Комментарий к Берешит 5:24

ויתהלך חנוך AND ENOCH WALKED [WITH GOD] — He was a righteous man, but his mind was easily induced) to turn from his righteous ways and to become wicked. The Holy One, blessed be He, therefore took him away quickly and made him die before his full time. This is why Scripture uses a different expression when referring to his death by writing ואיננו “and he was not”, meaning, he was not in the world to complete the number of his years.

ויתהלך, similar to Genesis 48,15 ויתהלכו אבותי לפניו, “before Whom my forefathers walked.” The wording means that Chanoch channeled all his love and desire into fulfilling the will of G’d, and he acquired a deep understanding of the ways of his Creator already at the age of 65. For the remaining 300 years of his life on earth he walked with G’d. In spite of this, he did not neglect his duties of producing offspring. As a result of his ever more profound study of theological matters he came to despise his body, so that when he no longer performed the commandment of being fruitful and multiplying, G’d decided that he had served his purpose on earth, and He removed him from the earth even though he had lived only less than half a normal lifespan.
ואיננו כי לקח אותו אלוקים, the word ואיננו is meant to convey that he did not die from sickness, nor did he suffer pains before he died. His contemporaries had not considered his impending death as even a remote possibility, so that they were totally unprepared for it. They did not notice his absence until he had actually died. When the Torah employs the unusual phrase כי לקח אותו אלוקים, this is an allusion to the fact that G’d removed his soul to the heavenly regions. We have the same expression in Psalms 73,24 ואחר כבוד תקחני, “You took me toward honour.” Similar uses of the expression occur in Psalms 49,16 כי יקחני סלה, the thrust of the word לקח אלוקים being that instead of death leading to gehinnom, the party described as subject to G’d taking him, is transported by G’d immediately to his life in the hereafter.
On the other hand, the expression cannot be explained in this fashion in Ezekiel 24,16 הנני לוקח את מחמד עיניך במגפה, “see I shall take from you the darling of your eyes, by the plague.” Even though the verse is introduced by the word הנני which always introduces something constructive, positive, and which might mislead the reader into thinking that what follows will be something good, something pleasant, the word במגפה, by the plague, makes it plain that being deprived of his wife is not presented by G’d as a positive experience for the prophet. It implies that not only will the prophet suffer mentally, but his wife will suffer physically. Also in Exodus 21,35 when the expression כי יגוף (same root) is used it is followed by the words ומת, that the party who has been gored will die as a result of such a goring. All this proves that מגפה is descriptive of a painful disease, or injury. On the other hand, it is a sudden affliction, whether in the form of a disease or assault by the horns of an ox.
People who have led blameless lives do not experience death throes, but die without experiencing such painful afflictions. By contrast, the popular understanding of the departure from earth of both Chanoch and the prophet Elijah, is that G’d transferred them to their afterlife, Gan Eden, complete with their bodies. Though a widespread popular perception, it is shared by some of our sages (Derech Eretz zuttah 1,9 as well as a remark in Bereshit Rabbah 25) These people imagine both Chanoch and Elijah as leading the kind of idyllic life in Gan Eden that Adam had enjoyed briefly before he sinned. They are presumed to continue in this fashion until the arrival of the Messiah. We may be allowed to ask why in the story here in chapter 5, the Torah concludes the reference to each individual named with the concluding word: וימת, he died, whereas in chapter 10 when the generations after Noach are enumerated, the Torah does not even bother to mention that these people had died. One answer given is that seeing that the people mentioned here died during the deluge their death had to be mentioned, i.e. that they did not die of natural causes. [this cannot not be correct, as the deluge occurred in the year 1556 and several of the people mentioned in our chapter whose ages at death are given, died earlier than that, including Noach’s grandfather Metushelach, and Lemech, his father, who died during the lifetime of his father Metushelach. Ed.]
I believe that the people mentioned in our chapter whose death is reported were righteous people; as a result their death left behind a spiritual void. Not a single one died a violent death during the deluge. This is why the Torah reports their death as a death from natural causes. Only their respective offspring died during the deluge. The people whose life (but not whose death) is recorded in chapter 10 were evil, so that their deaths did not leave behind a spiritual void at all, and their death did not warrant mentioning. Also, seeing that they did not live nearly as long as their antediluvian counterparts, there was nothing special about their dying when they did.

He could easily be induced to turn... Rashi is explaining: Since it is written, “Chanoch walked with Elohim,” we see he was righteous. So why did he die before his time? [The answer is] because “he could easily be induced...”

ואיננו, כי לקח אותו אלוקים, seeing that he was unique in his generation the Torah describes his absence from earth as איננו, “he no longer existed.” [the author means that whenever we leave behind offspring that can carry on our work on earth we have not totally disappeared, though we may be dead. Ed.]

ואיננו, “and suddenly he had disappeared;” his “death” is described as if he had never lived, as he died so much younger than all the other people named in the Bible so far [except for Hevel who had been murdered. Ed.]

כי לקח אותו FOR GOD TOOK HIM — before his time; a similar meaning of לקח “to take” we find in (Ezekiel 24:16), “I take away from thee the desire of thine eves [by a plague]”.

ואיננו כי לקח אותו אלוקים, “he had disappeared as G-d had taken him.” [In the Torah commentary of Samuel DavidLuzatto, (translated recently by this editor) this formulation is understood as definite proof that there is an afterlife of the soul in heavenly region. Ed.] According to our author, Onkelos [not in our editions, Ed,] translates the word איננו here as meaning: “he still exists,” meaning that seeing that G-d had not let him die, he will return at the time before the Messiah comes, with Elijah. He claims that this contrasts with Onkelos in all other places where the word: אין appears where he translated it as that the phenomenon described no longer existed. According to the Zohar, Chanoch died a natural death, G-d removing him from the temptation to fall victim to the wicked ways of his contemporaries. [This would explain why so many outstanding Jewish Rabbis died before reaching the age of 40, G-d rewarding them before they would succumb to more temptations on this earth. Ed.] The prophet Jonah had asked G-d to be treated thus. (Jonah 4,3) Compare also Psalms: 49,16.