Enoch

AI summary: Enoch matters because the cross references present him as an early human example of intimate fellowship with God in a world otherwise moving steadily toward death. His life is described briefly, but the unusual statement that God took him gives him a singular place in biblical memory. Later references in Hebrews and Jude deepen that significance by linking him to faith and prophetic witness. Taken together, the material presents this Enoch as a rare patriarch whose life symbolizes communion with God stronger than the ordinary pattern of mortality.¹

The son of Jared, and father of Methuselah (Gen. 5:21; Luke 3:37). His father was one hundred and sixty-two years old when he was born. After the birth of Methuselah, Enoch “walked with God three hundred years” (Gen. 5:22-24), when he was translated without tasting death. His whole life on earth was three hundred and sixty-five years. He was the “seventh from Adam” (Jude 1:14), as distinguished from the son of Cain, the third from Adam. He is spoken of in the catalogue of Old Testament worthies in the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:5). When he was translated, only Adam, so far as recorded, had as yet died a natural death, and Noah was not yet born. Mention is made of Enoch’s prophesying only in Jude 1:14. ³