Enoch

Scripture carries two men named Enoch and one city named for the first. Cain's firstborn appears at the head of the Cainite line, and a city is built and named after him in the same verse. The other Enoch belongs to the Sethite line: Jared's son, Methuselah's father, the seventh from Adam, who walked with God and was taken without dying. New Testament writers carry that second Enoch forward as a faith-witness and as a prophet whose word reaches the last days.

Cain's Son and the City Enoch

The first Enoch is born to Cain east of Eden. The same verse that names him names a city after him: "And Cain had sex with his wife; and she became pregnant, and gave birth to Enoch: and he built a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch" (Gen 4:17). The Cainite line then runs forward from this Enoch through Irad, Mehujael, Methushael, and Lamech (Gen 4:18). The text gives no further notice of this Enoch beyond the begetting and the naming of the city; he functions as the dynastic point from which the Cainite genealogy unrolls.

Enoch the Seventh from Adam

The Sethite Enoch enters at Genesis 5 as Jared's son: "And Jared lived 162 years, and begot Enoch" (Gen 5:18). At sixty-five years he becomes father of Methuselah (Gen 5:21). The chapter then steps off its standard "and he died" template. Where every other antediluvian patriarch in Genesis 5 closes with the death-formula, Enoch is summed twice as walking with God: "and Enoch walked with God after he begot Methuselah 300 years, and begot sons and daughters" (Gen 5:22), and again, "and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for [the Speech of] God took him" (Gen 5:24). His total span is 365 years (Gen 5:23) — by far the shortest in the chapter — and he leaves the genealogy not by dying but by being taken.

Jude fixes his generational rank in the line of Adam: "Enoch, the seventh from Adam" (Jude 1:14). Luke's ascending genealogy of Jesus carries him through the same slot, "the [son] of Methuselah, the [son] of Enoch, the [son] of Jared" (Luke 3:37), and the Chronicler lists him plainly between Jared and Methuselah in the opening roll of names: "Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech" (1Ch 1:3).

Walked with God, and Was Taken

The Genesis verdict is twofold: Enoch walked with God, and Enoch was taken. The walking-clause is past continuous and runs three centuries after Methuselah's birth (Gen 5:22). The taking-clause carries [the Speech of] God as the agent and stands in the slot where every other patriarch's death-notice belongs (Gen 5:24).

Hebrews reads the taking as faith's means by which Enoch was taken up: "By faith Enoch was taken up that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God took him up: for he has had witness borne to him that before he was taken up he had been well-pleasing to God" (Heb 11:5). Two clauses are stacked: he was taken up so that he should not see death, and before he was taken up he had been well-pleasing to God. The Hebrews writer treats the Genesis "was not" as the not-found of a divine removal, and the centuries-long walk as the established well-pleasingness that preceded it.

The sage's praise-of-the-fathers makes the same gathering. "Enoch was found perfect, and he walked with Yahweh, and was taken; A sign of knowledge to every generation" (Sir 44:16) opens the named-fathers list with the four-fold verdict of perfect-finding, Yahweh-walking, divine-taking, and standing-as-a-sign. A second notice in the same book underscores the rarity: "Few have been created on the earth like Enoch; He also was taken up from off the face of it" (Sir 49:14).

Enoch's Prophecy against the Ungodly

Jude reaches past Genesis to credit Enoch with a prophecy aimed at the false teachers of his own day: "And to these [men] also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Look, the Lord came with tens of thousands of his holy ones" (Jude 1:14). The seventh-from-Adam patriarch is exhibited as a speaker whose word carries forward against a present class of ungodly men, and the content of the word is a Lord-arrival accompanied by a vast holy-host.

The Variant Spelling

The Chronicler's roll reads the patriarch's name straightforwardly: "Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech" (1Ch 1:3). Older English translations carried the form "Henoch" at this verse; UPDV reads "Enoch" throughout, harmonizing the Chronicles list with Genesis 5 and Luke 3.