Enoch, the Man Who Did Not Die

Chapter 5 of Genesis is one of the most monotonous chapters in the Bible. Ten generations, from Adam to Noah, and the same formula for each of them: he lived so many years, begat sons and daughters, “and he died.” Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years, and he died. Seth lived nine hundred and twelve years, and he died. The reader gets used to the rhythm, the way one gets used to the ticking of a clock.

And then, in the seventh generation, the clock skips a beat: “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” No “and he died.” Of all the people on the list, only one is not said to have died.

Who Enoch was

Enoch was the son of Jared, the father of Methuselah and the great-grandfather of Noah. He is the seventh generation from Adam, and he should not be confused with another Enoch, the son of Cain, after whom the first city was named. The Torah gives only three details about him: that he walked with God, that he lived three hundred and sixty-five years, and that God took him.

The number is probably no accident. Three hundred and sixty-five is the number of days in a solar year, and ancient readers had already noticed it. It is also remarkably low. His son Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, longer than anyone else in the Bible. Enoch lived less than half of that. The man who did not die is also the man who lived the shortest life.

A few words, two thousand years of interpretation

What does “God took him” mean? The verse is silent, and the silence turned out to be especially fertile.

The translators of the Torah into Greek, in the third century BCE, wrote that God “transferred” Enoch to another place. Ben Sira, who lived in Jerusalem a few generations later, wrote that Enoch “was taken, a sign of knowledge for all generations.” The Bible itself knows one similar case: the prophet Elijah, who went up to heaven by a whirlwind. From there it is a short way to the conclusion that Enoch never died at all, and that he is somewhere, knowing things that none of us know.

The sages of the Midrash, on the other hand, were wary of the idea. Genesis Rabbah cites an opinion that Enoch was sometimes righteous and sometimes wicked, and that God removed him from the world while he was still righteous, before he had a chance to go bad. The Aramaic translation of Onkelos says that God caused him to die. Scholars see this as a reaction: the higher Enoch’s standing rose in the books written about him, the greater the need to remind everyone that he was only human.

What “walked with God” means

The phrase appears twice in the short story of Enoch, and in the whole Torah it is said of only one other person, Noah. Ancient readers took it literally: Enoch was righteous, and he also actually spent his time in the company of heavenly beings. The Book of Jubilees tells that Enoch stayed with the angels of God for many years, and that they showed him everything in heaven and on earth.

From there to a whole book of journeys, in which an angel leads Enoch from place to place and answers his questions, the distance is not great. The entire Enoch literature is, in a sense, a very long commentary on a single phrase.

The first scribe

The books written about him were not content with hints. In the Book of Jubilees, Enoch is the first human being to learn to write, and the first to record the signs of heaven and the order of the months. In 1 Enoch he is “the scribe of righteousness”: angels lead him to the ends of the earth, show him the storehouses of the winds, the resting place of souls and the paths of the luminaries, and he writes everything down. When the angels who sinned ask for forgiveness, it is to him that they turn to write their plea.

In 2 Enoch the story reaches its peak. Enoch rises from heaven to heaven, stands before the throne of God, and writes three hundred and sixty-six books. Then he is sent back to his sons for thirty days, passes on to them what he has learned, and is taken a second time:

When Enoch had finished speaking to the people, God sent darkness upon the earth, and there was darkness, and it covered the men standing with Enoch. And they took Enoch up to the highest heaven, to the place where God dwells. God received him and set him before him. And the darkness left the earth, and the light returned.

2 Enoch 67:1

The next verse adds a small and very human detail: the people saw, and did not understand how Enoch had been taken. Then everyone went home.

Why him?

Why was Enoch, of all people, chosen to carry an entire literature on his shoulders? The simple answer is that he was available. A figure the Torah says a lot about is hard to change. A figure to whom the Torah devotes one mysterious verse is an almost blank page, and every generation can write on it whatever concerns it.

The figure may also have older roots. Scholars have pointed to similarities between Enoch and Enmeduranki, an ancient king in the Mesopotamian tradition, the seventh on the list of kings before the Flood, who reigned in the city of the sun god and was said to have been taught the secrets of the gods. Seventh on the list, connected to the sun, a keeper of secrets: it is hard not to notice the resemblance.

Enoch in three religions

The figure of Enoch did not stay within the bounds of Judaism. The Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament says that Enoch “was translated that he should not see death,” and the Epistle of Jude even quotes his words. In Muslim tradition many identify him with Idris, a prophet of whom the Quran says that he was raised to a high place. In the Ethiopian church, which kept the Book of Enoch among its holy scriptures, he is a prophet in every sense. And in Jewish mystical tradition he undergoes the boldest change of all: the man Enoch becomes the angel Metatron, the scribe who sits on high.

So it happened that a man the Torah says almost nothing about became one of the busiest figures in ancient literature. He is an astronomer, a scribe, a traveler, a preacher at the gate and an angel.

The advantage of not dying

Most people are summed up after their death. The eulogy, the biography and the encyclopedia entry are written when the story is finished, and one can finally decide what it meant. Enoch escaped that fate. A man who did not die cannot be summed up, and so he can go on being written.

Perhaps that is the real secret of the short verse in Genesis. It does not tell us what happened to Enoch. It leaves a door open, and two thousand years of readers have not been able to resist peeking in.