Hebrews 11:5

By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God translated him: for he hath had witness borne to him that before his translation he had been well-pleasing to God.

This verse casts a great deal of light on the Genesis account of the phenomenon of Enoch's translation. There, it is merely stated that God translated him, but here it is learned what translation meant, namely, that he was received into eternal fellowship with God without being obligated to pass through the experience of death. Of all the souls ever to live on earth, only Elijah and Enoch enjoyed the blessed privilege of translation (Genesis 5:24; 2 Kings 2:17). The character of Enoch was summed up by Moses who said simply that "Enoch walked with God." This means that all of his earthly sojourn was enacted with constant respect to the divine presence of God; and it was doubtless in consideration of his holy and blameless life (in a relative sense) that God saw fit to reward him in this near-unique manner. It is strange that in both these examples of translation, it was accomplished privately. Friends and loved ones sought to find their bodies but did not. People may only conjecture as to why God elected to honor these men, and only these two, in that particular way; but it might have been to give all people hope of entering at last into fellowship with God IN THEIR BODIES. Paul testified in his writings that the redeemed shall have celestial bodies (1 Corinthians 15:40ff); but it is plainly declared that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Nevertheless, from the fact of the redeemed having bodies, related to the body that dies (for that body shall be raised), and from the fact of the disappearance of the bodies of Elijah and Enoch, and from the further fact of our Lord's resurrection in the glorified body that was slain - from all these considerations come the substantial conviction that people's earthly bodies, purified and changed in the resurrection, shall be their eternal possession in that upper and better world.

Enoch was translated at a much younger age than that attained by most of the other great patriarchs of that period; and from this, it has been supposed, came the proverb that "The good die young"! However, Enoch did not die at all.

Macknight observed that:

Enoch's translation by faith is mentioned by the apostle, not to raise in believers an expectation of being translated into heaven, as he was, without dying, but to excite them to imitate his faith, in the assurance of being admitted into heaven in the body after the resurrection.[12]

Will others be translated? Yes. 1Cor. 15:52,1 Thessalonians 4:17 teach that "all who are alive and remain" until the coming of the Lord shall be translated, changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Of course, the promise is to the saved.

As an example of faith, Enoch is introduced by the author of Hebrews; but the Genesis account merely states that he walked with God, making no mention of his faith; however, it must be accepted as certainty that he could not have so walked without faith. In fact, the very next verse seems to have been written to cover that very point. There is no evidence that Enoch, any more than Elijah, was a sinless person; but he was doubtless of those mentioned by Paul, whose sins God "passed over," for sufficient reason (Romans 3:25ff). That he was evidently blameless should be understood relatively, that is, in his relationship to his contemporaries.