The eldest son of Cain, (Genesis 4:17) who called after his name the city which he built. (Genesis 4:18) (B.C. 3870.)
The son of Jared and father of Methuselah. (Genesis 5:21) ff.; Luke 3:37 (B.C. 3378-3013.) In the Epistle of Jude (Jude 1:14) he described as "the seventh from Adam;" and the number is probably noticed as conveying the idea of divine completion and rest, while Enoch was himself a type of perfected humanity. After the birth of Methuselah it is said, (Genesis 5:22-24) that Enoch "walked with God three hundred years... and he was not; for God took him." The phrase "walked with God" is elsewhere only used of Noah, (Genesis 6:9) cf. Genesis17:1 etc., and is to be explained of a prophetic life spent in immediate converse with the spiritual world. Like Elijah, he was translated without seeing death. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the spring and issue of Enoch's life are clearly marked. Both the Latin and Greek fathers commonly coupled Enoch and Elijah as historic witnesses of the possibility of a resurrection of the body and of a true human existence in glory. (Revelation 11:3)
