Enoch Walked with God

Two friends walk side by side along a path. They have been walking together for a very long time. And one day, one of them is simply not there anymore. Not because he died. Because God took him.

Genesis chapter 5 is a family tree. It runs from Adam all the way down to Noah, and it has a rhythm, like a drumbeat. A man lives so many years. He has a son. He lives so many more years, and has other sons and daughters. And then the beat lands: and he died. Adam, and he died. Seth, and he died. Enosh. Kenan. Mahalalel. Jared. And he died. And he died. It is a steady reminder of what was lost when people left the garden. And then we reach a man called Enoch, and the drumbeat breaks.

Enoch is the seventh generation from Adam. When he is sixty-five years old, he becomes the father of a son named Methuselah. And then Genesis says something it has not said about anyone before him. After Methuselah was born, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. Notice that. Enoch did not walk with God by leaving ordinary life behind. He was a dad. He had a household, children to raise, work to do, meals to share. And through all of it, for three whole centuries, he walked with God.

What does it mean to walk with God? Genesis doesn’t give us a list of Enoch’s good deeds or a record of his prayers. But think about walking with a friend. You go at the same pace. You head in the same direction. You talk along the way, and sometimes you are quiet together. You can’t walk with someone and keep running off the other way. Walking with God means a life that goes where God goes, step after step, day after day. Not one big moment, but thousands of ordinary ones. Genesis uses the same words for just one more person in these early chapters: Noah, Enoch’s great-grandson, who also walked with God.

Then comes the end of Enoch’s part of the family tree. All the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. Listen for what is missing. There is no “and he died”. The drumbeat stops. Enoch was there, and then he was not, because God took him. Genesis does not explain how. Centuries later, the letter to the Hebrews puts it this way. By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not see death. He could not be found, because God had taken him. And before he was taken, he was known as one who pleased God.

It is a very short story. Just four verses. But it has given hope to readers for thousands of years. In a family tree full of endings, here is a man whose friendship with God did not end. And it is worth noticing how ordinary his path was. Enoch didn’t build an ark, or lead a nation out of slavery, or fight a giant. He walked with God. Faithfully. For a very long time. Then the drumbeat starts again. Methuselah lives nine hundred and sixty-nine years, longer than anyone else in the Bible, and then, and he died. The family line carries on, down to Noah.

Enoch fascinated ancient readers. In the centuries before Jesus, Jewish writers produced a collection of writings now known as First Enoch, describing visions and journeys they attributed to him. It is not part of most Bibles, though the Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes it in its scriptures. Pieces of it, written in Aramaic, were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. And the short New Testament letter of Jude quotes a prophecy of Enoch in words that closely match a passage in that book.

Enoch walked with God. You’ll find his story in Genesis chapter 5, verses 21 to 24, and it is remembered again in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 5. His life was not famous for one big moment. It was faithful, one step at a time. So here’s the question to take with you. What would it look like for you to walk with God tomorrow, in the ordinary things?