And Enoch walked with God after he begot Methuselah three hundred years, and begot sons and daughters:
22. walked with God ] The phrase here, as in Gen 5:24, used of Enoch, has passed into common use to express intimacy of communion with God. It denotes more than either standing in His presence, or walking before Him (Gen 6:9, Gen 17:1), or following after Him. It combines the ideas of fellowship and progress. It is the picture of one who has God with him in all the various scenes of life.
The audacity of the metaphor caused the LXX to render it by a paraphrase; = “and Enoch was well pleasing unto God,” which is quoted in Heb 11:5. For other paraphrases, see Targ. Onkelos, “walked in the fear of God”; Targ. Palestine, “served in the truth before the Lord.”
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 22. And Enoch walked with God – three hundred years] There are several things worthy of our most particular notice in this account:
1. The name of this patriarch; Enoch, from chanack, which signifies to instruct, to initiate, to dedicate. From his subsequent conduct we are authorized to believe he was early instructed in the things of God, initiated into the worship of his Maker, and dedicated to his service. By these means, under the influence of the Divine Spirit, which will ever attend pious parental instructions, his mind got that sacred bias which led him to act a part so distinguished through the course of a long life.
2. His religious conduct. He walked with God; yithhallech, he set himself to walk, he was fixedly purposed and determined to live to God. Those who are acquainted with the original will at once see that it has this force. A verb in the conjugation called hithpael signifies a reciprocal act, that which a man does upon himself: here we may consider Enoch receiving a pious education, and the Divine influence through it; in consequence of which he determines to be a worker with God, and therefore takes up the resolution to walk with his Maker, that he might not receive the grace of God in vain.
3. The circumstances in which he was placed. He was a patriarch; the king, the priest, and the prophet of a numerous family, to whom he was to administer justice, among whom he was to perform all the rites and ceremonies of religion, and teach, both by precept and example, the way of truth and righteousness. Add to this, he was a married man, he had a numerous family of his own, independently of the collateral branches over which he was obliged, as patriarch, to preside; he walked three hundred years with God, and begat sons and daughters; therefore marriage is no hinderance even to the perfection of piety; much less inconsistent with it, as some have injudiciously taught.
4. The astonishing height of piety to which he had arrived; being cleansed from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, and having perfected holiness in the fear of God, we find not only his soul but his body purified, so that, without being obliged to visit the empire of death, he was capable of immediate translation to the paradise of God. There are few cases of this kind on record; but probably there might be more, many more, were the followers of God more faithful to the grace they receive.
5. Enoch attained this state of religious and spiritual excellence in a time when, comparatively speaking, there were few helps, and no written revelation. Here then we cannot but see and admire how mighty the grace of God is, and what wonders it works in the behalf of those who are faithful, who set themselves to walk with God. It is not the want of grace nor of the means of grace that is the cause of the decay of this primitive piety, but the want of faithfulness in those who have the light, and yet will not walk as children of the light.
6. If the grace of God could work such a mighty change in those primitive times, when life and immortality were not brought to light by the Gospel, what may we not expect in these times, in which the Son of God tabernacles among men, in which God gives the Holy Spirit to them who ask him, in which all things are possible to him who believes? No man can prove that Enoch had greater spiritual advantages than any of the other patriarchs, though it seems pretty evident that he made a better use of those that were common to all than any of the rest did; and it would be absurd to say that he had greater spiritual helps and advantages than Christians can now expect, for he lived under a dispensation much less perfect than that of the LAW, and yet the law itself was only the shadow of the glorious substance of Gospel blessings and Gospel privileges.
7. It is said that Enoch not only walked with God, setting him always before his eyes, beginning, continuing, and ending every work to his glory, but also that he pleased God, and had the testimony that he did please God, Heb 11:5. Hence we learn that it was then possible to live so as not to offend God, consequently so as not to commit sin against him; and to have the continual evidence or testimony that all that a man did and purposed was pleasing in the sight of Him who searches the heart, and by whom devices are weighed: and if it was possible then, it is surely, through the same grace, possible now; for God, and Christ, and faith, are still the same.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
i.e. He lived as one whose eye was continually upon God; whose care and constant course and business it was to please God, and to imitate him, and to maintain acquaintance and communion with him; as one devoted to Gods service, and wholly governed by his will. He walked not with the men of that wicked age, or as they walked, but being a prophet and preacher, as may be gathered from Jud 1:14-15, with great zeal and courage he protested and preached against their evil practices, and boldly owned God and his ways in the midst of them. Compare Gen 6:6; Jer 12:3; Mic 6:8.
Begat sons and daughters; hence it is undeniably evident that the state and use of matrimony doth very well agree with the severest course of holiness, and with the office of a prophet or preacher.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And Enoch walked with God, after he begat Methuselah, three hundred years,…. The Greek version is two hundred. He had walked with God undoubtedly before, but perhaps after this time more closely and constantly: and this is observed to denote, that he continued so to do all the days of his life, notwithstanding the apostasy which began in the days of his father, and increased in his. He walked in the name and fear of God, according to his will, in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord then made known; he walked by faith in the promises of God, and in the view of the Messiah, the promised seed; he walked uprightly and sincerely, as in the sight of God; he had familiar converse, and near and intimate communion with him: and even the above Heathen writer, Eupolemus, seems to suggest something like this, when he says, that he knew all things by the angels of God, which seems to denote an intimacy with them; and that he received messages from God by them:
and begat sons and daughters; the marriage state and procreation of children being not inconsistent with the most religious, spiritual, and godly conversation.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
22. And Enoch walked with God. Undoubtedly Enoch is honored with peculiar praise among the men of his own age, when it is said that he walked with God. Yet both Seth and Enoch, and Cainan, and Mahalaleel, and Jared, were then living, whose piety was celebrated in the former part of the chapter. (254) As that age could not be ruder or barbarous, which had so many most excellent teachers; we hence infer, that the probity of this holy man, whom the Holy Spirit exempted from the common order, was rare and almost singular. Meanwhile, a method is here pointed out of guarding against being carried away by the perverse manners of those with whom we are conversant. For public custom is as a violent tempest; both because we easily suffer ourselves to be led hither and thither by the multitude, and because every one thinks what is commonly received must be right and lawful; just as swine contract an itching from each other; nor is there any contagion worse, and more loathsome than that of evil examples. Hence we ought the more diligently to notice the brief description of a holy life, contained in the words, “Enoch walked with God.” Let those, then, who please, glory in living according to the custom of others; yet the Spirit of God has established a rule of living well and rightly, by which we depart from the examples of men who do not form their life and manners according to the law of God. For he who, pouring contempt upon the word of God, yields himself up to the imitation of the world, must be regarded as living to the devil. Moreover, (as I have just now hinted,) all the rest of the patriarchs are not deprived of the praise of righteousness; but a remarkable example is set before us in the person of one man, who stood firmly in the season of most dreadful dissipation; in order that, if we wish to live rightly and orderly, we may learn to regard God more than men. For the language which Moses uses is of the same force as if he had said, that Enoch, lest he should be drawn aside by the corruptions of men, had respect to God alone; so that with a pure conscience, as under his eyes, he might cultivate uprightness.
(254) “ Superiori capite.” Doubtless a mistake. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
22. And Enoch walked with God Not before God, as a messenger, or a workman beneath his eye: nor after him, as a servant; but with him, as a friend . A remarkable expression, occurring but twice in Scripture: in the text as applied to Enoch, and in Gen 6:9, to Noah. In Mal 2:6, it is, in our translation, applied to the faithful priest, but the Hebrew verb in this passage is in Kal, not reaching the high spiritual idea of the text . The verb as applied to Enoch and Noah is in Hithpael implying a voluntary and delightful walk . The passages which speak of walking before God (Gen 24:40, etc . ,) and walking after him do not rise to the high conception of this text . The article is here, for the first time, used with Elohim, the one only God . The LXX translates ‘ , and Enoch pleased God, which version Paul uses in Heb 11:5: “He had this testimony, that he pleased God . ” Intimate and confidential communication, such as exists between the nearest friends, is suggested by this peculiar language . This single example of eminent piety stands forth sublimely solitary in the antediluvian waste . While the patriarchs from Seth to Enoch, and from Enoch to Lamech, are but a series of Hebrew names, we see Enoch’s face as it shines in his godly walk, and hear him, as a prophet, testify against the sin of his age, and proclaim a coming judgment. Jud 1:14-15. The Jews have manifold traditions concerning Enoch, most of which are gathered in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, written, probably, in the last century B . C . There is a heathen tradition of the same wonderful history in the Phrygian legend of Annacus, a pious king, who lived and prophesied three hundred years, predicting the deluge of Deucalion .
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Gen 5:22 And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:
Ver. 22. And Enoch walked with God, ] i.e., he walked in the fear of the Lord, as the Chaldee here paraphraseth: and this he did without intermission , not for a time or two, but continually, constantly: he walked with God by a humble familiarity, and a holy conformity; as a man doth with his friend. To walk with God, before God, and after God, are much at one. See Trapp on “ Gen 5:24 “
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Genesis
WITH, BEFORE, AFTER
‘Enoch walked with God,’- Gen 5:22 .
‘Walk before Me.’- Gen 17:1 .
‘Ye shall walk after the Lord your God.’- Deu 13:4 .
You will have anticipated, I suppose, my purpose in doing what I very seldom do-cutting little snippets out of different verses and putting them together. You see that these three fragments, in their resemblances and in their differences, are equally significant and instructive. They concur in regarding life as a walk-a metaphor which expresses continuity, so that every man’s life is a whole, which expresses progress, which expresses change, and which implies a goal. They agree in saying that God must he brought into a life somehow, and in some aspect, if that life is to be anything else but an aimless wandering, if it is to tend to the point to which every human life should attain. But then they diverge, and, if we put them together, they say to us that there are three different ways in which we ought to bring God into our life. We should ‘walk with Him,’ like Enoch; we should ‘walk before’ Him, as Abraham was bade to do; and we should ‘walk after’ Him, as the command to do was given to all Israel. And these three prepositions, with , before , after , attached to the general idea of life as a walk, give us a triple aspect-which yet is, of course, fundamentally, one-of the way in which life may be ennobled, dignified, calmed, hallowed, focussed, and concentrated by the various relations into which we enter with Him. So I take the three of them.
1. ‘Enoch walked with God.’
That is a sweet, simple, easily intelligible, and yet lofty way of putting the notion which we bring into a more abstract and less impressive shape when we talk about communion with God. Two men travelling along a road keep each other company. ‘How can two walk together except they be agreed?’ The companion is at our side all the same, though the mists may have come down and we cannot see Him. We can hear His voice, we can grasp His hand, we can catch the echoes of His steps. We know He is there, and that is enough. Enoch and God walked together, by the simple exercise of the faith that fills the Invisible with one great, loving Face. By a continuous, definite effort, as we are going through the bustle of daily life, and amid all the pettiness and perplexities and monotonies that make up our often weary and always heavy days, we can realise to ourselves that He is of a truth at our sides, and by purity of life and heart we can bring Him nearer, and can make ourselves more conscious of His nearness. For, brethren, the one thing that parts a man from God, and makes it impossible for a heart to expatiate in the thought of His presence, is the contrariety to His will in our conduct. The slightest invisible film of mist that comes across the blue abyss of the mighty sky will blot out the brightest of the stars, and we may sometimes not be able to see the mist, and only know that it is there because we do not see the planet. So unconscious sin may steal in between us and God, and we shall no longer be able to say, ‘I walk with Him.’
The Roman Catholics talk, in their mechanical way, of bringing down all the spiritual into the material and formal, about the ‘practice of the presence of God.’ It is an ugly phrase, but it means a great thing, that Christian people ought, very much more than they do, to aim, day by day, and amidst their daily duties, at realising that most elementary thought which, like a great many other elementary thoughts, is impotent because we believe it so utterly, that wherever we are, we may have Him with us. It is the secret of blessedness, of tranquillity, of power, of everything good and noble.
‘I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were,’ said the Psalmist of old. If he had left out these two little words, ‘with Thee,’ he would have been uttering a tragic complaint; but when they come in, all that is painful, all that is solitary, all that is transient, bitterly transient, in the long succession of the generations that have passed across earth’s scene, and have not been kindred to it, is cleared away and changed into gladness. Never mind, though you are a stranger, if you have that companion. Never mind, though you are only a sojourner; if you have Him with you, whatever passes He will not pass; and though we dwell here in a system to which we do not belong, and its transiency and our transiency bring with them many sorrows, when we can say, ‘Lord! Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations,’ we are at home, and that eternal home will never pass.
Enoch ‘walked with God,’ and, of course, ‘God took him,’ There was nothing else for it, and there could be no other end, for a life of communion with God here has in it the prophecy and the pledge of a life of eternal union hereafter. So, then, ‘practise the presence of God.’ An old mystic says: ‘If I can tell how many times to-day I have thought about God, I have not thought about Him often enough.’ Walk with Him by faith, by effort, by purity.
2. And now take the other aspect suggested by the other word God spoke to Abraham: ‘I am the Almighty God, walk before Me and be thou perfect.’
That suggests, as I suppose I do not need to point out, the idea not only of communion, which the former phrase brought to our minds, but that of the inspection of our conduct. ‘As ever in the great Taskmaster’s eye,’ says the stern Puritan poet, and although one may object to that word ‘Taskmaster,’ yet the idea conveyed is the correct expansion of the commandment given to Abraham. Observe how ‘walk before Me’ is dovetailed, as it were, between the revelation ‘I am the Almighty God’ and the injunction ‘Be thou perfect.’ The realisation of that presence of the Almighty which is implied in the expression ‘Walk before Me,’ the assurance that we are in His sight, will lead straight to the fulfilment of the injunction that bears upon the moral conduct. The same connection of thought underlies Peter’s injunction, ‘Like as He . . .is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation,’ followed immediately as it is by, ‘If ye call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons judgeth’-as a present estimate-’according to every mail’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear’-that reverential awe which will lead you to be ‘holy even as I am holy.’
This thought that we are in that divine presence, and that there is silently, but most really, a divine opinion being formed of us, consolidated, as it were, moment by moment through our lives, is only tolerable if we have been walking with God. If we are sure, by the power of our communion with Him, of His loving heart as well as of His righteous judgment, then we can spread ourselves out before Him, as a woman will lay out her webs of cloth on the green grass for the sun to blaze down upon them, and bleach the ingrained filth out of them. We must first walk ‘with God’ before the consciousness that we are walking ‘before’ Him becomes one that we can entertain and not go mad. When we are sure of the ‘with’ we can bear the ‘before.’
Did you ever see how on a review day, as each successive battalion and company nears the saluting-point where the General inspecting sits, they straighten themselves up and dress their ranks, and pull themselves together as they pass beneath his critical eye. A master’s eye makes diligent servants. If we, in the strength of God, would only realise, day by day and act by act of our lives, that we are before Him, what a revolution could be effected on our characters and what a transformation on all our conduct!
‘Walk before Me’ and you will be perfect. For the Hebrew words on which I am now commenting may be read, in accordance with the usage of the language, as being not only a commandment but a promise, or, rather, not as two commandments, but a commandment with an appended promise, and so as equivalent to ‘If you will walk before Me you will be perfect.’ And if we realise that we are under ‘the pure eyes and perfect judgment of’ God, we shall thereby be strongly urged and mightily helped to be perfect as He is perfect.
3. Lastly, take the other relation, which is suggested by the third of my texts, where Israel as a whole is commanded to ‘walk after the Lord’ their God.
In harmony with the very frequent expression of the Old Testament about ‘going after idols’ so Israel here is to ‘go after God.’ What does that mean? Communion, the consciousness of being judged by God, will lead on to aspiration and loving, longing effort to get nearer and nearer to Him. ‘My soul followeth hard after Thee,’ said the Psalmist, ‘Thy right hand upholdeth me.’ That element of yearning aspiration, of eager desire to be closer and closer, and liker and liker, to God must be in all true religion. And unless we have it in some measure, it is useless to talk about being Christian people. To press onwards, not as though we had already attained, but following after, if that we may apprehend that for which also we are apprehended, is the attitude of every true follower of Christ. The very crown of the excellence of the Christian life is that it never can reach its goal, and therefore an immortal youth of aspiration and growth is guaranteed to it. Christian people, are you following after God? Are you any nearer to Him than you were ten years ago? ‘Walk with Me, walk before Me, walk after Me.’
I need not do more than remind you of another meaning involved in this same expression. If I walk after God, then I let Him go before me and show me my road. Do you remember how, when the ark was to cross Jordan, the commandment was given to the Israelites to let it go well on in front, so that there should be no mistake about the course, ‘for ye have not passed this way heretofore.’ Do not be in too great a hurry to press upon the heels of God, if I may so say. Do not let your decisions outrun His providence. Keep back the impatience that would hurry on, and wait for His ripening purposes to ripen and His counsels to develop themselves. Walk after God, and be sure you do not go in front of your Guide, or you will lose both your way and your Guide.
I need not say more than a word about the highest aspect which this third of our commandments takes, ‘His sheep follow Him’-’leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps,’ that is the culmination of the walking ‘with,’ and ‘before,’ and ‘after’ God which these Old Testament saints were partially practising. All is gathered into the one great word, ‘He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Walked = walked to and fro; why not literally as with Adam before the Fall? Gen 2:19; Gen 3:8.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Enoch
Enoch, “translated that he should not see death” Heb 11:5 before the judgment of the Flood, is a type of those saints who are to be translated before the apocalyptic judgments 1Th 4:14-17. Noah, left on the earth, but preserved through the judgment of the Flood, is a type of the Jewish people, who will be kept through the apocalyptic judgments; Jer 30:5-9; Rev 12:13-16 and brought as an earthly people to the new heaven and new earth; Isa 65:17-19; Isa 66:20-22; Rev 21:1.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Gen 6:9, Gen 17:1, Gen 24:40, Gen 48:15, Exo 16:4, Lev 26:12, Deu 5:33, Deu 13:4, Deu 28:9, 1Ki 2:4, 2Ki 20:3, Psa 16:8, Psa 26:11, Psa 56:13, Psa 86:11, Psa 116:9, Psa 128:1, Son 1:4, Hos 14:9, Amo 3:3, Mic 4:5, Mic 6:8, Mal 2:6, Luk 1:6, Act 9:31, Rom 8:1, 1Co 7:17, 2Co 6:16, Eph 5:15, Col 1:10, Col 4:5, 1Th 2:12, 1Th 4:1, Heb 11:5, Heb 11:6, 1Jo 1:7
Reciprocal: Gen 4:17 – Enoch Gen 5:4 – and he Isa 38:3 – I have 1Co 7:24 – abide
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Gen 5:22. Enoch walked with God A Scriptural phrase for eminent piety. He set God always before him, and acted as one that considered he was always under his eye. He lived a life of communion and intercourse with God in his ordinances and providences. He made Gods will his rule, and Gods glory his end, in all his actions. He made it his constant care to please God in every thing, and to offend him in nothing, and was a worker together with him. Reader, go thou, and do likewise. He walked with God after he begat Methuselah Which seems to intimate that he did not begin to be eminent for piety till about that time. And he begat sons and daughters A state of matrimony, and the cares and duties incumbent on the master of a family, are not inconsistent with the strictest holiness, or with the office of a prophet, or preacher of righteousness. For, according to Jdg 1:14-15, such was Enoch.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
5:22 And Enoch {f} walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:
(f) That is, he led an upright and godly life.