Who Walks With God? Parshat Noach

Last week, while preparing to read the Torah portion in our synagogue, I came across the mysterious person of Hanoch (known as Enoch to the English-speaking world) who “walked with God.” I thought to myself that his story was rather strange, standing out in the midst of all the boring genealogies. In addition, the name חנוך incorporates the word חן which means grace. Since last week’s parsha ended with the phrase that “Noach found favor with God–   וְנֹ֕חַ מָ֥צָא חֵ֖ן בְּעֵינֵ֥י יְהֹוָֽה — to me this was a perfect segue to this week’s parsha. Moreover, Hanoch’s name also includes נח if you reverse the first two letters.  This week’s parsha begins with a similar phrase about Noach, who “walked with God.” So of course, I pondered about this and decided to check the sources — certain that I was not the only one to think along these lines.

Only two people in the book of Genesis are described as walking with God: Hanoch and Noach. The Torah uses the same phrase for both — and yet they could not be more different.

“ויתהלך חנוך את האלהים ואיננו כי לקח אותו אלהים.”
“Hanoch walked with God; then he was no more, for God took him” (Genesis 5:24).

“נח איש צדיק תמים היה בדרתיו את האלהים התהלך נח.”
“Noach was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noach walked with God” (Genesis 6:9).

Although both of them “walked with God,” they had different destinies. One is Hanoch, a mysterious figure who appears briefly and vanishes just as quickly: “Hanoch walked with God; then he was no more, for God took him.” What happened to him? Is he like Elijah, who was also taken by God (2 Kings 2:1-12)—still wandering around in the world? The other is the righteous man Noach: “Noach walked with God.” It sounds the same. Yet midrashic sources say these two walks were completely different. What does it really mean to walk with God—להתהלך את האלהים? And notice the fact that the phrase with Hanoch is at the beginning, whereas the phrase with Noach is at the end, after pointing out that he was a blameless person. In contrast, Abraham is commanded to walk beforeְ God and be without blame/blemish– הִתְהַלֵּ֥ךְ לְפָנַ֖י וֶהְיֵ֥ה תָמִֽים  (Genesis 17:1). And needless to say, there are rabbinic commentaries connecting all three characters, which I will briefly mention, while focusing on the former two.

HANOCH: The midrash says that Hanoch was righteous but weak — he started on the right path but could easily have been swayed toward evil. Therefore, “God took him early” (Gen. 5:24), meaning He removed Hanoch from the world while he was still righteous, to prevent him from falling. “Hanoch was a man who was sometimes righteous, sometimes wicked; the Holy One said: Let Me remove him while he is righteous” (Bereshit Rabbah 25:1). Later mystical writings, like Sefer Heichalot and The Book of Hanoch, imagine him transformed into the angel Metatron, ruler of the heavens. He ascended. He became fire.

To me it’s a dangerous image: a man who loved God too much.

NOACH: Noach also walked with God, but not upward. He was a practical man. He followed orders. He built an ark plank by plank, endured ridicule, cared for every creature, and waited out the storm. And that might be why God liked Noach — for unlike Jonah, who tried to escape his destiny, Noach didn’t question God. Rashi on Gen. 6:9 compared him to Abraham: “Noach needed support; Abraham, who ‘walked before God,’ needed none.” Noach’s faith may have been lesser than Abraham’s and Hanoch, but he was literally a life preserver. Nehama Leibowitz, the great Israeli Bible teacher, turns this comparison into a lesson about moral maturity. To “walk with God,” she says, is good—but it means leaning on God. Abraham’s “walking before God” (להתהלך לפני ה’) means taking initiative, taking risks, and even arguing with God for the sake of justice.

CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE TWO

Ramban (Nachmanides) and Sforno both stress that Noach’s “walking with God” refers to his moral perfection in a corrupt environment, a sign of courage and integrity. Hanoch, by contrast, reached spiritual perfection and was “taken” to prevent decline — a divine mercy. Malbim notes that both Noach and Hanoch shared an inward purity, but Noach’s righteousness was active, affecting others, while Hanoch’s was passive, expressed through withdrawal and meditation. The Sfat Emet on Noach explores the phrase “Noach walked with God” as signifying righteousness amid confusion. He contrasts this with Hanoch, whose walking with God removed him from worldly struggle:

“There are two ways of serving God: one through separation from the world, and one through remaining within it and uplifting it. Hanoch was from the first type, Noach from the second.” For the Sfat Emet, Hanoch represents devekut (cleaving to God through transcendence), while Noach represents avodah b’gashmiyut — serving God through the material world, sanctifying even the mundane.

Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook (early 20th c.) returns to the same verses in Orot HaKodesh and Midbar Shur:

He writes that Hanoch represents the saint who ascends, while Noach represents the saint who repairs. “There are souls whose light burns too fiercely for the world, and God gathers them before their time, as with Hanoch. And there are souls whose light steadies and heals the world, as with Noach.” Rav Kook sees in Noach’s “walking with God” a model of tikkun olam — the spiritual calling not to abandon a corrupt generation, but to bring it back to life through compassion and creativity. Hanoch’s holiness, though pure, is introverted; Noach’s is redemptive.

The Aish Kodesh (Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira), writing during the Holocaust, turns Noach into a model for spiritual survival in catastrophe:

Like Noach, one must “walk with God” even when the world is drowning. He distinguishes between Hanoch’s escape and Noach’s endurance: “Hanoch’s walking was an ascent; Noach’s was an exile. Yet the Shechinah rests more truly with the one who remains in exile and still walks with God.” In this reading, Noach’s way of walking — slowly, painfully, within chaos — becomes the truest test of faith.

Aviva Zornberg writes in The Beginning of Desire:

Hanoch is “absorbed into God’s breath,” while Noach “moves through the trauma of creation’s failure.” His walking is halting, fragile, but enduring — the embodied spirituality of survival.

Today, there are too many who long to ascend—who see martyrdom, fire, and death as the surest path to God. They believe paradise lies beyond, consuming everything in its path. And then there are those who choose to stay—who build, nurture, protect, repair. They find God not above the world but beside them, in the work of life itself. Hanoch’s path still tempts us— especially in moments of rage or despair, when destruction feels easier than repair. But Noach’s way is the one that saves. There’s something deeply human about Noach’s kind of holiness. He’s not perfect. He gets drunk after the flood; he exposes himself; he curses. He never becomes Abraham. But he survives — and survival, in a ruined world, is also a form of faith. To walk with God doesn’t mean to escape the flood — it means to outlast it. To keep building, keep caring, keep loving, when everything else gives way. Hanoch disappears; ascends, whereas Noach plants vineyards; rebuilds; saves the earth. The world doesn’t need more Hanochs. It needs Noachs—people who keep the ark afloat, who choose life, who refuse to let the flood win.

Today, there are many choices. Those who stay; those who do not want change; and those who are willing to wreak havoc on society in the name of ideals. And then there are those who leave, who relocate. The other day, I read a chilling, but totally understandable statistic about negative migration in Israel between 2022 and the present:

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics has reported that more than 137,000 Israelis left the country over the past two years, almost twice the number of new arrivals. The data shows that more than 82,000 Israelis left last year, while 31,000 arrived. In 2023, about 55,000 Israelis left, compared with 46,000 who arrived. According to the bureau’s data, Israel’s population on the eve of the Jewish New Year exceeded 10 million. Population growth in the past Hebrew year was recorded at 1.2 per cent, down from 1.6 per cent the year before. The statistical report noted that 21.4 per cent of Israel’s population are Palestinians from the occupied territories of 1948, while 78.6 per cent are Jews or others. The number of foreign residents last year was estimated at around 260,000. Israelis attribute the rise in emigration to worsening security and political conditions following the events of 7 October 2023, alongside feelings of insecurity, fears of international isolation, and ongoing economic and social challenges.

I do not criticize those who leave; I understand them. Most of them are spiritual human beings, who cannot stand what is going on in our divided country. Yet I question their decision!  Is holiness about climbing upward, escaping the world to reach the heavens–abandoning ship as it were? Or is it about staying rooted in the mess, doing the hard work of tikkun olam right here? In an age of zealotry and despair, true holiness is not to escape the world—but to refuse to give up on it.

Shabbat shalom.