21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 5:22-24, hitpael

In the next lessons I’m going to finish off the first Parshah of Genesis. I have only a few verses in each lesson but no vocabulary; I want you to to try using a dictionary, like Harkavy’s which is free online, to look up words you don’t know.

כב וַיִּתְהַלֵּ֨ךְ חֲנ֜וֹךְ אֶת־הָֽאֱלֹהִ֗ים אַֽחֲרֵי֙ הֽוֹלִיד֣וֹ אֶת־מְתוּשֶׁ֔לַח שְׁלֹ֥שׁ מֵא֖וֹת שָׁנָ֑ה וַיּ֥וֹלֶד בָּנִ֖ים וּבָנֽוֹת:

כג וַיְהִ֖י כָּל־יְמֵ֣י חֲנ֑וֹךְ חָמֵ֤שׁ וְשִׁשִּׁים֙ שָׁנָ֔ה וּשְׁל֥שׁ מֵא֖וֹת שָׁנָֽה:

כד וַיִּתְהַלֵּ֥ךְ חֲנ֖וֹךְ אֶת־הָֽאֱלֹהִ֑ים וְאֵינֶ֕נּוּ כִּֽי־לָקַ֥ח אֹת֖וֹ אֱלֹהִֽים:   ס

Chanokh would go around with Gd – after his siring M’tushelach – 300 years; he sired sons and daughters.

It must have been all the years of Chanokh -- 563 years –

That Chanokh was going around with Gd; but he was not [there], Gd taking him.

Use of hitpael in these verses points you in two directions. One is the reciprocal feature -- that Chanokh constantly associated with Gd. That’s the good one.

But hitpael implies continuous repetition and Midrash Rabbah Breshit 25:1 comments that Chanokh was not consistent in his good behavior. To keep him from swinging more and more in the negative direction, Gd took him out of this world.

Notice that last little ki- substantivization, using laqach. You probably think that this phrase refers to an action, but it refers to a situation.

Usually eyn “not” takes a sort of predicate. In Genesis 11 it says of Sarah eyn la valad, “she had no child.” Here the sort of predicate is the object suffix, which is masculine singular. But at least in Genesis 11 it says who did not have, Sarah. Here it doesn’t say who. Generally this is the idea of “there was no”, so “there was none of him”, “he was not there.”

What literally happened to Chanokh is one of the big mysteries of Torah. This might be what Axel Olrik called a survival, meaning that there was once a more elaborate story about what happened to Chanokh. As time went on and the oral tradition grew and the culture changed, what happened to Chanokh became less and less important, people stopped calling for the story, and finally only this tag line remained. Why it did survive is another mystery that I’m not going to dig into.