The Birth of Chanoch (Enoch)
Yered, aged 162, fathers Chanoch—the seventh generation from Adam and the only one of whom it is said, "and Chanoch walked with God".
Chanoch is born in AM 622, seventh from Adam; his father Yered was then a hundred and sixty-two. In the flat list of Genesis 5 his entry breaks the pattern twice. First, instead of "and he lived" it says "and Chanoch walked with God"—a phrase later used only of Noach. Second, his lifespan, 365 years, is strikingly short where his neighbours live past nine hundred.
The number matches the days of the solar year, and the sages do not treat that as coincidence. Later literature turned Chanoch into an almost mythic figure, but the Torah itself is spare: he walked with God, fathered Methuselah, walked with God another three hundred years, had sons and daughters—"and he was no more, for God took him". No death, no burial. In AM 987 he simply leaves the list of the living, the only such case in the whole era from Adam to the Flood.
How we know
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereishit 5:18–24 — the birth of Chanoch to Yered, his 365 years and the words “and Chanoch walked with Elohim”
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bereishit Rabbah 25:1 — the dispute over what became of Chanoch
Rishonim
- Rashi on Bereishit 5:24 — “righteous, but easily turned back to evil” — why he was taken before his time
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.