It’s interesting to me how subtle, yet purposeful, contrasts in the Bible can make all the difference in the world. I’m currently studying 1 John in preparation to preach at the Des Plaines Prayer & Praise Night this Friday. Since it’s the first one of the season, I’m introducing the theme for the year, which is “Walk As Jesus Did.” So I opened my Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary to see if it had anything to say on “walk” (it had an entry for wasp, so I figured it would have something). Sure enough, there was a short entry that confirmed what I already knew. The word, outside of it’s literal meaning, means to conduct one’s self or regulate one’s life in a certain way, and then it listed a few Scriptures to reference. One was 1 John (no surprise), another was Romans 8:4, and then there was Genesis 5:24.
Mostly out of pure curiosity, I turned to Genesis just to see how in the world this passage had anything to do with this concept. I was really confused when I found a genealogy. Not only do I not really care about who begat who, but I was even more curious to figure out what this meant.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that out of the 10 people this genealogy focuses on, most of them (9 to be accurate) have the same structure. It basically goes like this: “When (name of some dude) had lived (a really long time), he became the father of (another dude who was bound to live a really long time).” Here’s an example:
“When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh. And after he became the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Seth lived 912 years, and then he died.” (Gensis 5:6-8)
Well, if you actually make it through, you get to verse 21 of chapter 5, and it starts to read completely differently than the other descriptions. It says, “When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. And after he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years. Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.”
See, the difference is that in all the other cases, it just says this guy lived. It’s interesting to me that the Bible goes out of it’s way to clarify; to clarify that there is a massive difference between walking with God and just living. The Zondervan’s NIV Study Bible says, “The phrase replaces the word “lived” in the other paragraphs of the chapter and reminds us that there is a difference between walking with God and merely living.”
It’s interesting to me that the Bible makes just a little contrast, and at the same time makes all the difference in the world.
(Photo courtesy of VinothChandar.)