Hebrews 11:5 By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him… The suggestion is very beautiful as to the way in which he was wanted and missed when he was gone. It seems to point to some scene, veiled in one of God's august silences, when Methuselah and the other sons and daughters found the tent or the chamber empty, sought the saintly father everywhere and found him not — found not even the body — could but infer, till God inspired and wrote it down, that which had happened — namely, that the life was so full of God, the walk with God so close and so intimate, the sight of God by faith so constant and so intuitive, that it had pleased the Divine Companion to "make a new thing in the earth," to "send down a hand from above" and deliver His servant "out of the waters" of time, from the surrounding of the "strange children" of an "untoward generation," and to carry him by a short and direct passage to the land of an everlasting rest and peace. We who know what one righteous man may be, in a house or in a city — how dear to his own, how necessary to a wider circle, whose counsellor, whose oracle, probity and wisdom and piety have made him — can faintly picture that sorrowful morning, when "Enoch was not found, because God had translated him; " when the life of that household, that neighbourhood, that country, must henceforth be lived without him — without his help, without his example, without his sympathy, without his prayers. I know not that we ought to desire to be missed when we are gone; but I know that, whether desiring this or no, we ought all so to live as that we shall be wanted when we are "not found." There is no replacing, on earth, of the really missed one. That house, that town, that Church must learn to do without him. If the loss really leads any one to inquire into the secret of it — to ask why he was so much to others and to his own — to discover the royal road, which honest prayer is, into the sanctuary which he frequented, and into the companionship which was his strength; then the life, and the "translation," will together have explained the mystery of the Divine purpose in ordaining both. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. |
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