Bibliotheca Sacra 148 (July-Sept. 1991) 288-97
Copyright © 1991 by Dallas Theological Seminary. Cited with permission.
Enoch, a Man Who Walked
with God
Timothy J. Cole
Senior Pastor, Grace Bible Church
St. Petersburg, Florida
The account of Enoch, the seventh from Adam, is placed in the
third section of Genesis1 and is announced by the major structural
word of the book tOdl;OT, generally expressed as "these are the gener-
ations of. . . ." However, as Woudstra has demonstrated,2 the tOdl;OT
structure announces the historical development from the ancestor
mentioned and should be understood as, "this is what became of
(person's name)," or "this is what happened to the line of (person's
name)." Genesis 5:1 would then read, "This is the book of what be-
came of the family tree of Adam."
What did become of Adam's family tree? Whatever happened
to the human race? Did God's promise of death (2:16-17) come true?
Whatever became of the curse (3:19)? Would man, due to his rebel-
lion, die after all? Before 5:1 no one had died (though Abel was
murdered by his brother and Lamech killed a man for wounding him
and a boy for striking him, 4:23).
The theme of chapter 5 is the end of life. "No reader of Genesis
5 . . . fails to be impressed by the recurrent phrase 'And he died;'
which baldly and emphatically concludes the entry for each of
these antediluvians. The whole movement of the regular form of
these notices is toward death."3 In other words the answer to the
1 The first section is 1:1-2:3 and the second is 2:4-4:26.
2 M. H. Woudstra, "The Toledot of the Book of Genesis and Their Redemptive-His-
torical Significance," Concordia Theological Journal 5 (1970): 185.
3 David J. A. Clines, The Theme of the Pentateuch (Sheffield: Sheffield Univer-
sity Press, 1978), p. 66.
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Enoch, a Man Who Walked with God 289
questions, Whatever happened to Adam's family tree? or Whatever
happened to the human race? is that they al