c): he died A. M. 1656, the same year the flood came, according to Bishop Usher.
(a) Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 74. 2. (b) Apud Hottinger, p. 244. (c) Bereshit Rabba, sect. 32. fol. 27. 3. Juchasin, fol. 6. 1. Baal Habturim in Gen. vii. 10.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv22, 24, 25 And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah…
And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah - To walk with God, is to set God always before us, and to act as those that are always under his eye. It is to live a life of communion with God, both in ordinances and providences; it is to make God's word our rule, and his glory our end, in all our actions; it is to make it our constant care and endeavour in every thing to please God, and in nothing to offend him; it is to comply with his will, to concur with his designs, and to be workers together with him. He walked with God after he begat Methuselah, which intimates, that he did not begin to be eminent for piety 'till about that time.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv22, 27 Verse 22. And Enoch walked with God - three…
Verse 22. And Enoch walked with God - three hundred years] There are several things worthy of our most particular notice in this account:
1. The name of this patriarch; Enoch, from חנך chanack, which signifies to instruct, to initiate, to dedicate. From his subsequent conduct we are authorized to believe he was early instructed in the things of God, initiated into the worship of his Maker, and dedicated to his service. By these means, under the influence of the Divine Spirit, which will ever attend pious parental instructions, his mind got that sacred bias which led him to act a part so distinguished through the course of a long life.
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2. His religious conduct. He walked with God; יתהלך yithhallech, he set himself to walk, he was fixedly purposed and determined to live to God. Those who are acquainted with the original will at once see that it has this force. A verb in the conjugation called hithpael signifies a reciprocal act, that which a man does upon himself: here we may consider Enoch receiving a pious education, and the Divine influence through it; in consequence of which he determines to be a worker with God, and therefore takes up the resolution to walk with his Maker, that he might not receive the grace of God in vain.
3. The circumstances in which he was placed. He was a patriarch; the king, the priest, and the prophet of a numerous family, to whom he was to administer justice, among whom he was to perform all the rites and ceremonies of religion, and teach, both by precept and example, the way of truth and righteousness. Add to this, he was a married man, he had a numerous family of his own, independently of the collateral branches over which he was obliged, as patriarch, to preside; he walked three hundred years with God, and begat sons and daughters; therefore marriage is no hinderance even to the perfection of piety; much less inconsistent with it, as some have injudiciously taught.
4. The astonishing height of piety to which he had arrived; being cleansed from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, and having perfected holiness in the fear of God, we find not only his soul but his body purified, so that, without being obliged to visit the empire of death, he was capable of immediate translation to the paradise of God. There are few cases of this kind on record; but probably there might be more, many more, were the followers of God more faithful to the grace they receive.
5. Enoch attained this state of religious and spiritual excellence in a time when, comparatively speaking, there were few helps, and no written revelation. Here then we cannot but see and admire how mighty the grace of God is, and what wonders it works in the behalf of those who are faithful, who set themselves to walk with God. It is not the want of grace nor of the means of grace that is the cause of the decay of this primitive piety, but the want of faithfulness in those who have the light, and yet will not walk as children of the light.
6. If the grace of God could work such a mighty change in those primitive times, when life and immortality were not brought to light by the Gospel, what may we not expect in these times, in which the Son of God tabernacles among men, in which God gives the Holy Spirit to them who ask him, in which all things are possible to him who believes? No man can prove that Enoch had greater spiritual advantages than any of the other patriarchs, though it seems pretty evident that he made a better use of those that were common to all than any of the rest did; and it would be absurd to say that he had greater spiritual helps and advantages than Christians can now expect, for he lived under a dispensation much less perfect than that of the LAW, and yet the law itself was only the shadow of the glorious substance of Gospel blessings and Gospel privileges.
7. It is said that Enoch not only walked with God, setting him always before his eyes, beginning, continuing, and ending every work to his glory, but also that he pleased God, and had the testimony that he did please God, Heb 11:5. Hence we learn that it was then possible to live so as not to offend God, consequently so as not to commit sin against him; and to have the continual evidence or testimony that all that a man did and purposed was pleasing in the sight of Him who searches the heart, and by whom devices are weighed: and if it was possible then, it is surely, through the same grace, possible now; for God, and Christ, and faith, are still the same.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv22, 24 Gen 5:22. Enoch walked with God — A Scriptural…
Gen 5:22. Enoch walked with God — A Scriptural phrase for eminent piety. He set God always before him, and acted as one that considered he was always under his eye. He lived a life of communion and intercourse with God in his ordinances and providences. He made God’s will his rule, and God’s glory his end, in all his actions. He made it his constant care to please God in every thing, and to offend him in nothing, and was a worker together with him. Reader, go thou, and do likewise. He walked with God after he begat Methuselah — Which seems to intimate that he did not begin to be eminent for piety till about that time. And he begat sons and daughters — A state of matrimony, and the cares and duties incumbent on the master of a family, are not inconsistent with the strictest holiness, or with the office of a prophet, or preacher of righteousness. For, according to Jdg 1:14-15, such was Enoch.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On v24 Walked with God. Septuagint, "was pleasing to God," by…
Walked with God. Septuagint, "was pleasing to God," by continual recollection and watchfulness over himself. Thus he became perfect. --- Was seen no more; or, as St. Paul reads, after the Septuagint, he was not found. (Hebrews xi. 5.) --- God took him alive to some place unknown, which is commonly supposed to be Paradise, conformably to Ecclesiasticus xliv. 16, though in Greek we do not read Paradise. Henoch pleased God, and was translated [into Paradise], that he may give repentance to the nations. To him, that of Wisdom iv. 10, may be applied: He...was beloved, and living among sinners, he was translated. He will come again, when the charity of many of his children, (for we all spring from him) shall have grown cold; and shall at last suffer death for opposing Antichrist. (Apocalypse xi.) (Haydock) --- "Though it be not an article of faith, whether Henoch be now in that Paradise, from which Adam and Eve were driven, or in some other delightful place; yet the holy Scriptures affirm, that God translated him alive, that he might not experience death," St. Chrysostom, hom. 21, with whom the other fathers agree, cited in the Douay Bible; so that it is a matter of surprise, how any Protestant can call it in question. He is the other witness, who will come with Elias, before the great day of the Lord, to perform the same office to the nations, as the latter will to the Jews. (Malachias iv.) God preserves these two alive, perhaps to give us a striking proof how he could have treated Adam and his posterity, if they had not sinned; and also to confirm our hopes of immortality, when we shall have paid the debt of nature. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv21, 24, 26 Enoch . . . begat Methuselah--This name signifies, "He…
Enoch . . . begat Methuselah--This name signifies, "He dieth, and the sending forth," so that Enoch gave it as prophetical of the flood. It is computed that Methuselah died in the year of that catastrophe.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv22, 24, 27 22. And Enoch walked with God — ויתהלךְ חנוךְ…
22. And Enoch walked with God — ויתהלךְ חנוךְ את האלהיםNot before God, as a messenger, or a workman beneath his eye: nor after him, as a servant; but with him, as a friend. A remarkable expression, occurring but twice in Scripture: in the text as applied to Enoch, and in Gen_6:9, to Noah. In Mal_2:6, it is, in our translation, applied to the faithful priest, but the Hebrew verb in this passage is in Kal, not reaching the high spiritual idea of the text. The verb as applied to Enoch and Noah is in Hithpael implying a voluntary and delightful walk. The passages which speak of walking before God (Gen_24:40, etc.,) and walking after him do not rise to the high conception of this text. The article is here, for the first time, used with Elohim, the one only God. The LXX translates Και ευηρεστησεν ‘Ενωχ τω Θεω, and Enoch pleased God, which version Paul uses in Heb_11:5 : “He had this testimony, that he pleased God.” Intimate and confidential communication, such as exists between the nearest friends, is suggested by this peculiar language. This single example of eminent piety stands forth sublimely solitary in the antediluvian waste. While the patriarchs from Seth to Enoch, and from Enoch to Lamech, are but a series of Hebrew names, we see Enoch’s face as it shines in his godly walk, and hear him, as a prophet, testify against the sin of his age, and proclaim a coming judgment. Jud_1:14-15. The Jews have manifold traditions concerning Enoch, most of which are gathered in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, written, probably, in the last century B.C. There is a heathen tradition of the same wonderful history in the Phrygian legend of Annacus, a pious king, who lived and prophesied three hundred years, predicting the deluge of Deucalion.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv21–25 21. Methuselah] Possibly = “the man of Shelah”; and,…
21. Methuselah] Possibly = “the man of Shelah”; and, if so, Shelah may indicate the name of a deity; cf. Methushael (Gen_4:18) = “the man of God.”
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On v24 (24) Enoch walked with God.—This is translated in the…
(24) Enoch walked with God.—This is translated in the LXX., “Enoch pleased God,” whence comes the “testimony” quoted in Heb_11:5. Really it gives the cause of which the Greek phrase is the effect; for it denotes a steady continuance in well-doing, and a life spent in the immediate presence of and in constant communion with God. (See Note on Gen_4:18.)
God took him.—Instead of the mournful refrain and he died, coming like a surprise at the end of each of these protracted lives, we have here an early removal into another world, suggesting already that long life was not the highest form of blessing; and this removal is without pain, decay, or death into the immediate presence of God. Thus one of Adam’s posterity after the fall succeeded in doing, though, doubtless, not without special help and blessing from the Almighty, that wherein Adam in Paradise had failed. We learn, too, from Jud_1:14-15, that Enoch’s was a removal from prevailing evil to happiness secured. Already, probably, the intermarriages between the Cainites and Sethites had begun and with it the corruption of mankind. Philippson, while regarding the phrase “God took him” as a euphemism for an early death, yet finds in it an indication of there being another life besides this upon earth. We may further add that Enoch’s translation took place about the middle of the antediluvian period, and that his age was 365, the number of the days of the year. As, however, the Hebrew year consisted of only 354 days, and the Chaldean of 360, the conclusion that Enoch was a solar deity has no solid foundation to rest upon. But see Note on Gen_8:14.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv21, 22, 24, 25 The dedicated and initiated child grew up, like an…
The dedicated and initiated child grew up, like an Old Testament Timothy let us hope, to possess, illustrate, and proclaim the piety which was the distinguishing characteristic of the holy line. At the comparatively early age of sixty-five he begat ("forbidding to marry" being unknown then) Methuselah. Man of a dart (Gesenius), man of military arms (Furst), man of the missile (Murphy), man of the sending forth sc. of water (Wordsworth), man of growth (Delitzsch). And Enoch walked with God (Elohim). The phrase, used also of Noah,, (Gen_6:9) and by Micah (Gen_6:8. Cf. the similar expressions, "to walk before Gen_17:1; Psa_116:9, and "to walk after God," Deu_13:4; Eph_5:1) portrays a life of singularly elevated piety; not merely a constant realization of the Divine presence, or even a perpetual effort at holy obedience, but also "a maintenance of the most confidential intercourse with the personal God (Keil). It implies a situation of nearness to God, if not in place at least in spirit; a character of likeness to God, (Amo_3:3) and a life of converse with God. Following the LXX (eujhresthse de jEnwc tw qew), the writer to the Hebrews describes it as a life that was "pleasing to God," as springing from the root of faith. (Heb_11:5) Yet though pre-eminently spiritual and contemplative, Jude tells us (vers. 14, 15) the patriarch s life had its active and aggressive outlook towards the evil times in which he lived. After he begat Methuselah. "Which intimates that he did not begin to be eminent for piety till about that time; at first he walked as other men" (Henry). Procopius Gazeus goes beyond this, and thinks that before his son"s birth Enoch was "a wicked liver," but then repented. The historian"s language, however, does not necessarily imply that his piety was so late in commencing and it is more pleasing to think that from his youth upwards he was "as a shining star for virtue and holiness (Willet). Three hundred years. As his piety began early, so likewise did it continue long; it was not intermittent and fluctuating, but steadfast and persevering (cf. Job_17:9; Pro_4:18; 1Co_15:58) And begat sons and daughters. "Hence it is undeniably evident that the stats and use of matrimony doth very well agree with the severest course of holiness, and with the office of a prophet or preacher" (Peele). And all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. "A year of years" (Henry); "the same period as that of the revolution of the earth round the sun. After he had finished his course, revolving round him who is the true light, which is God, in the orbit of duty, he was approved by God, and taken to him" (Wordsworth). Modern critics have discovered in the age of Enoch traces of a mythical origin. They conclude the entire list of names to be not older than the time of the Babylonian Nabonassar, and believe it to be not improbable that "the Babylonians regulated the calendar with the assistance of an Indian astrologer or ganaka (arithmetician) of the town of Chanoge" (Von Bohlen). But "it would be strange indeed if just in the life of Enoch, which represents the purest and sublimest unity with God, a heathen and astrological element were intentionally introduced;" and, besides, "it is almost generally admitted that our list contains no astronomical numbers that the years which it specifies refer to the lives of individuals, not to periods of the world; and that none of all these figures is in any way reducible "to a chronological, system" (Kalisch). And Enoch walked with God. Non otiosa tautologia," but an emphatic repetition, indicative of the ground of what follows. And he was not. Literally, and not he. (cf. Gen_12:3-6; Jer_31:15; kaisketo LXX) "Not absolutely he was not, but relatively he was not extant in the sphere of sense." Non amplius inter mortales apparuit" (Rosenm "If this phrase does not denote annihilation, much less does the phrase "and he died." The one denotes absence from the world of sense, and the other indicates the ordinary way in which the soul departs from this world" (Murphy). For God (Elohim) took him. (Cf. 2Ki_2:3, 2Ki_2:5, 2Ki_2:9, 2Ki_2:10, where the same word jql; is used of Elijah"s translation; oJti meteqhken aujtoov, LXX) Though the writer to the Hebrews (Gen_11:5) adopts the paraphrase of the LXX, yet his language must be accepted as conveying the exact sense of the words of Moses. Analyzed, it teaches
(1) that the patriarch Enoch did not see death, as did all the other worthies in the catalogue; and
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(2) that in some mysterious way "he was taken up from this temporal life and transfigured into life eternal, as those of the faithful will be who shall be alive at the coming of Christ to judgment" (Keil). The case of Elijah, who was also taken up, and who afterwards appeared in glory on the mount of transfiguration, (Mt 17 Mr 9 Lu 9) appears to determine the locality into which Enoch was translated (which Kaliseh willingly leaves to antiquaries to decide) to be neither the terrestrial Eden (certain Popish writers) nor the heavenly paradise where the pious dead are now assembled sheol (Delitzsch and Lange), but the realm of celestial glory (Keil). That the departure of the good man was witnessed by his contemporaries we may infer from what occurred in the case of Elijah; and, indeed, unless it had been so it is difficult to see how it could have served the end for which apparently it was designed, which was not solely to reward Enoch"s piety, but to demonstrate the certainty and to stimulate the hope of immortality. That the memory of an event so remarkable should have survived not merely in Jewish (Ecc 44:16) and Christian tradition (Jud_1:15), but also in heathen fable, is nothing marvelous. The Book of Enoch, compiled probably by a Jew in the days of Herod the Great, describes the patriarch as exhorting, his son Methuselah and all his contemporaries to reform their evil ways; as penetrating with his prophetic eye into the remote future, and exploring all mysteries in earth and heaven; as passing a retired life after the birth of his eldest son in intercourse with the angels and in meditation on Divine matters; and as at length being translated to heaven in order to reappear in the time of the Messiah, leaving behind him a number, of writings on religion and morality. The Book of Jubilees relates that he was carried into paradise, where he writes down the judgment of all men, their wickedness and eternal punishment" (Kalisch). Arabic legend declares him to have been the inventor of writing and arithmetic. The Phrygian sagsAnnacus (jAnakov: "nomen detortum ab Chanoch") is said by Stephanus Byzantinus, and Suidas, who corrupts the name into Nannacus, to have lived before the flood of Deucalion, to have attained an age of more than 300 years, to have foreseen the flood, gathered all the people into a temple and made supplication to God, and finally to have been translated into heaven. "Classical writers also mention such translations into heaven; they assign this distinction among others to Hercules, to Ganymede, and to Romutus (54:1:16: "nec deinde in terris fuit"). But it was awarded to them either for their valor or their physical beauty, and not, as the translation of Enoch, for "a pious and religious life." Nor is the idea of a translation to heaven limited to the old world; it was familiar to the tribes of Central America; the chronicles of Guatemala record four progenitors of mankind who were suddenly raised to heaven; and the documents add that those first men came to Guatemala from the other side of the sea, from the East" (cf. Rosenm and Kalisch, in loco ).
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv24, 27 Enoch walked with God
Gen_5:24
Enoch walked with God
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The life and translation of Enoch
I.
Consider THE LIFE OF ENOCH. He walked with God. These words seem to imply that Enoch possessed a remarkable resemblance to God in moral excellence; that he realized Gods presence, and enjoyed His communion in an extraordinary measure, and that he publicly avowed himself to be on Gods side, and stood almost alone in doing so. We notice especially the quietness and unconsciousness of his walk with God. The life of David or of Job resembled a stormy spring day, made up of sweeping tempest, angry glooms, and sudden bursts of windy sunshine; that of Enoch is a soft grey autumn noon, with one mild haze of brightness covering earth and heaven.
II. Notice ENOCHS PUBLIC WORK OF PROTEST AND PROPHECY. The Epistle of Jude supplies us with new information about Enochs public work. He not only characterized and by implication condemned his age, but predicted the coming of the last great judgment of God. He announced it
(1) as a glorious and overpowering event;
(2) as one of conclusive judgment and convincing demonstration.
III. Look now at ENOCHS TRANSLATION. How striking in its simplicity is the phrase, He was not, for God took him! The circumstances of his translation are advisedly concealed: translated that he should not see death. Many a hero has gathered fame because he stood face to face with death, and has outfaced the old enemy; but death never so much as dared to look into Enochs eye as it kindled into immortality. The reasons why this honour was conferred on him were probably--
(1) to show his transcendent excellence;
(2) to abash an infidel world;
(3) to prove that there was another state of being, and to give a pledge of this to all future ages. (G. Gilfillan.)
Enochs life
Few words are needed to describe the salient features of the majority of human lives. It is not needful to write a volume to tell whether a man has spent a noble or a wasted life. One stroke of the pen, one solitary word, may be enough.
I. HERE IS A LIFE SUDDENLY AND PREMATURELY CUT SHORT; for, although Enoch lived 365 years, it Was not half the usual age of the men of his day.
II. A LIFE SPENT AMID SURROUNDING WICKEDNESS.
III. A LIFE SPENT IN FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD. In the expression walked with God, there is the idea of--
(1) strong persistence and determination;
(2) progress.
IV. A LIFE OF NOBLE TESTIMONY. V. A LIFE CROWNED BY TRANSLATION. His translation was--
(1) A reminder to the men of his day that there was another state above and beyond the present;
(2) an intimation of the final reward of the saints. (J. W. Atkinson.)
Enoch, one of the worlds great teachers
Three strange things in connection with Enochs history:
(1) That so little is said about him;
(2) the comparative shortness of his stay on earth;
(3) the manifest singularity of the life he lived.
I. HE TAUGHT THE WORLD BY HIS LIFE.
1. He walked with God.
2. He had the testimony that he pleased God.
II. HE TAUGHT THE WORLD BY HIS TRANSLATION.
1. That death is not a necessity of human nature.
2. That there is a sphere of human existence beyond this.
3. That there is a God in the universe who approves of goodness.
4. That the mastering of sin is the way to a grand destiny.
III. HE TAUGHT THE WORLD BY HIS PREACHING (Jud_1:14-15).
(1) The advent of the Judge.
(2) The gathering of the saints.
(3) The conversion of sinners. (Homilist.)
The heavenly walk
I. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED NOTWITHSTANDING THE PREVALENCY OF SIN AROUND.
II. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED IN THE VERY PRIME OF BUSY MANHOOD.
III. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED IN THE VERY MIDST OF DOMESTIC ANXIETY AND CARE. Many people have lost their religion through the increase of domestic cares. But a godly soul can walk with God in family life, and take all its offspring in the same holy path. Enoch would instruct his children in the right way. He would pray for them. He would commend them to his Divine friend. Happy the home where such a godly parent is at its head.
IV. THAT IT MAY BE PURSUED INTO THE VERY PORTALS OF HEAVEN AND ETERNAL BLISS. Enoch walked with God, and one day walked right into heaven with Him. Heaven is but the continuation of the holy walk of earth. (J. S.Exell, M. A.)
Enoch: accounting for mens disappearance from the earth
God took him.
I. WE SHOULD TAKE AN INTEREST IN THE DESTINY OF MEN.
II. WE SHOULD RECOGNIZE THE HAND OF GOD IN THE REMOVAL OF MEN.
III. WE SHOULD BELIEVE IN THE PARTICULARITY OF GODS OVERSIGHT OF MEN. When God takes a good man--
(1) He takes that man to a higher blessing,
(2) He will fill that mans place as a Christian worker upon earth.
(3) He trains survivors towards self-reliance and emulous work. Or thus:
1. God took him the assertion of a sovereign right.
2. God took him--an illustration of Divine regard.
3. God took him--an assurance of eternal blessedness.
4. God took him--a pledge that all like him will be associated. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Enoch
I. ENOCH AS TO HIS AGE.
1. It Was an age of longevity.
2. It was an ungodly age.
II. ENOCH AS TO HIS RELIGION.
1. He was independent.
2. Practical.
III. ENOCH AS TO HIS DEPARTURE.
1. His departure implies a future state.
(1) Analogy says so.
(2) The state of the world shows that there is a hereafter to square the accounts.
(3) Revelation proves it.
2. His departure shows that there is a reward to the faithful.
(1) Present satisfaction.
(2) Future felicity. Heb_4:9. (W. Griffiths.)
Enoch
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY ENOCHS WALKING WITH GOD?
1. That he was well-pleasing to God (Heb_11:5). Amity, friendship, intimacy, love.
2. That he realized the Divine presence (Heb_11:6). God was to him a living Friend, in whom he confided, and by whom he was loved.
3. That he had very familiar intercourse with the Most High.
4. That his intercourse with God was continuous. He did not take a turn or two with God and then leave His company, but walked with God for hundreds of years. He did not commune with God by fits and starts, but abode in the conscious love of God.
5. That his life was progressive. At the end of two hundred years he was not where he began; he was not in the same company, but he had gone forward in the right way.
II. WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES WERE CONNECTED WITH ENOCHS WALKING WITH GOD?
1. The details of his life are very few. Quite enough for us to know that he walked with God.
2. It is a mistake to suppose that he was placed in very advantageous circumstances for piety.
(1) A public man.
(2) A family man.
(3) Living in a very evil age. Still he bore his witness for God.
III. WHAT WAS THE CLOSE OF ENOCHS WALK?
1. He finished his work early.
2. He was missed. Not found (Heb_11:5).
3. His departure was a testimony. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Enochs walk with God
In Kittos Daily Bible Readings there is an exceedingly pleasing piece, illustrating what it must be to walk with God by the figure of a fathers taking his little son by the hand and walking forth with him upon the breezy Dills. He says, As that child walks with thee, so do thou walk with God. That child loves thee now. The world--the cold cruel world--has not yet come between his heart and thine. His love now is the purest and most beautiful he will ever feel, or thou wilt ever receive. Cherish it well, and as that child walks lovingly with thee, so do thou walk lovingly with God. It is a delight to such children to be with their father. The roughness of the way or of the weather is nothing to them: it is joy enough to go for a walk with father. There is a warm, tender, affectionate grip of the hand and a beaming smile of the eye as they look up to father while he conducts them over hill and dale. Such a walk is humble too, for the child looks upon its father as the greatest and wisest man that ever lived. He considers him to be the incarnation of everything that is strong and wise, and all that his father says or does he admires. As he walks along he feels for his father the utmost affection, but his reverence is equally strong: he is very near his father, but yet he is only a child, and looks up to his father as his king. Moreover, such a walk is one of perfect confidence. The boy is not afraid of missing his way, he trusts implicitly his fathers guidance. His fathers arm will screen him from all danger, and therefore he does not so much as give it a thought--why should he? If care is needed as to the road, it is his fathers business to see to it, and the child, therefore, never dreams of anxiety--why should he? If any difficult place is to be passed, the father will have to lift the boy ever it, or help him through it; the child meanwhile is merry as a bird--why should he not be? Thus should the believer walk with God, resting on eternal tenderness and rejoicing in undoubted lave. What an instructive walk a child has with a wise, communicative parent! How many of his little puzzles are explained to him, how everything about him is illuminated by the fathers wisdom. The boy, every step he takes, becomes the wiser for such companionship. Oh, happy children of God, who have been taught of their Father while they have walked with Him! Enoch must have been a man of profound knowledge and great wisdom as to Divine things. He must have dived into the deep things of God beyond most men. His life must also have been a holy life, because he walked with God, and God never walks out of the way of holiness. If we walk with God, we must walk according to truth, justice, and love. The Lord has no company with the unjust and rebellious, and therefore we know that he who walked with God must have been an upright and holy man. Enochs life must, moreover, have been a happy one. Who could be unhappy with such a companion! With God himself to be with us the way can never be dreary. Did Enoch walk with God? Then his pilgrimage must have been safe. Nothing can harm the man who is walking with the Lord God at his right hand. And oh, what an honourable thing it is to walk with the Eternal! Many a man would give thousands to walk with a king. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
High ground
I. WHAT IS IT TO WALK WITH GOD?
1. Reconciliation with God.
2. Spiritual life (Gal_5:25).
3. None walk with God closely but those who love Him supremely.
4. Those with whom we walk, and whom we love, we are desirous to please and oblige. And those who walk with God delight to do His will.
5. Communion with God.
6. Similarity of disposition and feeling.
II. THE ADVANTAGES ARISING FROM SUCH A WALK.
1. It gives a real enjoyment, for which we are not at all dependent on external things, and of which nothing in this world can deprive us.
2. It sweetens all earthly pleasures and pains.
3. The man who walks with God learns much of the will of God.
4. Such a walk is a preparation for the enjoyment of God in heaven. (Benson Bailey.)
Enoch
I. ENOCHS PIETY.
1. Walking with God includes--
(1) A true knowledge of God--of His character and laws; of His will concerning us, etc.
(2) Reconciliation to God (Amo_3:3). In Jesus alone can this be effected.
(3) Cheerful obedience to the commands of God (1Jn_2:3).
(4) Devotional intercourse with God. Meditation. Prayer. Praise.
(5) Assimilation to the holy image of God (2Co_3:18).
(6) Advancement in all the things of God.
2. Walking with God is associated with--
(1) True dignity.
(2) Real pleasure.
(3) Permanent security. And
(4) eternal advantages.
II. HiS DISTINGUISHED REMOVAL.
1. He was not. No more among men.
(1) He was not allowed to remain in a troublesome and ungodly world.
(2) He was not subjected to the, otherwise, universal stroke of mortality. Exempted from disease, death, and corruption.
2. God took him.
(1) In a peculiar way. Body and soul unseparated.
(2) God took him to Himself--to His own immediate presence, where is fulness of joy, etc.
(3) God took him; and thus signalized and honoured distinguished piety.
Application: Learn--
1. The nature of true piety. To walk with God.
2. The reward of true piety. Interested in Gods gracious care; and ultimately raised to His own Divine presence.
3. Removal of Enoch teaches immortality of soul. (J. Burns, D. D.)
Enochs walk with God
I. EXPLAIN THE VIEW GIVEN OF ENOCHS LIFE AND CHARACTER.
II. THE SINGULAR CLOSE OF HIS PIOUS COURSE.
1. It was a sudden change.
2. It was a miraculous change.
3. It was a happy change. (The Evangelical Preacher.)
Walking with God
I. HIS GENERAL CHARACTER. He walked with God.
1. What walking with God supposes.
2. Some advantages which result from walking with God.
(1) Guidance in difficulties (Pro_3:6). He shall direct. Psa_32:8).
(2) Preservation from falling (Psa_16:8).
(3) Assistance in weakness (Isa_41:10).
(4) Comfort in afflictions (Psa_46:1; Psa_94:19).
(5) Improvement in piety (Pro_4:18).
II. SOME PECULIAR CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH IT. Particularly--
1. The period of its commencement, and the time of its continuance. It commenced in what may be considered his early youth; when he had not lived the twelfth part of the then usual age of man. This shows us that early piety is acceptable to God (Pro_8:17). Seek it (Ecc_12:1); for early habits are most easily formed, and most lasting Lam_3:27). It continued at least three hundred years. This teaches us that the pleasures of religion never cloy (Psa_63:3-4); and that Gods grace is sufficient for the longest pilgrimage (2Co_12:9).
2. The relations under which it was sustained.
(1) The relation of a family governor. Hence, we see the falsehood of three common suppositions. First, That solitude is necessary to piety. This is an error of superstition; as Christians we are called to sociability Mat_5:14-16). Secondly, That religion is injurious to social duties and comforts. This is an error of prejudice, which is confuted by many living characters (Pro_12:26). Thirdly, That we serve God only when we engage in acts of devotion. This is an error of ignorance; for we also serve God acceptably when we serve mankind in obedience to Act_13:36; Gal_5:14; Gal_6:2; Gal_6:10).
(2) This character was also sustained by Enoch, under the relation of a public teacher. From this example we learn that teachers of others should be careful to walk with God themselves; in domestic life, that they may engage their families in Gods service (Jos_24:15); in public life, that their labours may be blessed by God (Psa_51:12-13; Mal_2:6).
3. The scenes amidst which it was preserved. These were examples of prevailing ungodliness, when piety was generally reproached. Thus, when iniquity is general, it is our duty to be singular (Exo_23:2); for we are called by God to be a peculiar people (Tit_2:14; Rom_12:2). A resolute confession of God in the face of an opposing world, is highly pleasing to Him (Heb_11:5). He pleased God Num_14:24). Those who honour God are honoured by Him (1Sa_2:30).
4. The glorious event which succeeded this holy walk: God took him. He was translated body and soul to heaven, without seeing death.
(1) This removal was gainful to him; it perfected his felicity. So the death of all true believers is followed by the eternal consummation of all their happiness (Php_1:21; Php_1:23; Luk_23:43).
(2) It was honourable to God. To His wisdom in discriminating characters; to His goodness, in rewarding the faithful; and to His truth, in fulfilling His promises. So is the death of all His saints (Psa_116:15; Psa_58:11).
(3) It was beneficial to mankind. It teaches mankind in all ages--
(a) That there is another and better world reserved for the righteous, as the ascension of Elijah and our Lord did afterwards (Heb 1Pe_1:3-5);
(b) that piety is extensively profitable, being evidently conducive to our eternal, as well as to our present welfare (1Ti_4:8);
(c) that the redemption of our bodies as well as our souls is certain. For we see God able and faithful to fulfil His engagements (Ho Php_3:21);
(d) that an early removal is no loss to the righteous. For what is taken from time is added to a blissful eternity (Rev_7:14-17);
(e) that a sudden removal, when God appoints it, is no cause of terror to those who die in Him, for to all such characters sudden death becomes sudden glory. (Sketches of Sermons.)
Walking with God
I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN THE TERM.
II. I SHALL PRESCRIBE SOME MEANS, IN THE LAWFUL USE OF WHICH BELIEVERS ARE ENABLED TO KEEP UP THEIR WALK WITH GOD.
1. By studying the Scriptures.
2. By constant and earnest prayer.
3. By watching the dealings of God without.
4. The motions of God within.
5. Walking in ordinances.
6. Walking in providences.
7. In the communion of saints.
8. And by meditation.
III. I SHALL OFFER SOME MOTIVES TO STIR US UP TO THIS HOLY PRACTICE. It is most honourable: most pleasing: and abundantly beneficial to the souls of men.
1. This walking is by faith in Christ (2Co_5:7).
2. Looking to the promises of God (1Ti_4:8).
3. Trusting to the wisdom of God (Rom_8:28). (T. B. Baker.)
Enoch
I. ENOCHS CHARACTER. He walked with God.
II. ENOCHS END. He was not any longer subject to pain, sickness, infirmity, sorrow; all of which are still the portion even of those who walk with God in this vale of tears. He was not any longer tempted by Satan, by the world, by his own fallen nature, to sin against his kind Friend and Saviour; and thus his heaviest burden is removed. He was not any more vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked, with the dishonour cast on his God, with the triumphing of the wicked. He was not spared to see their ungodliness proceeding to that gigantic pitch, which at length brought upon them the flood of waters to destroy all the earth. (J. Jowett, M. A.)
Enoch; or, the earthly walk and heavenly home
I. HE WALKED WITH GOD--A BRIEF AND SIMPLE STATEMENT OF A MOMENTOUS FACT. Of course the meaning is, that he was a good man, that he lived religiously. True religion is, walking with God. We are meant to walk with someone. We are social as well as active. Solitary journeying is sorrowful journeying. Company gives safety as well as cheer, beguiles the long hours and goads the flagging spirits. Most men have fellowships in their journey through life--companions of their moral ways, walking with the wise, or going with the evil. But the highest of all fellowships is with God: and if we all walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. We walk with God. What does it include? Unquestionably realization. God is with us wherever we are, but we are with Him only as we recognize and feel Him to be present. God is invisible, and only faith can realize; and by faith Enoch was translated. In the dark night, a stranger perhaps might place himself by our side, or just behind us, for a time, but we should not walk with him. In the dark night of sin, God is not far from every one of us, but only one here and there are with Him. To see God, to be aware of His solemn nearness, to act as if this thought were ever in our mind, Thou, God, seest me, doing His will as that of a present Master, rejoicing in His favour as that of a present Friend, and trusting in His succour as that of a present Protector--to go on thus divinely right, and brave, and happy, is to walk with God. It includes intercourse. But truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.
II. Enoch walked with God, AFTER THE BIRTH OF METHUSELAH. It was then, so far as appears, that he began to do so. It is not said that he did so before. Until then it is said that he lived, as it is said of the rest. Does it not imply that he had not walked with God for sixty-five years? Or, supposing the expression, in his case, refers to eminence in religion, does it not imply that at that time his religion received a new start?
III. Be this as it may, the fact is clear that Enoch did walk with God after the birth of Methuselah and the births of other children. One of the two men who have had the honours of translation in this world for pleasing God was a man who LIVED IN THE MIDST OF SOCIETY, and was surrounded with children; he was not a recluse or a celibate. He lived in that condition in which there are natural and necessary distractions and temptations. It would be saying very little for religion if such a case were impossible. It would be queer theology which taught that man must denude himself of a portion of himself, ignore some of his capabilities and propensities, in order to know and possess much, or most, of God. When it is said that Enoch walked with God, it is meant that he attained to special religious excellence. His religion did not merely come into contact with his secular life; his spiritual humanity did not merely touch his social humanity, but, like the prophet upon the dead child, stretched itself upon it, mouth on mouth, eyes on eyes, hands on hands, and made it live. His religion was life, an active life. He walked with God.
IV. We see Enochs eminent godliness attaining A STRANGE AND SIGNAL HONOUR. He was not, for God took him. Paul says of Enoch, he did not see death. Christ says of every disciple that he does not taste death. I know not how it strikes you, but I always feel when reading this passage as if there was a beautiful fitness in this exit, a fitness of course and end. God took him who had walked with Him, bore him away to another sphere. The very silence of the historian aids the impression: there is no breach between the earthly and the heavenly life, no defined horizon--clouds, and sky, fields, hills, and wood, meet together, and this worlds beauty and the glory of the world above melt into each other, and one unbroken scene fills and satisfies the eye. He was with God here, he is with God there. He became more and more Divine in the lower and harder conditions of life, and now he has reached a state where nothing exists to check or disappoint his Godward aspirations. There is no translation now for the righteous, but there is better, transformation, the being changed from glory to glory now, and the bearing of the image of the heavenly hereafter. (A. J. Morris.)
Enochs character and translation
Observe, Be the times never so bad, it is mens own fault they are bad too. Eminent holiness, and intimate communion with God, may be attained in the worst of times. The reasons are--
1. Because, however men grow worse and worse, heaven is still as good and bountiful as ever (Isa_59:1-2).
2. Because those that mind for heaven must row against the stream always; and if they do not, they will be called down the stream in the best of times; for, says our Lord (Mat_11:12).
3. The badness of the times affords matter to excite Gods people the more to their duty and close walking with God. The profaneness and formality of those they live among, and the dishonour done to God thereby, should be like oil to the flame of their holy love and zeal, as it was to David Psa_119:126-127).
4. Because, as the Lord shows Himself most concerned for the welfare of those who are most concerned for His honour, so the worse the times are, they that cleave to Him closely may expect to fare the better.
I. Let us consider Enochs holy life in this world; Enoch walked with God. The Spirit of God puts a special remark on this. It is Enochs honour, that he did not walk as others did, after their lusts. Observe,
1. God takes special notice of those who are best when others are worst Gen_6:9).
(1) To be thus argues an ingenuous spirit, a love to the Lord for Himself, and a love to His way for its likeness to Himself; that the soul is carried thus to it against the stream of the corruption of the age.
(2) It argues not only grace, but the strength of grace. It must be strong faith, love, etc., that so much bear out against the strong temptation to apostasy, arising from the combination of a generation against God and His way. To be holy when the helps to a holy life are least in the world, argues the vigour of grace in the heart. Labour ye then to be best while others are worst, to confront the impiety of the generation wherein ye live. Do they indulge themselves in licentiousness? be ye the more strict and holy in your walk. Do they take up with mere externals in religion? strive ye the rather to get into the inner court, to taste and see, and here to have communion with God. Observe,
2. It is the honour of a professor of religion to outgo others in the matter of close walking with God. In the first part of the words we have--
(1) The person characterized; and that is Enoch. There was another of this name descended from Cain, who had a city called after his name Gen_4:17). Immortality is desired of all; and because men cannot stave off death, they follow after a shadow of immortality, that at least their name may live when they are gone. Therefore that has been an ancient custom, for men to call their lands after their own names (Psa_49:11). How much better was it with this Enoch, that took that course to get on him the name of the city of God, which Christ promises to write on all his people (Rev_3:12)? The city called by the name of the other Enoch was destroyed by the deluge, and is now unknown; but the city of God lasts still, and will last forever. Observe, True piety is the best way to honour, even to true honour. For the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance, when the memory of the wicked shall rot. Observe, They that live near God are most likely to be put upon His secrets, and to know most of His mind (Psa_25:14).
II. His character; he walked with God. He lived like a man of another world; a life of close communion with God. It imports--
(1) That he was really religious; not only religious before men, but before God. Religion lies inwardly. We are that really which we are before the Lord; He is a Jew which is one inwardly. See, here, what he was: a spiritual traveller through the world; he walked. He walked with God. He looked on himself as a pilgrim and stranger in this present world Heb_11:13). (T. Boston, D. D.)
Of walking with God
I. First, I am to consider walking with God in the foundation thereof, with respect to our state.
II. Secondly, I shall consider walking with God in the matter of it, in respect of our frame and conversation. And, indeed, this duty goes as broad as the whole law. If we would have the life of religion in our walk, we must not walk at random.
1. We must walk with God in the way of habitual eyeing of Him in all things.
2. We must walk with God in the way of the hearts going along with Him in all things, as the shadow goes with the body. Walking with God is no bodily motion, but a spiritual motion, a moving of the heart and affections; and so it must import necessarily the hearts going along with Him.
3. We must walk with God in ordinances (Luk_1:6). The ordinances are the banqueting house of Christ wherein He feasts His people (Son_2:4), the galleries wherein the king is held by those that walk with him there (Son_7:5).
4. We must walk with God in the stations and relations wherein He hath placed us. These are the sphere that God hath given us to move in, in the world. There are two pieces of work which a Christian has to do.
(1) One for himself, and that is his salvation work (Php_2:12). This lies in his personal walk.
(2) One for God, and that is his generation work (Act_13:36). This lies in his relative walk.
5. We must walk with God in all our actions, whether natural, civil, or religious. Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God (1Co_10:31).
III. Thirdly, I shall consider walking with God in the properties thereof. Walking with God is religion; and it is--
1. Practical religion, religion in deed, not in word only; and there is no other sort of religion that will bring us to heaven; hence says our Lord Joh_13:17).
2. It is inward and heart religion (1Pe_3:4). They that have no religion but what is visible to the world, have no true religion; for God is the invisible God, and walking with Him must be so too (Rom_2:28-29).
3. It is heavenly religion (Php_3:20). According to mens state and their nature, so will their actions be; for as is the tree, so will the fruit be. The heart of man, according as grace or corruption reigns in it, will tincture everything that comes through it.
4. It is lively and active religion, being a walking with the living God, wherein there is not only grace, but grace in exercise (Son_1:12).
5. It is regular religion, and uniform; for he that walks with God must needs walk by a constant rule, eyeing Him not in some things only, but in Gal_6:16; Psa_16:8). He gives one rule of walking, extending to mans whole conversation; and so he that walks with Him, walks regularly, aiming at a holy niceness, preciseness, and exactness, in conformity to that rule in all things (Eph_5:15).
6. It is laborious and painful religion; for it is no easy life they have whose trade it is to walk on their feet (Heb_6:10). And it is no easy religion to walk with God. Religion is not a business of saying, but doing; not of doing carelessly, but carefully, painfully, and diligently.
7. It is a self-denied religion (Mat_16:24).
8. It is a humble religion (Mic_6:8).
9. It is constant religion. Walking is not a rising up and sitting down again, but a continued action, like that of a traveller going on till he come to his journeys end. Enoch walked on through the world, till he was not.
10. It is progressive religion; religion that is going forward (Pro_4:18). (T. Boston, D. D.)
Walking with God
I. First and chiefest, because it will secure the rest, walk CONFIDENTLY with God. Rest upon His faithfulness. Entertain no suspicions of His love.
II. Walk OBEDIENTLY with God; i.e., be diligent in keeping His commandments. And let your obedience be an unreserved, warm-hearted, zealous, faithful obedience, an obedience of love which is ready at all times, as love is ready. Walk, then, unreservedly, in the love of the Lord with all its glorious consequences. And walk obediently with God in the second commandment as well as the first. Oh! then, let your walk with God be obedient; unreserved, without fear of excess; universal, without exception or partiality; and persevering, without yielding to monotony.
III. Walk HUMBLY with your God. He is a Father, and we are children. What does that relationship call for? Reverence--filial reverence, it is true, but still reverence, or honour--the honour of the father and the mother. If I be a Father, He says, where is My honour? and if I be a Master, where is My fear? Further, He is the Creator, and we are the creatures of His hands; and this relationship calls for real subjection and prostration.
IV. Walk PATIENTLY with God. For however confiding your walk may be; however obedient with all the great characteristics of obedience; however humble, still you will suffer, and must be prepared for endurance. The Lord chastens every son whom He receiveth; and you must not expect to walk through this world exempt from trouble. Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as though some strange thing happened unto you. It is not a strange thing, it is the common case of the Lords children. (H. McNeile, D. D.)
Enochs walk and translation
I. THE CHARACTER OF ENOCH, WITH HIS DECIDED RELIGIOUS WORTH.
II. ENOCHS GLORIOUS TRANSLATION FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN.
1. A sign of Gods love.
2. It is remarkable that three eminent translations distinguished three dispensations of Gods mercy to men--the last the most glorious.
(1) Enochs translation in the patriarchal age.
(2) Elijahs translation in the prophetic age.
(3) Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended, was translated to heaven, in the Christian dispensation, when, after His triumphant resurrection and sojourn on earth for forty days, He ascended on a cloud of glory before His own disciples. Now, these three most memorable instances of translation to heaven clearly prove a separate state--a glorified humanity and an immortal life.
III. A FEW PRACTICAL REFLECTIONS MAY PROFITABLY CONCLUDE THIS SERMON: especially when a solemn event fills the minds of so many with deep thoughts.
1. We may all copy the living sermon of a holy life dedicated to Christ.
2. How sweet and blessed is the death of the Christian! His soul is taken away to the Saviour whom he loved; and his body rests in hopes of resurrection glory. His soul is gone; he is not on earth; God has taken him to heaven! No more shall sin or sorrow cloud the soul; no more shall trial, suffering, or death affect the body; no more shall the gloom of life intercept or darken the eye of faith, or the streaming light of heaven. (J. G.Angley, M. A.)
The piety and translation of Enoch
I. ENOCH WALKED WITH GOD.
II. THE TRANSLATION OF ENOCH.
1. As a work of omnipotence.
(1) A suspension of the order of nature in this particular case, arresting the arm of death.
(2) There was also a miraculous removal of the body of Enoch.
2. As a work of mercy. The wings of heavenly mercy overshadowed him, to protect him from the penalties of a violated law.
3. The translation of Enoch eminently displays the glory and honour of God. His love of the righteous was strikingly shown. His moral government was manifested, and His entire command over the present and the future so fully exemplified, that we cannot contemplate it without profound adoration of the Most High.
4. It was calculated to be beneficial to mankind, and to serve in that early stage of society the interests of truth and piety. (Essex Remembrancer.)
The character and translation of Enoch
I. HISTORY OF ENOCH.
II. CHARACTER OF ENOCH.
III. CONDUCT OF ENOCH. The conduct of this antediluvian saint was the piety of intelligence; he understood Gods claim and his own obligations, and it was not a mere custom. It was the piety of deliberate design and choice; he was not, so to speak, thrown accidentally into Gods company, but chose to go to Him, and with fixed, determinate purpose, sought His friendship. It was the piety also of a minister of religion; and what is any minister of religion, without personal godliness, but an actor in the most dreadful tragedy ever performed on the stage of this world, since it ends not in the feigned, but the real, death and destruction of the performer? It was the piety of one who had few of those helps and advantages of divine revelation and ordinances which we enjoy, and therefore shows how God can, and will, help those in the Divine life, who are, by Providence, deprived of the assistance which others possess. It was piety, maintained during a long period of severe trial, a profession consistently upheld amidst all conceivable opposition for nearly four centuries, thus exhibiting a sublime instance of endurance, perseverance, and victorious faith.
IV. TRANSLATION OF ENOCH. Enochs translation was a testimony to that generation of which he was a member, and to the whole world from that time to this, of Gods approval of his conduct. (J. A. James.)
Walking with God
I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN WALKING WITH GOD.
II. THAT GOD WILL MANIFEST SOME PECULIAR TOKENS OF HIS FAVOUR TO THOSE WHO WALK WITH HIM.
1. God will guard them against the favours of the world.
2. God graciously guards his friends while they walk with Him, from their invisible as well as visible enemies.
3. God will give those who walk with Him peculiar evidence of their interest in His special grace. He loves those who walk with Him, and will manifest His love to them. He expressly called Abraham His friend when he offered up his son upon the altar. He sent a messenger from heaven to declare that Daniel was greatly beloved. And He manifested His special love to David by lifting the light of His countenance upon him.
4. God will manifest His peculiar favour to those who walk with Him, by giving them not only inward light, and joy, and peace, and the full assurance of hope, but by granting them outward prosperity.
5. Those who walk with God have ground to hope for another great and peculiar favour; that is, His gracious and comforting presence when they leave the world.
IMPROVEMENT.
1. We may learn from the nature and effects of walking with God how all true believers may attain to the full assurance of hope. If saints would prevent or remove darkness, doubts, and distress from their minds, let them walk closely with God, who will give them peculiar tokens of their displeasing Him, and standing high in His favour.
2. If God manifests peculiar tokens of His favour to those who walk with Him, then they have more to gain than to lose by walking with Him.
3. If God be highly pleased with His friends while they walk with Him, then He must be highly displeased when they depart from Him.
4. It appears from the nature of walking with God, that those who walk with Him in a day of degeneracy do peculiar service and honour to religion.
5. This subject calls upon all who have professed to walk with God to inquire whether they have walked worthy of the vocation wherewith they are called.
6. This subject exhorts all who have not hitherto walked with God to walk with Him. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
Walking with God
Other notable men existed in that ancient time, to whom we are apparently more indebted than we are to Enoch; men who were the fathers of arts and sciences, and the founders of political institutions--pioneers in the onward march of civilization. But what are Jabal, and Jubal, and Tubal-Cain to us but so many cyphers associated in our minds with certain objects? We know something of these mens work; of themselves we know absolutely nothing. Here, on the contrary, nothing is told us of any outward work that the man did; we only have the brief and summarized story of an inner life. But more than this. Enoch was the first saint, in the full sense of the word, of whom we hear anything in human history, as Abel was the first righteous for justified] man. He stands, perhaps, historically speaking, at the head of the great master roll of heavens nobility; and it is the brotherhood of saints that makes the ages one. We are more indebted to the first pioneer upon the highway of holiness than to the earliest discoverers in science and in art. Holiness is, above everything else, the reproduction of the Divine. As I said a moment ago, very little has been told us about Enoch, where our curiosity would fain have heard a great deal; but the little that has been told us is suggestive, and every point seems to carry its own lesson. To begin with his name. Enoch has the double meaning of consecration and initiation, suggesting first the thought that he who bore that name was to be one of Gods consecrated ones, a priest unto God, and next that, as a priest, he was to be introduced into the spiritual temple, to be allowed to see and know what the outer world knows nothing of, and to be initiated into the deeper mysteries of the spiritual life. And in this name we have the clue not only to his career, but to that of every other saint who, like him, walks with God. The life of fellowship must needs be the product of a state of consecration. God consecrates us His spiritual priests that our whole manhood may be set apart and our whole lives dedicated to His service. We may be occupied, as Enoch was, in the ordinary duties of life; our hands and our heads may be busy, yet may we find Gods temple everywhere, and His service in everything. For there is nothing secular, all is a sanctity, where all is given to God. Further, our attention is specially called by a New Testament writer to the fact that Enoch was the seventh from Adam. His was the Sabbath life in that genealogical record. As the Sabbath days to the other days of the week, so must his life have seemed as compared with the lives of others in those troublous and tumultuous days. And there is a rest even here for the people of God. We need not defer the Sabbath keeping of the soul to that glorious future which awaits Gods faithful ones yonder. It may seem, perhaps, fanciful to call attention to another fact mentioned in this brief notice, but I cannot bring myself to pass it over. We read that all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years. That is to say, he lived a perfect year of years; as many days as there are in the year, so many years there were in his life; he fulfilled his year. Perhaps when we reach the other side we shall make some strange discoveries with respect to the term of our existence here in the house of our discipline. Perhaps we may find that some lives have been lengthened out to extreme old age, just because lifes lessons were being learned indeed, but learned wondrous slowly by very dull scholars; and that some lives were cut short just because Divine Omniscience saw no probability of these lessons ever being learned at all by scholars who positively refused to learn. But to every man is appointed his own proper year; and blessed are they who so live that the year completes the life in every sense of the word! Blessed are they who so walk with God that when their appointed life period draws to a close their life lesson may be learnt, and they themselves be ready for the call to higher knowledge and more perfect service, while it is said of them, He was not; for God took him. Enochs life was not a long one as lives went in those days; he was only in what would be then regarded as early middle life when his call came, but had fulfilled his year. His life was complete in Gods sight, his days work done, and there was no necessity that he should tarry in the house of discipline through the long ages which measured the life of a Methuselah. But it is time that we looked more closely at this pregnant phrase, which tells us all that we historically know of the religious life of this ancient servant of God, Enoch walked with God. What is it, let us ask, to walk with God? More than a single idea would seem to be suggested by this familiar expression. As the words stand in the original they suggest primarily the idea of walking with reference to God. It is the idea that the Psalmist expresses when he says, I foresaw God always before mine eyes. In the practical issues of life, and in all its complete details, everything turns upon our choice of our centre of reference. He whose central idea in life is, How shall I please myself? can never walk with God, because God is not his centre of reference. Or again, this life of reference to God stands contrasted with the life of reference to the world, that conventional life which so many people condescend to lead. With such the question is, What is expected of me? or, What is the correct thing? or, What do others do? or, Will people like it? What will people say if I adopt this course, or do not adopt the other? Do not aim at singularity, but, on the other hand, do not shrink from it. You needs must be singular if you serve God in a world that serves Him not; you needs must be singular if you put the good before the fashionable in a world that puts the fashionable before the good; you needs must be singular if you put duty before worldly expediency, and the love of God and man before both in a selfish, shallow world, where all men seek their own. But there is nothing to be ashamed at in such singularity, and he who plays the poltroon, and is afraid to face reproach, would indeed be very singular in heaven if he were ever to get there. Better surely to be singular in this perishing world than hopelessly out of harmony with the spirit and genius of heaven. But this leads us to consider another thought suggested by the words of our text, closely connected with what we have just been considering, and yet distinct from it. To walk with God is not only to walk with reference to God, but to move, so to speak, on the same moral plane as belongs to God--seeing things from His point of view, entering into His designs, and drinking ever more and more deeply of His Spirit. There is a unity of heart and mind, of thought and feeling, that is usually a feature of close association amongst ourselves; and something of this kind would seem to be implied by the words, Enoch walked with God, Listen to the words quoted by St. Jude, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. The man that uttered those words was clearly looking at things from the Divine standpoint. With him sinners are regarded specially as ungodly, and sins are ungodly deeds; the habit of life that induces them is an ungodly habit of life, and the very words that such sinners are wont to speak are ungodly words. And the reason of this way of viewing things is that the man is walking with God. He takes measure of evil and of good, according as it affects that Divine Being with whom his life is hid. His standpoint is no longer merely ethical; he is conversant rather with She very heart of God than with moral principles. He is jealous for Gods glory with a godly jealousy, and is fired with a holy indignation at all that militates against this. And oh, with what a heart full of yearning love does he who thus walks with God gaze upon a God-dishonouring world! God loved the world, and loves it, and he who is in fellowship with the mind of God must needs love it too. The more He hates sin, the more does He long for the salvation of the sinner. But let us take the words of our text in the meaning which they most naturally bear, and which suggests perhaps the most important lesson of all. Enoch walked with God; that is to say, he lived in the society of God. In all his life an invisible but ever-present Friend was his Companion. He lived in His society, he consulted Him about everything, he was in communion with Him everywhere. So he lived out his allotted life, his year of years, until he passed from the triumphs of the walk of faith to the glories of the Land of Vision; for there is no death for such. The presence of God makes earth heaven, and brings heaven down to earth. The presence of God turns the shadow of death into the morning, and invests him who enjoys it with immortality. I am the resurrection, and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and he that liveth and believeth on Me shall never die. By-and-by, when the last of the three hundred and sixty five days of his year had arrived and was reaching its close, the call came, Friend, come up higher: and he was not; for God took him. For as to walk with God is the secret of perfection here on earth, so to walk with God will be the crowning glory of that higher world. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)
Enoch, the model walker
I. A SAFE WALK. During a sudden freshet, a labouring man and his child, living in a cottage that stood by itself, were obliged to walk at midnight for more than a mile through water reaching to the little boys waist before they could reach a place of safety. After they had changed their clothes, and were feeling comfortable, the friend in whose cottage they had found shelter said to the little boy, And wasnt you afraid, Jack, while walking through the water? No, not at all, said the little fellow, who was but seven years old: I was walking along with father, you know. And I knew he wouldnt let the water drown me. This was very sweet. And if, like Enoch, we are walking with God, let us remember that we are walking with our heavenly Father. And He promises us expressly, When thou passest through the waters, they shall not overflow thee (Isa_43:2). One morning a teacher found many empty seats in her schoolroom. Two little scholars lay dead at their homes, and others were sick. The few children present gathered around her, and said, Oh! what shall we do? Do you think we shall be sick, and die too? The teacher gently touched the bell, and said, Children, you are all afraid of this disease. You grieve for the death of your little friends, and you fear that you also may be taken. I only know of one thing for us to do, and that is to hide. Listen whale I read to you about a hiding place. Then she read the 91st Psalm, which begins thus: He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. They were all hushed by the sweet words, and then the morning lesson went on as usual. At recess, a dear little girl came up to the desk, and said, Teacher, arent you afraid of the diphtheria? No, my child, she answered. Well, wouldnt you be if you thought you would be sick, and die? No, dear, I trust not. The child gazed wonderingly at her for a moment; and then her face lightened up as she said, Oh! I know! You are hidden under Gods wings. What a nice safe place that is to hide in!
II. WALKING WITH GOD IS A USEFUL WALK. Suppose that you and I were taking a walk through the wards of a hospital. It is full of people who are suffering from accidents, and diseases of different kinds. There are some people there with broken limbs. Some are blind, others are deaf; and some are sick with various fevers, and consumption. And suppose that, like our blessed Lord, we had the power, as we went from one bed to another, to heal the sick and suffering people in that hospital. Here is a lame man. We make his limbs straight and strong, so that he can walk. Here is a blind man. We touch his eyes with our fingers; they open, and he can see. We speak to those who are suffering from diseases of different kinds, and make them well. Then we might well say that our walk through that hospital was a useful walk. But we have no such power as this to cure the diseases from which the bodies of men are suffering. Yet this may afford us a good illustration of what we can do for the souls that are suffering around us, when we become Christians, and walk with God. Some years ago a gentleman from England brought a letter of introduction to a merchant in this country. The stranger was an intelligent man with very pleasant manners, but he was an infidel. The gentleman to whom he brought the letter of introduction, and his wife, were earnest Christian people. They invited the stranger to make their house his home during his stay, and treated him with the greatest possible kindness. On the evening of his arrival, before the hour of retiring, the gentleman of the house, knowing what the views of his guest were on the subject of religion, told him they were in the habit of having family worship every evening; that they would be happy to have him join with them; or, if he preferred, he could retire to his room. He said it would give him pleasure to remain. Then a chapter of the Bible was read, and the family knelt in prayer, the stranger with them. After spending a few days in that pleasant Christian home, the stranger embarked on board a ship, and sailed to a foreign land. In the course of three or four years he returned, and stayed with the same family. But what a change there was in him! His infidelity was all gone. He was now an humble, earnest Christian. In speaking to his friend of this change, he said: Sir, I owe it all to you. When I knelt down with you at family prayers on my former visit, it was the first time for years that I had ever bowed my knees before God. It brought back to me the memory of my pious mother, now in heaven, and all the teaching she had given me when a boy. I was so occupied with these thoughts that I did not hear a word of your prayer. But this led me to give up my infidelity, and seek the blessing of my mothers God. And now I am as happy as the day is long in His service. Here again we see how true it is that walking with God is a useful walk.
III. A PLEASANT WALK. When we are taking a walk there are several things that will help to make up the pleasure to be found in that walk. If we have a guide to show us the road; if we have a pleasant companion to talk with as we go on our way; if we have plenty of refreshments--nice things to eat and drink; if there are bright and cheerful prospects around and before us; and especially, if we are sure of a nice comfortable home to rest in when our walk is ended, these will help to make it pleasant. But when we walk with God, as Enoch did, we have all these things, and more too.
And these are sure to make it a pleasant walk. Solomon is speaking of this walk when he says: Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace. I visited a poor old woman belonging to my congregation, said a minister. She was entirely dependent on the church for her support. Her home was a very small cottage. The moment I entered it I saw how neat and clean everything was. She had just been gathering some sticks from the lane with which to cook her evening meal. Her face was one of the sweetest I ever saw. It was surrounded by the strings of her snow-white cap. On the table lay a well-worn copy of the Word of God. I looked around for a daughter or friend to be her companion and caretaker, but saw none. I said: Mother Ansel, you dont live here alone, do you? Live alone! Live alone! she exclaimed in surprise, and then, as a sweet smile lighted up her face, she added, No, sir, the blessed Lord lives with me, and that makes it pleasant living! Certainly she found walking with God a pleasant walk. A Christian lady was visiting among the poor one day. She called, among others, on a little sick girl. Her home was a dreary looking one. The room she occupied was on the north side of the house. There was nothing bright or pleasant about it. Everything looked dark and cheerless. I am sorry you have no sun on this side of the house, said the lady. Not a ray of sunshine gets in here. This is a misfortune, for sunshine is everything. Oh, maam! you are mistaken, said the sick girl, as a sweet smile lighted up her pale face. My sun pours in at every window, and through all the cracks. But how can the sun get round on this side of the house? asked the visitor. It is Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, that shines in here, was the reply, and He makes the best sunshine. That sick girl found walking with God a pleasant walk.
IV. A PROFITABLE WALK. We see a good deal of walking done without much profit. But sometimes we hear of people who are able to make their walking pay. There was a walking match in New York not long ago. A number of persons were engaged in it, and the man who won the prize secured twenty-five thousand dollars. That was profitable walking, so far as money was concerned; but walking with God is more profitable than this. Suppose there was a savings bank half a mile from your house, and you were told that if you walked to that bank every week, and put a penny in the treasury, for every penny you put in you would get a dollar at the end of the year. A penny a week would make fifty-two pennies by the end of the year, and if for these fifty-two pennies you were to receive fifty-two dollars, that would make your walk to the bank profitable walking. It would be getting what we call a hundredfold for the money invested there.
There is no such savings bank as this. But, when we learn to walk with God, we find that serving Him is just like putting money in such a bank. Jesus says that if we give a cup of cold water to one of His disciples, or if we suffer for Him, or do any work for Him, we shall receive a manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting. And if such rewards are given to those who walk with Him, then we may well say that that is profitable walking. An infidel was one day laughing at a plain farmer because he believed the Bible. The farmer surprised him by saying, Well, you see, we plain country people like to have two strings to our bow. And pray what do you mean by that? asked the infidel. Only this, was the farmers answer, that believing the Bible, and acting up to it, is like having two strings to ones bow; for, if the Bible is not true, still I shall be a better and happier man for living according to its teachings, and so it will be profitable for me in this life; this is one string to my bow, and a good one, too. And, if the Bible should prove true, as I know it will, it will be profitable for me in the next world, and that is another string, and a pretty strong one, too. But, sir, if you do not believe the Bible, and do not live as it requires, you have no string to your bow in this world. And, oh, sir! if the tremendous threatenings of the Bible prove true--as they surely will--you will have no string to your bow for the next world, and what will become of you then? This shows us that walking with God is profitable walking. (R. Newton, D. D.)
Known by his walk
That mans been in the army, said a gentleman to his friend the other day, as a stranger passed them in the street; I know a soldier by his walk. Men ought to know Christs soldiers by their walk.
The biography of Enoch; or, a glorious life and a glorious end
Enoch is one of the few excellent men mentioned in the Bible, of whom nothing bad is recorded. Abraham is described as the father of the faithful; and yet there are instances on record in which his mighty faith gave way. Who ever thinks of the flaws on the face of beauty? Who ever thinks of the spots which deface the sun? They exist, you may find them by minute observation; but they do not make a deep impression upon your mind. Thus the character of Enoch, in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation, seemed to be one mass of light, in which there was no darkness at all. Enoch is one of these men who owe their immortality to the brightness of their characters. Let us then consider the text as--
I. A SIMPLE RECORD OF A GLORIOUS LIFE. What does a glorious life consist in? The poet thinks it a glorious thing to produce burning thoughts, to master the powers of language, to command brilliant imagery; to revel in imagination through the ethereal regions of the lovely, the grand, the eternal; and then descend from those lofty heights to the lowly regions of real life, to enlighten its gloom, to soothe its sorrows, to strengthen its hopes. The orator thinks it a glorious thing to rivet the attention of assembled multitudes. The warrior thinks it a glorious thing to be entrusted with the command of a powerful army. Here is a simple record of a glorious life; let us now endeavour to analyse it. The words point to--
1. A life of absolute devotedness. It is not a selfish existence, but an existence linked to another existence, subordinate to another existence, devoted to another existence. With God.
2. A life of steady progress. This is clearly suggested by the term walking. Man is never more dignified than when he walks with a regular, firm, steady step; it is then that he looks every inch the lord of creation; you wonder not that other creatures should submit to his sway. But let him loiter about as if he had nothing to do, or let him run as if he were pursued, and he falls at once in your estimation. There is a touch of manliness about the very act of walking, which indicates a definite purpose, a reasonable aim, a complete mastery over ones self. You have only to conceive of a man walking and a man running, and compare these two conceptions together, in order to be impressed with the superiority of the one over the other. But the expression employed here has a wider meaning than this. Enoch walked with God. This indicates progress. It is progress in knowledge, progress in holiness, progress in good works. It is an upward struggle, a heavenward course, a climbing up to the mount of God.
3. A life of blessed companionship. With God. Now, the blessed companionship of Enoch with God, which was a type of all true companionship, implied faith in God. Enochs companionship implied also a certain degree of familiarity with God. Just think of it. Gods friend must become a God-like character. The moon which is bathed in the transforming light of the sun, becomes itself a luminous body, and lightens up the sombre blackness of the night with its pale, beautiful, silvery rays. And so the man who walks in the light of Gods countenance must necessarily catch some of the glory and reflect it upon the world around him. Besides this, Gods friend needs fear no enemy.
II. A SIMPLE RECORD OF A GLORIOUS END. And he was not, for God took him. A good man is never lost; long after his body has mouldered in the dust, the influence of his holy example will remain, will remain as a mighty power; a power which will not diminish, but grow with the flight of ages. (D. Rowlands, B. A.)
Enochs walking with God
I. As the first acceptable worshipper of God was Abel, so the first acceptable walker with God was Enoch, in Scripture record. Here are two remarks upon Enoch recorded in Scripture. The first is, his appearance in the world. The second is, his disappearance from the world.
1. His appearance is attended with sundry considerable circumstances. As
(1) his name.
(2) His time.
(3) His Age.
(4) His office or employ. Concerning his name Enoch, which has a double signification.
Enoch signifies dedicated; his father Jared (which signifies meek) being a lowly and a holy man, did dedicate this son to God, as soon as he had received him from God.
II. Enoch signifies catechized or instructed; well knowing, also, that the care of the means was committed to the father, though he had committed the care of the end to the Lord. The paternal instruction must promote the dedication. As Jared had marred him by propagation (begetting a son in his own, the fallen image), so he must mend him by instruction. God is so exact in Scripture record, stating him the seventh patriarch, not only to declare the genealogy of Christ in a more distinct chronology of succession than can be found in any of the best human histories, but also to show both His great care of His Church and His great delight in His Church.
1. His great care of it in upholding it by seven descents of holy patriarchs.
2. His great delight in His Church above all other His concerns in the world, being only, all of them, in order to His Church.
3. The age of life that Enoch lived. The years that he lived in this lower world were exactly answerable to the days of a year, to wit, 365. What he wanted in the silver of a life natural, he had well paid him in the gold of a life eternal; so that not only the shortness of the fathers life was made up in the long life of his son, but also, God took him from a worse place to plant him into a better. His translation was but transplantation, as it were, out of Gods kitchen garden into His heavenly paradise. Thus we see here on earth, those northern plants which are transplanted out of their cold climate into a warmer southern soil, find no detriment, but advantage thereby, and thrive the better. How much more was it no loss, but gain, to Enoch to be translated out of the vale of tears into Gods garden of celestial pleasures! There are many talkers and but few walkers; many talkers of God, few walkers with God. Their lives give the lie to their lips or tongues, as not running relatively in parallel lines together with the heart. A mans conversation is the most conspicuous comment upon all that the heart believeth and the mouth expresseth (Rom_10:9-10).
I. WHAT IS THIS WALKING WITH GOD?
1. Negatively. It is not as if a man should desert the society of mankind, and run into a desert or cloister; or as if a man should depart out of the world, and fly up into heaven. Neither does this phrase import only Enochs public capacity, as if it were proper solely to such as serve God in some high office. There are three Scripture phrases--
(1) Walking with God, as here.
(2) Walking before God (Gen_17:1).
(3) Walking after God (Deu_13:4).
2. Showing what it is to walk with God positively; that is, he did serve God in his generation according to his will, as is said of David (Act_13:3; Act_13:6).
II. HOW THIS WALKING WITH GOD IS MANS DUTY. Upon a threefold respect.
1. It is the principal end why God created man, that man should walk with God his Creator.
2. It is the creatures homage and fealty to his creator, God, to walk with Him, not with Satan, or with sin and sinners.
3. This walking with God is the very badge and character whereby saints are distinguished from sinners, believers from unbelievers, and the children of God from the children of the World.
III. HOW THIS WALKING WITH GOD IS MANS DIGNITY AS WELL AS DUTY. It is not only mans homage, but it is also his honour to walk with God. It is accounted honourable to be but a follower of a mortal king. Inferences hence are--
1. It is our duty to walk with God, though the whole world walk contrary to God. The worse that times are, the better should we be, that the times may not be worse, but better by us. We should all strive to be the most holy persons, even in the most unholy times.
2. Therefore we should all strive to walk with God, upon these three following motives; besides the reasons of the duty, as also of the dignity.
(1) Safety.
(2) Solace.
(3) Satiety.
Having done with Enochs first grand concern, to wit, concerning his appearance in the world--all which he managed in a constant walking with God--I come now to discourse upon his second grand concern, concerning his DISAPPEARANCE FROM THE WORLD; to wit, his translation from earth to heaven. (C. Ness.)
The memorial of Enoch
Could we but hope that, even in a limited sense, these words might be inscribed as the motto on our tomb, then we need not envy either the mausoleums of the Pharaohs, the tomb of Alexander or Napoleon, or the sepulchres of the Caesars! Our record would be on high, and our memorial would live when the scroll of fame should be scattered by the winds of heaven, and perish forever in the conflagration of the world; for they who walk with God on earth shall reign with Christ in heaven.
I. CONTEMPLATE THE CHARACTER HERE GIVEN OF ENOCH--HE WALKED WITH GOD. Let none suppose that, whatever this may imply, it was the exclusive privilege of Enoch, and, therefore, is not to be sought after by others; for of Noah it is written--he found grace in the eyes of the Lord; for he was a just man, and perfect in his generation. And Noah walked with God. To Abraham, also, it was commanded--Walk before Me; and this the father of the faithful actually described himself as doing, when he said, The Lord, before whom I walk, will send His angel with thee, and prosper thy way.
1. It must imply the true knowledge of each other; for familiar intercourse is founded on knowledge. On the part of God, the knowledge is perfect and infinite. Well, then, might the Psalmist exclaim--O Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising; thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compasseth my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo! O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether. But man is naturally ignorant of God. He knows Him not, nor desires to know Him; for God is not in all his thoughts. How, then, shall he understand His being and perfections, His works and His ways? Such knowledge is too wonderful for him; it is high, he cannot attain unto it. For who by searching can find out God? who can find out the Almighty to perfection? But He has graciously revealed Himself to us by His Spirit, in His Holy Word.
2. The most sincere friendship.
3. The strongest proofs of devoted attachment. Without these, friendship itself is only a name; but with them, the very balm of life.
4. But, in one word, to walk with God includes a community of interests. Their aim is one. Now, as God necessarily exists for His own glory, and delights in its manifestation in the happiness of His creatures; so man, regenerated and sanctified, supremely seeks the glory of God in all things.
II. CONTEMPLATE HIS SPECIAL PRIVILEGE. He was removed to heaven, without tasting the bitterness of death. It might be sooner than he expected; for he had not attained to half the years of the life of his father--but he rejoiced to depart, and to be with God, his exceeding joy, forever and ever! And was not this the richest boon he could possibly receive? Classic story has told us of two lovely youths that were found dead in their bed, soon after the prayer had been offered for them, that they might possess the best blessing heaven could bestow. And the Christian well knows, that to depart, and to be with Christ, is far better than anything here. Such was the privilege of Enoch--but as to the mode of his translation we know nothing. Yet, it must have been eminently gracious. Whatever was the manner of his translation, it was evidently supernatural--the doing of the Lord, and marvellous in the eyes of all. No rude stormof chaos, no fortuitous blast of atoms hurled him on high. But the Lord did it, in His own most gracious way. He had frequently conferred on him many distinguished favours--but then, to crown all, he took him as a special friend to Himself, to be forever with Him in heaven, in joys unutterable and full of glory. But do not expect the same kind of dismissal as Enoch. Only Elijah and he ever entered the eternal kingdom, without passing through the gate of death. (J. Clunie, LL. D.)
Enochs holiness and its reward
His mind was pure; his spirit rose above the turmoil of worldliness; he delighted in calm communion with God; once more the familiar intercourse between God and man, which had existed in the time of paradise, was restored; the path commenced by Seth was continued by Enoch; the former addressed God by the medium of the word; the latter approached Him by the still more spiritual medium of thought: the highest form of religious life was gained. But, unfortunately, Enoch alone walked with God; his contemporaries were sunk in iniquity and depravation; but the measure of their wickedness was not yet complete; three generations more were required to mature their destruction; and God, in order to rescue Enoch, took him to Himself, delivering him from the contamination of his time at a comparatively early period of his life. Was this early death a punishment? But the piety of Enoch is repeatedly stated. Was it a misfortune? It was this as little as the full length of Noahs life; both cases were analogous; in the one, the pious man left the wicked generation; in the other, he was by a catastrophe freed from it; and in both instances, the deliverance was miraculous and supernatural, by the immediate agency of God. If this is the clear internal meaning of Enochs history, who can doubt that he was called away from the earth, not to cease his life abruptly, but to continue it in a better sphere, and in still more perfect virtue? We are convinced that the taking away of Enoch is one of the strongest proofs of the belief in a future state prevailing among the Hebrews; without this belief, the history of Enoch is a perfect mystery, a hieroglyph without a clue, a commencement without an end. If, then, pious men could hope to continue a brighter existence after their transitory sojourn upon earth, the books of the Old Testament are not enveloped in the gloomy clouds of despair; they radiate in the beams of hope; and, if a long life on earth was also gratefully accepted as a high, though not the highest, boon, this may have sprung from the just feeling, that man is born to enjoy and to work, to receive much and to give more; and that he does not deserve the blessing of eternal rest before he has toiled to extend the empire of truth and piety (comp. Gen_4:7-10.) God took Enoch as He took Elijah (2Ki_2:9), or he was translated by faith, that he should not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him (Heb_11:5). The notion seems to be, that Enoch passed from earth to heaven without the intermediate state of decrepitude and dissolution; he suffered no bodily infirmity; his eye grew not dim, nor did his natural strength abate, as it is stated with regard to Moses, who also disappeared, so that no mortal knew his grave. For the pious Enoch, death lost its pang and its sting; though the descendant of a sinful race, he was delivered from the real punishment which sin inflicted upon the human family; his existence was uninterrupted; he was undying, as man was originally intended to be; for he passed from this life into a future state both without fear and without struggle. God took him as a loving father to His eternal home. The history of Enoch has ever been regarded as embodying profound truths; and, we think, there are few so strongly affecting the very root of religious life as those which we have just briefly indicated. And, as the virtuous are thus translated into heaven, the wicked are devoured alive in the gulf of the earth (Num_16:1-50). It is known that the classical writers also mention such translations into heaven; they assign this distinction among others to Hercules, to Ganymede, and to Romulus. But it was awarded to them either for their valour, or for mere physical beauty, which advantages, though valued among the Hebrews, were not considered by them as sublime or godlike; a pious and religious life alone deserved and obtained the crown of immortal glory. In no single feature can the Scriptures conceal their high spiritual character. However, the idea of a translation to heaven is not limited to the old world; it was familiar to the tribes of Central America; the chronicles of Guatemala record four progenitors of mankind who were suddenly raised to heaven; and the documents add that those first men came to Guatemala from the other side of the sea, from the east. This is, then, apparently, a rather remarkable connection of the primitive traditions of the most different nations. (M. M. Kalisch, Ph. D.)
My ministry
On the 22nd of February 1880 Dr. Raleigh preached for the last time. His text was, And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. Had he known that he would never preach again, he could not have chosen a more appropriate text, or have spoken with more impressiveness and pathos. One of the members of the congregation said, on returning home, I have heard today what I never expect to hear again in this world. Dr. Raleigh was compelled to rest; weeks passed away, but there was no amendment in his health, and at length he had to be told that there was an hope of his recovery. When he received the intelligence he said, Then my ministry is ended. There was a pause, and then he added, My ministry!--It is dearer than my life. On the Tuesday before his death, he was visited by the Rev. Joshua Harrison, to whom he freely expressed his confidence in the glorious work of the Saviour, and said, in any case I may well be content and thankful. I am not an old man, yet I have lived long and worked hard. I have had, on the whole, a most happy, and I think I may say successful, ministry. God has blessed my work, and has always given me true friends. If I have finished my work, I am ready to go. Indeed, I should have no regrets but for these dear ones (his wife and children). When reminded of the prayers which were being offered on his behalf, he replied, Yes, my peoples prayers make me sometimes think I may have a little more work to do, but it not, I shall calmly march up to the gates. Still trusting in Christ, he went through the gate, April 1880. In the presence of a sorrowing multitude, his coffin was lowered into a grave in Abney Park Cemetery. (Old Testament Anecdotes.)
Gathering flowers to compose him in the hour of death
We know it to be a Scripture fact that men have walked with God in closest intimacy, and that God hath held converse with them, even as a man converseth with his friend. Such was the case with Enoch, Abraham, Moses, and all that luminous cloud of witnesses so brightly and clearly revealed in the Bible. The Church of God, even down to our own time, furnishes innumerable witnesses to this truth, which we will establish by the mouth of two of them. John Holland was an old Puritan minister, who died two hundred and fifty years ago. Little is known of him, except what relates to his deathbed. Perceiving that he was near his end, he said, Come, oh, come; death approaches. Let us gather some flowers to comfort this hour. He requested that the eighth chapter of Romans might be read to him. But at every verse he stopped the reading, while he expounded it to the comfort of his soul, and to the joy and wonder of his friends. Having thus continued his meditations above two hours, he suddenly cried out, Oh, stay your reading. What brightness is this I see? Have you lighted any candles? They told him No; it is the sunshine. Sunshine? said he; nay, my Saviours shine! Now farewell, world--welcome, heaven. The day star from on high hath visited my heart. Oh! speak when I am gone, and preach it at my funeral, God dealeth familiarly with man. In such transports his soul soared towards heaven. His last words, after repeating the declaration that God doth and will deal familiarly with man, were these: And now, thou fiery chariot, that camest down to fetch up Elijah, carry me to my happy home. And, all ye blessed angels, who attended the soul of Lazarus to bring it to heaven, bear me, oh! bear me to the bosom of my best beloved. Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! One other present witness is Gilbert Tennent, who was a main instrument, with Whitefield and Edwards, of the great revival in New England one hundred years ago. In one of his letters to his brother, the holy William Tennent, he says, Brother, shall I tell you an astonishing instance of the glorious grace of the Lord Jesus Christ? It is this, that one of the meanest of His servants has had His presence every day, in some degree, for above eleven weeks, Nor is the great, good Master yet gone. Oh, brother, it is heaven upon earth to live near to God! Verily, our comfort does not depend so much upon our outward situation as is generally supposed. No, a Saviours love is all in all. Oh, this will make any situation sweet, and turn the thickest darkness into day! (Old Testament Anecdotes.)
Preparation for death necessary
I have read of a gentleman who died very suddenly, and his jester ran to the other servants, and having told them that their master was dead, he, with much gravity, said, And where is he gone? The servants replied, Why, to heaven, to be sure! No, said the jester, he is not gone to heaven, I am certain. The servants with much warmth asked him how he knew that his master was not gone to heaven? The jester then replied, Because heaven is a great way off, and I never knew my master take a long journey in his life but he always talked of it some time beforehand, and also made preparations for it; but I never heard him talk about heaven, nor ever saw him making preparations for death, and therefore I am sure he is not gone to heaven. (H. G. Salter.)
Enochs translation
This moment Enoch is surrounded by antediluvian sinners, transformed by evil passions into demons; the next, he is in the society of angels, of the general assembly of the firstborn, of God Himself: this moment he is in a humble tent; the next, he is in the city and palace of the King: this moment he is in imminent danger; the next, his is quietness and assurance forever: this moment he is in earth--an earth reeling with wickedness, and ripening fast for ruin; the next, he summers high in bliss upon the hills of God: this moment he is almost a solitary protester against evil; the next, he has outsoared the shadow of sin, and is one of a holy company that no man can number, standing before the throne: this moment his body is frail and corrupt, a body of death, even as others; the next, his body has become a glorious body, winged, radiant, immortal: this moment he is like all men, subject to, and in danger of, death; the next, he has evaded the grim king of terrors, escaped not only the feeling, but the sight, of death. (G. Gilfillan.)
A singular saint is a precious saint
As the morning star in the midst of the clouds, and as the moon when it is at full; as the flower of the roses in the spring of the year, and as the lilies by the springs of waters; as the branches of the frankincense in the time of summer, and as a vessel of massy gold, set with all manner of precious stones, and as the fat that is taken from the peace offering;--so is one Enoch, that walketh with God when others walk from Him; one Rahab, in Jericho; one Elias, that boweth not his knee to Baal; one David, in Mesech; one Esther, in Shushan; one Judith, in Bethulia; one Joseph, in the Sanhedrim of the Jews; one Gamaliel, in the council of the Pharisees; one innocent and righteous man, in the midst of a crooked and froward generation. (J. Spencer.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv22, 24 ‘Enoch walked with God,’- Gen 5:22.
Genesis
WITH, BEFORE, AFTER
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‘Enoch walked with God,’- Gen 5:22.
‘Walk before Me.’- Gen 17:1.
‘Ye shall walk after the Lord your God.’- Deu 13:4.
You will have anticipated, I suppose, my purpose in doing what I very seldom do-cutting little snippets out of different verses and putting them together. You see that these three fragments, in their resemblances and in their differences, are equally significant and instructive. They concur in regarding life as a walk-a metaphor which expresses continuity, so that every man’s life is a whole, which expresses progress, which expresses change, and which implies a goal. They agree in saying that God must he brought into a life somehow, and in some aspect, if that life is to be anything else but an aimless wandering, if it is to tend to the point to which every human life should attain. But then they diverge, and, if we put them together, they say to us that there are three different ways in which we ought to bring God into our life. We should ‘walk with Him,’ like Enoch; we should ‘walk before’ Him, as Abraham was bade to do; and we should ‘walk after’ Him, as the command to do was given to all Israel. And these three prepositions, with, before, after, attached to the general idea of life as a walk, give us a triple aspect-which yet is, of course, fundamentally, one-of the way in which life may be ennobled, dignified, calmed, hallowed, focussed, and concentrated by the various relations into which we enter with Him. So I take the three of them.
1. ‘Enoch walked with God.’
That is a sweet, simple, easily intelligible, and yet lofty way of putting the notion which we bring into a more abstract and less impressive shape when we talk about communion with God. Two men travelling along a road keep each other company. ‘How can two walk together except they be agreed?’ The companion is at our side all the same, though the mists may have come down and we cannot see Him. We can hear His voice, we can grasp His hand, we can catch the echoes of His steps. We know He is there, and that is enough. Enoch and God walked together, by the simple exercise of the faith that fills the Invisible with one great, loving Face. By a continuous, definite effort, as we are going through the bustle of daily life, and amid all the pettiness and perplexities and monotonies that make up our often weary and always heavy days, we can realise to ourselves that He is of a truth at our sides, and by purity of life and heart we can bring Him nearer, and can make ourselves more conscious of His nearness. For, brethren, the one thing that parts a man from God, and makes it impossible for a heart to expatiate in the thought of His presence, is the contrariety to His will in our conduct. The slightest invisible film of mist that comes across the blue abyss of the mighty sky will blot out the brightest of the stars, and we may sometimes not be able to see the mist, and only know that it is there because we do not see the planet. So unconscious sin may steal in between us and God, and we shall no longer be able to say, ‘I walk with Him.’
The Roman Catholics talk, in their mechanical way, of bringing down all the spiritual into the material and formal, about the ‘practice of the presence of God.’ It is an ugly phrase, but it means a great thing, that Christian people ought, very much more than they do, to aim, day by day, and amidst their daily duties, at realising that most elementary thought which, like a great many other elementary thoughts, is impotent because we believe it so utterly, that wherever we are, we may have Him with us. It is the secret of blessedness, of tranquillity, of power, of everything good and noble.
‘I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were,’ said the Psalmist of old. If he had left out these two little words, ‘with Thee,’ he would have been uttering a tragic complaint; but when they come in, all that is painful, all that is solitary, all that is transient, bitterly transient, in the long succession of the generations that have passed across earth’s scene, and have not been kindred to it, is cleared away and changed into gladness. Never mind, though you are a stranger, if you have that companion. Never mind, though you are only a sojourner; if you have Him with you, whatever passes He will not pass; and though we dwell here in a system to which we do not belong, and its transiency and our transiency bring with them many sorrows, when we can say, ‘Lord! Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations,’ we are at home, and that eternal home will never pass.
Enoch ‘walked with God,’ and, of course, ‘God took him,’ There was nothing else for it, and there could be no other end, for a life of communion with God here has in it the prophecy and the pledge of a life of eternal union hereafter. So, then, ‘practise the presence of God.’ An old mystic says: ‘If I can tell how many times to-day I have thought about God, I have not thought about Him often enough.’ Walk with Him by faith, by effort, by purity.
2. And now take the other aspect suggested by the other word God spoke to Abraham: ‘I am the Almighty God, walk before Me and be thou perfect.’
That suggests, as I suppose I do not need to point out, the idea not only of communion, which the former phrase brought to our minds, but that of the inspection of our conduct. ‘As ever in the great Taskmaster’s eye,’ says the stern Puritan poet, and although one may object to that word ‘Taskmaster,’ yet the idea conveyed is the correct expansion of the commandment given to Abraham. Observe how ‘walk before Me’ is dovetailed, as it were, between the revelation ‘I am the Almighty God’ and the injunction ‘Be thou perfect.’ The realisation of that presence of the Almighty which is implied in the expression ‘Walk before Me,’ the assurance that we are in His sight, will lead straight to the fulfilment of the injunction that bears upon the moral conduct. The same connection of thought underlies Peter’s injunction, ‘Like as He . . .is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation,’ followed immediately as it is by, ‘If ye call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons judgeth’-as a present estimate-’according to every mail’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear’-that reverential awe which will lead you to be ‘holy even as I am holy.’
This thought that we are in that divine presence, and that there is silently, but most really, a divine opinion being formed of us, consolidated, as it were, moment by moment through our lives, is only tolerable if we have been walking with God. If we are sure, by the power of our communion with Him, of His loving heart as well as of His righteous judgment, then we can spread ourselves out before Him, as a woman will lay out her webs of cloth on the green grass for the sun to blaze down upon them, and bleach the ingrained filth out of them. We must first walk ‘with God’ before the consciousness that we are walking ‘before’ Him becomes one that we can entertain and not go mad. When we are sure of the ‘with’ we can bear the ‘before.’
Did you ever see how on a review day, as each successive battalion and company nears the saluting-point where the General inspecting sits, they straighten themselves up and dress their ranks, and pull themselves together as they pass beneath his critical eye. A master’s eye makes diligent servants. If we, in the strength of God, would only realise, day by day and act by act of our lives, that we are before Him, what a revolution could be effected on our characters and what a transformation on all our conduct!
‘Walk before Me’ and you will be perfect. For the Hebrew words on which I am now commenting may be read, in accordance with the usage of the language, as being not only a commandment but a promise, or, rather, not as two commandments, but a commandment with an appended promise, and so as equivalent to ‘If you will walk before Me you will be perfect.’ And if we realise that we are under ‘the pure eyes and perfect judgment of’ God, we shall thereby be strongly urged and mightily helped to be perfect as He is perfect.
3. Lastly, take the other relation, which is suggested by the third of my texts, where Israel as a whole is commanded to ‘walk after the Lord’ their God.
In harmony with the very frequent expression of the Old Testament about ‘going after idols’ so Israel here is to ‘go after God.’ What does that mean? Communion, the consciousness of being judged by God, will lead on to aspiration and loving, longing effort to get nearer and nearer to Him. ‘My soul followeth hard after Thee,’ said the Psalmist, ‘Thy right hand upholdeth me.’ That element of yearning aspiration, of eager desire to be closer and closer, and liker and liker, to God must be in all true religion. And unless we have it in some measure, it is useless to talk about being Christian people. To press onwards, not as though we had already attained, but following after, if that we may apprehend that for which also we are apprehended, is the attitude of every true follower of Christ. The very crown of the excellence of the Christian life is that it never can reach its goal, and therefore an immortal youth of aspiration and growth is guaranteed to it. Christian people, are you following after God? Are you any nearer to Him than you were ten years ago? ‘Walk with Me, walk before Me, walk after Me.’
I need not do more than remind you of another meaning involved in this same expression. If I walk after God, then I let Him go before me and show me my road. Do you remember how, when the ark was to cross Jordan, the commandment was given to the Israelites to let it go well on in front, so that there should be no mistake about the course, ‘for ye have not passed this way heretofore.’ Do not be in too great a hurry to press upon the heels of God, if I may so say. Do not let your decisions outrun His providence. Keep back the impatience that would hurry on, and wait for His ripening purposes to ripen and His counsels to develop themselves. Walk after God, and be sure you do not go in front of your Guide, or you will lose both your way and your Guide.
I need not say more than a word about the highest aspect which this third of our commandments takes, ‘His sheep follow Him’-’leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps,’ that is the culmination of the walking ‘with,’ and ‘before,’ and ‘after’ God which these Old Testament saints were partially practising. All is gathered into the one great word, ‘He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v22 Enoch, "translated that he should not see death" Heb…
Enoch
Enoch, "translated that he should not see death" Heb 11:5 before the judgment of the Flood, is a type of those saints who are to be translated before the apocalyptic judgments 1Th 4:14-17. Noah, left on the earth, but preserved through the judgment of the Flood, is a type of the Jewish people, who will be kept through the apocalyptic judgments; Jer 30:5-9; Rev 12:13-16 and brought as an earthly people to the new heaven and new earth; Isa 65:17-19; Isa 66:20-22; Rev 21:1.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v21 From Enoch to Shem, Ham, and Japheth
From Enoch to Shem, Ham, and Japheth
v. 21. And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah.
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v. 22. And Enoch walked with God, after he begat Methuselah, three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
v. 23. And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years.
v. 24. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not; for God took him. Here we have the short account of Enoch and the praise in which the New Testament joins, Heb 11:5-6. He walked with God: he was in the most intimate intercourse, in the most confidential relation with God. He clung to the invisible God and walked before Him at all times as though He were present and saw every act, heard every word. To such a degree of perfection did he attain in the course of the three centuries after the birth of Methuselah that God chose to take him from this world with its manifold misery. Without seeing death, he was translated into heaven, according to both body and soul. Although a ripe old age, also in our days, may be considered a gift of God, and is to be accepted with all thanksgiving, yet it is also a great kindness on the parts of God if He takes some of His children home in the bloom of their youth or in the fullness of their strength and usefulness. He always knows the best time.
v. 25. And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech.
v. 26. And Methuselah lived, after he begat Lamech, seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters.
v. 27. And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years; and he died. Methuselah thus enjoys the distinction of having reached the greatest age recorded for any human being.
v. 28. And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son.
v. 29. And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed. It is seen here that even the patriarchs felt the misery of this earthly life in all its burdensomeness. But incidentally Lamech, in explaining the name Noah which he gave to his son, showed that the Messianic hope was alive in him and in his family. Like Eve, he thought that this son of his was the promised Savior, he that would bring rest. Thus the faith and the hope of the fathers before the Flood were directed toward Christ, and herein they agree with the believers of all times.
v. 30. And Lamech lived, after he begat Noah, five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters.
v. 31. And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years; and he died.
v. 32. And Noah was five hundred years old; and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth. With Noah the genealogical table closes; he was the last patriarch before the Flood. His three sons are mentioned because each of them became the ancestor of a separate branch of the human family after the Flood.
The following list will aid in giving a correct idea of the time of the patriarchs before the Flood.
Adam
created
1,
died
930
Seth
born
130,
died
1042
Enos
born
235,
died
1140
Cainan
born
325,
died
1235
Mahalaleel
born
395,
died
1290
Jared
born
460,
died
1422
Enoch
born
622,
taken away
987
Methuselah
born
687,
died
1656
Lamech
born
874,
died
1651
Noah
born
1056,
died
2006
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv21, 25 he became the father of Methuselah
he became the father of Methuselah
"he had his son Methuselah"
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Methuselah
This is the name of a man. (See: How to Translate Names)
Enoch walked with God
To walk with someone is a metaphor for being in a close relationship with him. AT: "Enoch had a close relationship with God" or "Enoch lived in union with God" (See: Metaphor)
He became the father of more sons and daughters
"He had more sons and daughters"
Enoch lived 365 years
"Enoch lived three hundred and sixty-five years." Enoch lived a total of 365 years. (See: Numbers)
then he was gone
The word "he" refers to Enoch. He was no longer on earth.
for God took him
This means that God took Enoch to be with himself (God).
translationWords
Enoch
ancestor
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv22, 24, 27 5:22 Enoch lived in close fellowship with God (literally…
5:22 Enoch lived in close fellowship with God (literally Enoch walked with God; also in 5:24): Enoch’s position as seventh from Adam in the genealogy strikes a contrast with Lamech, the seventh from Adam in the line of Cain (see study note on 4:17–5:32).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.