'And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took
him.'
GENESIS v. 24.
This notice of Enoch occurs in the course of a catalogue of the
descendants of Adam, from the Creation to the Deluge. It is evidently a
very ancient document, and is constructed on a remarkable plan. The
formula for each man is the same. So-and-so lived, begat his heir, the
next in the series, lived on after that so many years, having anonymous
children, lived altogether so long, and then died. The chief thing
about each life is the birth of the successor, and each man's career is
in broad outline the same. A dreary monotony runs through the ages. How
brief and uniform may be the records of lives of striving and tears and
smiles and love that stretched through centuries! Nine hundred years
shrink into less than as many lines.
The solemn monotony is broken in the case of Enoch. This paragraph
begins as usual--he 'lived'; but afterwards, instead of that word, we
read that he 'walked with God'--happy they for whom such a phrase is
equivalent to 'live'--and, instead of 'died,' it is said of him that
'he _was not_.' That seems to imply that he, as it were, slipped out of
sight or suddenly disappeared; as one of the psalms says, 'I looked,
and lo! he was not.' He was there a moment ago--now he is gone; and my
text tells how that sudden withdrawal came about. God, with whom he
walked, put out His hand and took him to Himself. Of course. What other
end could there be to a life that was all passed in communion with God
except that apotheosis and crown of it all, the lifting of the man into
closer communion with his Father and his Friend?
So, then, there are just these two things here--the noblest life and
its crown.