Context No. 91 of 4322 · Genesis
Context · Reflection
Genesis 5:18-24: in context
18Jared lived one hundred sixty-two years, then became the father of Enoch. 19Jared lived after he became the father of Enoch eight hundred years, and became the father of other sons and daughters. 20All of the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty-two years, then he died. 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.
This is the genealogy from Adam to Noah again, the chapter with the fixed template: he lived, he fathered, he lived on, all his days were, and he died. An earlier reading in this series covered Seth and Enosh and the refrain of that closing clause. This passage runs Jared, then Enoch, and the template breaks.
Enoch is the seventh from Adam. The formula starts the same way, sixty-five years, then Methuselah. Then instead of he lived, the text says Enoch walked with God three hundred years. And instead of and he died, it says: Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. His total is 365 years, the shortest life in the chapter by centuries, in a list where length is the measure of everything.
The one man whose ending is different has the fewest years, and the word used of him is walked, which is about company rather than duration. Later tradition built a great deal on those two verses, including the books of Enoch, and Hebrews reads him as the man who pleased God. In a chapter that counts, he is measured a different way. If someone tallied my life the way this chapter tallies, what would the number be, and would the sentence beside it say anything about company?
Sources
- Genesis 5: the genealogy from Adam to Noah with its repeated closing clause, and he died
- Genesis 5:24: Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him
- Hebrews 11:5 and Jude 14: later readings of Enoch, alongside the non-canonical books of Enoch