By: Adam Faithful on X @Adam_FaithfulM
There’s a man in Genesis who never died. And the Bible gives him one sentence.
Genesis 5 is the chapter most people skip. A list of names. Ages. Sons and daughters. And over and over, like a funeral bell, the same three words:
“…and he died.”
Adam lived 930 years, and he died. Seth, and he died. Enosh, and he died. Eight times the bell rings.
And then, in the middle of the list, it doesn’t:
“Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” – Genesis 5:24
No death. No burial. No explanation. He was just… gone.
The book of Hebrews confirms what it means: “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him” (Hebrews 11:5).
One man in the whole ancient world skipped the grave. Only one other in all of Scripture shares that: Elijah, carried up in the whirlwind.
So what was so special about Enoch?
The Bible tells us exactly one thing about his life. Twice. He walked with God.
That’s it. No miracles. No kingdom. No great battles. Just a walk.
And the details are surprising.
It started late. Verse 22 says Enoch walked with God after he became the father of Methuselah, when he was 65. Something changed when that child was born. Whatever his life was before, it turned there.
It was ordinary. He walked with God for 300 years, and the same verse says he “had other sons and daughters.” Enoch wasn’t a hermit on a mountain. He was a father. He raised kids, worked, ate, slept. He walked with God in the middle of an ordinary, busy, family life.
It was constant. The Hebrew verb is a special form, hithallek, meaning to walk about, to go to and fro, a continuous, ongoing walk. It’s the same form used in Genesis 3:8 of God Himself walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Enoch got back what Adam lost: walking with God, side by side.
So what does walking with God actually mean?
It’s not a feeling. It’s not a single dramatic moment. It’s a direction. Every day, going the same way He’s going.
The prophet Amos asks: “Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?” (Amos 3:3). Walking with God means agreement. His way becomes your way. His pace becomes your pace. You stop running ahead and stop dragging behind.
And Hebrews tells us what made it possible: “Before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please him” (Hebrews 11:5–6). Not perfection. Faith. Trusting the One walking beside you.
There’s an old saying about this verse. Enoch and God walked together every day, and they talked, and they walked a little further each time. And one day they walked so far that God said, “Enoch, we’re closer to my house than yours. Why don’t you come home with me?”
That’s the end of every true walk with God.
For Enoch, it came without death. For us, Jesus has gone through death first so that it can never be the end of the road. “I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3).
He took Enoch.
He will take you too.
Just keep walking.