Enoch

The Biblical Record

Enoch appears in the genealogy of Genesis 5:18–24. He was the son of Jared and became the father of Methuselah at the age of sixty-five. For three hundred years afterward he "walked with God" and had sons and daughters, and his life spanned 365 years in all. The King James Version renders Genesis 5:24 as "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." The entries for the other figures in this genealogy end with the words "and he died"; Enoch's entry alone lacks them. His name also appears in the genealogy of 1 Chronicles 1:3 and in the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3:37.

Another figure bears the same name: Enoch the son of Cain (Genesis 4:17), after whom Cain named the city he built. The two are distinct individuals.

Significance Within Scripture

In Genesis the expression "walked with God" is also applied to Noah (Genesis 6:9), describing a life lived in close relationship with God.

The New Testament mentions Enoch on two further occasions.

• Hebrews 11:5 lists Enoch among the exemplars of faith. It states that by faith he "was translated that he should not see death," and that "before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God."
• Jude 14–15 calls Enoch "the seventh from Adam" and quotes his prophecy that the Lord comes "to execute judgment."

Interpretation and Debate

Not seeing death: Enoch is often paired with Elijah, who went up to heaven by a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:11), as one who went to God without dying. Some Church Fathers and later interpreters identified the "two witnesses" of Revelation 11 as Enoch and Elijah. The text does not state this directly, and many interpreters reject the identification. Preaching in the dispensationalist tradition sometimes presents Enoch as a type (a figure that foreshadows later events) of the Rapture. Others object that Scripture itself makes no such connection.

The Book of Enoch: The prophecy quoted in Jude closely matches a passage in an ancient Jewish writing known as 1 Enoch. This book contains material not found in the Genesis account, such as the fall of the angels and Enoch's journeys through the heavens. Protestants and Roman Catholics do not include the book in the canon. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is known to accept it as canonical. Interpreters differ over whether Jude's quotation affirms the authority of the entire book or simply borrows a single well-known passage.

In the Korean Church

In Korean preaching, Enoch is chiefly presented as a model of "a life of walking with God." He is portrayed as someone who kept his faith in everyday and family life, and Genesis 5:24 and Hebrews 11:5 are frequently cited together. Some sermons link his lifespan of 365 years to the number of days in a year, interpreting it as "a life of walking with God every day." This, however, is a devotional application rather than something the text directly states. In Sunday school, he is often introduced as "the man who went to heaven without dying."