Introduction
Enoch, son of Jared, is a figure in the genealogy from Adam to Noah, distinguished from every other name in that list by a striking detail: rather than the formula "and he died" used for every other ancestor, Genesis says Enoch "walked with God; then he was not, for God took him".
Note: this Enoch, of the line of Seth, is a different figure from the Enoch who is Cain's son, after whom Cain names a city; the two share a name but are not identified with one another in the text.
Family
- Father: Jared
- Son: Methuselah
Walking with God
Genesis 5:22-24 records that Enoch "walked with God" for 300 years after the birth of his son Methuselah, and that his total lifespan of 365 years is markedly shorter than the other figures in the chapter's genealogy, most of whom live over 900 years, a detail some readers connect to his unusual, favoured relationship with God.
Taken by God
Rather than recording Enoch's death, the text says God "took him", a phrase later Jewish and Christian tradition widely understood as a bodily assumption into heaven without death, comparable to the later account of Elijah's ascension in 2 Kings.
Later tradition
Enoch became a major figure in later Jewish apocalyptic literature, most notably the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch), a text not included in the Hebrew Bible or most Christian canons but influential in Second Temple Judaism and preserved as scripture in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which greatly expands on his story with visions of heaven, angels and the end times; none of this expanded material is found in Genesis itself.