Enoch and Noah’s Genealogical Lesson

I remember when I first became interested in family genealogies many years ago.  Much of what I learned were names and dates.  The real treasure was when I was able to dig up additional information, especially stories about the people the names represented.

I was thinking about this in our daily Bible readings.  Enoch and Noah stand out in the genealogy of Genesis 5 because they have more than just names and years.

“Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (Gen 5:24).

“…and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Gen 5:29). 

Do Enoch and Noah have anything in common other than getting a little extra information in a genealogical list?  

The first thing to notice is they both were favored by God.  Enoch walked with God (Gen 5:24), and Noah found favor with God (Gen 6:8). Both are included as exemplary models of faith in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews (Heb 11:5,7).  

A second thing to notice is they were both saved by God.  Noah was saved “through water” according to 1 Peter 3:20.  In other words, Noah was saved from the wicked and violent world by the flood.  Enoch was saved the opposite way.  Instead of taking the world by flood, God took Enoch instead.  Enoch’s son, Methusaleh, was still alive when the flood came, which indicates that he did not find favor with God as Noah did.  God saved Enoch from having to experience the wickedness in his children and children’s children that led to the flood.

This is not the only time God would do something like this.  I am reminded of king Josiah, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and enacted a sweeping reform back to Yahweh.  He repaired and rededicated the temple for worship of Yahweh.  He destroyed all of the pagan shrines in the land.  He even went so far as to defile a popular place of pagan worship and sacrifice in the valley of Hinnom so that it could never be used for such purposes again.  The text says there was no king like him who turned with all his heart to Yahweh (2 Kg 23:25).   In spite of this, Pharaoh Neco shockingly defeated and killed him in battle at Megiddo (2 Kg 23:29).  The explanation is in 2 Chronicles 34:24-28, where God had affirmed that he would bring disaster on Jerusalem due to their ongoing pattern of wickedness.  However, God said that he would cause Josiah to die before this happened, sparing him the experience of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile. 

The people of Enoch’s day may not have known why Enoch was taken from this earth even though he walked with God.  The people of Josiah’s day were likely devastated at his defeat and premature death even though he had been faithful to God.  They probably could not have imagined that their departure from this life was due to God’s favor.  However, we the readers of the story have the privilege of seeing the larger picture.  It demonstrates that God does indeed work all things together for good to those that love him (Rom 8:28).

For the present, we do not know all the details of why certain faithful people die “before their time.”  But this story helps to put some perspective on things that may not make sense to us on this side of Heaven.  Enoch and Noah remind us that God will save us one way or another.