Enoch was not found, because God took him
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καὶ εὐηρέστησεν Ἑνὼχ τῷ θεῷ· καὶ οὐχ ηὑρίσκετο, διότι μετέθηκεν αὐτὸν ὁ θεός.
The refrain that has closed seven lives in a row — “and he died” — is here, uniquely, replaced. The verse first repeats v.22’s verb verbatim, “and Enoch was well-pleasing to God,” now standing in place of the expected notice of death; then comes the extraordinary second clause: οὐχ ηὑρίσκετο, “he was not found” — a verb of searching applied not to a search but to a simple absence, as if someone eventually noticed Enoch simply was not there any more — διότι μετέθηκεν αὐτὸν ὁ θεός, “because God transferred him.” μετατίθημι is an ordinary, unremarkable verb for moving something from one place to another; here, applied to a person instead of an object, it becomes one of the most quietly startling verbs in the whole Greek Bible. The New Testament’s own reading of this verse, Hebrews 11:5, borrows the verb directly: “By faith Enoch was translated [μετετέθη] that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God had translated him.” Whether the governing image is v.22’s “walking with” or this verse’s repeated “being well-pleasing,” both describe an unbroken nearness to God sustained across centuries and ended, not by dying, but by a kind of quiet removal from the world — the first person in the Bible of whom Scripture declines to say that he died.
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The Septuagint 5.24 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/septuagint/5.24/