Genesis 5:22

And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:

And Enoch walked with God - Hebrew, haa-'Elohiym (H430), the God, a personal deity; because the Divine Being still condescended to manifest Himself visibly to His people. This phraseology, which is figurative, is intended to describe the close and constant communion of true believers with God. Since "two cannot walk together except they be agreed" (Amos 3:3); because without coincidence in sentiment and judgment, without congeniality of feeling and disposition, there can be no cordial union or harmony; and since it is only after man, through repentance and faith, becomes a new creature, he is brought into a state where he is disposed and able to walk so as to please God (1 Thessalonians 4:1; Hebrews 11:5), this may be considered as implied in the expression, 'walking with God;' and in some such manner as the following, it may be supposed that Enoch lived.

He gave evidence that religion had taken up her settled residence in his soul; but as genuine piety may be in the heart while the fruits of righteousness are not very conspicuous in the conduct, an expression is used in reference to Enoch's religious deportment, which describes not only the fervour of his piety, but the intimate communion of his heart with God as influencing his habitual conduct, and shedding a bright luster over the whole of his character.

This 'walking with God' would seem also to express his active exertions to promote religion around him; and thus, while he walked with God in the secret privacy of his soul, he was a fellow-worker with Him in enlightening, reclaiming, and saving sinners. In short, it is not said that he walked before God (Genesis 17:1), as one inwardly conscious of being always subject to His omniscient scrutiny, or that he walked after God (Deuteronomy 8:19; Deuteronomy 13:4) - i:e., served Him in the customary rites of His worship, and faithfully conformed to the external requirements of His law; but that he "walked with God" (cf. Genesis 6:9; Malachi 2:6); not only leading a prophetic life, spent in immediate converse with the spiritual world, but cultivating a habitual and exalted tone of sanctified character-that of a man who lived by faith in the Unseen; and who, though an inhabitant of earth, had his conversation in heaven. 'He is described' (Jude 1:14) as 'the seventh from Adam,' and the number is probably noticed as conveying, according to Augustine, the idea of divine completion and rest; while Enoch was himself, as Irenaeus expressed it, 'a type of perfect humanity, a man raised to heaven by pleasing God, while angels fell to earth by transgression' (quoted in Smith's 'Dictionary').

It can hardly fail to strike the attentive reader of this concise account of Enoch, that the eminence in religion for which he was distinguished is not ascribed to the early part of his life. The same language is applied to him at that period as is used in the accounts of the other patriarchs; but after the birth of Methuselah different language is employed in describing his character. "Enoch lived sixty and five years and begat Methuselah. And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah for 300 years, and begat sons and daughters." The change in the mode of expression is striking, and has not been made without an obvious design. It is witnessed of him, whose character while in the single state called for no marked eulogium, that after his entrance on the domestic life he "walked with God." Whether he had been indifferent to religion in the early part of his life, or, like Obadiah, "had feared the Lord from his youth," it was not until his sphere of duty was enlarged, and his responsibilities increased, that he became so distinguished for personal piety.

The statement is deserving of notice, since it demonstrates the error of those who think high attainments in religion inconsistent with the cares and perplexities unavoidably connected with active life; who recommend the recesses of the cloister and convent as the only places in which devotion is beheld in its purest attire; or point to the solitude of the desert as the only scene where high spirituality is likely to flourish, in the person of some ascetic recluse, who abandons the duties and rejects the comforts of life, and who shuts himself out from every sphere of usefulness, and devotes himself to perpetual celibacy and complete seclusion from the world as the only way of serving, in the highest possible degree, the end of his creation. The description of Enoch's character in this passage shows that 'walking with God' is perfectly compatible with the cares and comforts of domestic as well as social life, and consists much in the conscientious performance of relative duties ('Christian Repository').