Genesis 5:22

Genesis WITH, BEFORE, AFTER ‘Enoch walked with God,’- Genesis 5:22 . ‘Walk before Me.’- Genesis 17:1 . ‘Ye shall walk after the Lord your God.’- Deuteronomy 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.

Genesis 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 God’s will his rule, and God’s 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.

22 . walked with God ] The phrase here, as in Genesis 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 ( Genesis 6:9 , Genesis 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; εὐηρέστησε δὲ Ἐνὼχ τῷ θεῷ = “and Enoch was well pleasing unto God,” which is quoted in Hebrews 11:5 . For other paraphrases, see Targ. Onkelos, “walked in the fear of God”; Targ. Palestine, “served in the truth before the Lord.” Genesis 5:22