Catholic Commentary
Enoch: Model of Repentance and Divine Favor
16Enoch pleased the Lord, and was taken up, an example of repentance to all generations.
Sirach 44:16 presents Enoch as the opening figure in the Praise of the Fathers, commended for pleasing God through continuous alignment with the divine will and then being taken up by God as a supernatural exception to death. Ben Sira uniquely frames Enoch's elevation as an exemplary model of repentance—radical turning toward God—available as a pattern for all subsequent generations.
Enoch didn't achieve holiness through one dramatic conversion—he pleased God by turning toward him, day after day, year after year, until God refused to let him die.
The phrase "to all generations" (eis geneas geneon) universalizes the lesson. Enoch is not a figure for Israel alone, nor for one historical moment; he stands as a permanent, universally accessible example. Ben Sira is, in effect, saying to his students: the pattern of holy living that ends in God taking you to himself — that pattern began here, and it is available to you.
Catholic tradition finds in Enoch a remarkable convergence of themes: the possibility of human holiness, the reality of bodily assumption, and the relationship between repentance and eternal life.
The Church Fathers and Enoch's Assumption: The Fathers consistently read Enoch's translation as a type (foreshadowing) of the resurrection and of the assumption of the body into glory. St. Irenaeus of Lyons (Adversus Haereses V.5.1) explicitly cites Enoch and Elijah as demonstrations that "the flesh is capable of incorruption," directly countering Gnostic denials of bodily resurrection. For Irenaeus, Enoch's untasted death proves that flesh is not inherently corrupt — a crucial anti-Gnostic argument that remains relevant. St. Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis I.21) also honors Enoch as a figure of righteousness lifted beyond ordinary human fate. St. Augustine (City of God XV.19) reflects at length on what Enoch's translation means, affirming the literal reality of it while connecting it to eschatological hope.
Catechism and the Universal Call to Holiness: The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "all Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity" (CCC §2013, citing Lumen Gentium §40). Enoch in Sirach embodies this principle before Sinai, before the Temple, before the Church — demonstrating that the call to holiness is not the product of any particular religious institution but is woven into the human vocation itself. His status as "example to all generations" aligns perfectly with the universal scope of CCC §1716–1717, which locates the human longing for beatitude in the very structure of human nature.
Repentance and Assumption — A Typological Arc: Catholic typology sees in Enoch a remote prefiguration of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As Munificentissimus Deus (Pius XII, 1950) declares, Mary's assumption is the supreme expression of Christ's redemptive victory extending to a human person. Enoch's translation, while not redemptive in the same sense, pre-figures the truth that God's favor, when met with perfect human cooperation, can triumph over death. The difference — and it is crucial — is that Mary's assumption flows from her sinlessness and her unique cooperation with the Incarnation, whereas Enoch's translation flows from his repentance and persistent fidelity. Together they frame the breadth of Catholic hope: assumption as the destiny of those who fully belong to God.
Wisdom Literature's Moral Purpose: Ben Sira's genius in labeling Enoch an "example of repentance" reflects the Wisdom tradition's insistence that theology must be lived. The teshuvah Enoch models is not a single dramatic conversion but a life-pattern. This resonates with the Council of Trent's teaching on ongoing justification (Session VI), which emphasizes that grace, once received, must be cooperated with through sustained moral effort.
Contemporary Catholic life is saturated with the language of "one-time" conversion moments — the retreat breakthrough, the Confession that changed everything — while the quieter, harder discipline of sustained turning toward God receives less attention. Enoch challenges this imbalance. His holiness was not a single dramatic act but a life of continuous pleasing of God: day after day, year after year, presumably amid the ordinary pressures of marriage, family, and antediluvian society (Gen 5:22 notes he fathered children and lived 300 years after Methuselah's birth).
For the Catholic today, Enoch's example as "repentance to all generations" suggests that the Daily Examen of St. Ignatius — that brief nightly review of where one drew close to or moved away from God — is not a spiritual luxury but a structural necessity. It is the practice by which a person, over years and decades, builds a life that "pleases God." Enoch also speaks to Catholics who feel spiritually unremarkable: he left no recorded words, no great deeds, no miracles. He simply walked with God. That walk was sufficient. In an age of performative faith and social media spirituality, Enoch witnesses to the holiness that is invisible to everyone but God — and which God, in the end, refuses to let die.
Commentary
Sirach 44:16 — Literal and Narrative Analysis
Sirach 44 begins the famous Laus Patrum ("Praise of the Fathers" or "Hymn to the Ancestors"), a sweeping retrospective of Israel's holy men stretching from Enoch to the High Priest Simon II. The deliberate choice to open this magnificent roll call with Enoch — and not Adam, nor Noah, nor Abraham — is itself theologically charged. Ben Sira is writing in the second century B.C., at a time when Enoch had become a towering figure in Second Temple Judaism, the subject of extensive pseudepigraphical literature (1 Enoch, Jubilees) that portrayed him as the supreme scribe of heavenly secrets. By placing him first, Sirach anchors the entire history of Israel's fidelity within a framework of direct, transformative communion with God.
"Enoch pleased the Lord" — The Greek verb eúareston (εὐαρεστέω) used here is the same word the Septuagint employs in Genesis 5:22 and 5:24 to translate the Hebrew hithallek et-ha'Elohim — "he walked with God." To "please" God and to "walk with" God are treated as synonyms, communicating a life of continuous moral and spiritual alignment with the divine will. This is not merely moral rectitude in an abstract sense; it is relational proximity, a habitual turning of the self toward the face of God. The imperfect tense implies sustained, ongoing action: Enoch kept on pleasing God.
"and was taken up" — The passive construction is theologically deliberate. Enoch does nothing by his own power; God acts upon him. The Greek metetelémphthē (from metalambanō) and the underlying Hebrew concept of being "taken" (cf. Gen 5:24, laqach) point to a sovereign divine act of assumption — a bodily translation from earthly life into the divine realm. Ancient readers understood this as a miraculous exception to the universal law of death established after Adam's sin. Ben Sira preserves this tradition without elaboration, presenting it as established fact requiring no defense.
"an example of repentance to all generations" — This phrase is the most theologically surprising and uniquely Sirachian contribution to the Enoch tradition. Nowhere in Genesis is Enoch associated with repentance; the text there simply attributes to him an unusual intimacy with God. Yet Ben Sira — writing as a wisdom teacher — draws a practical, pastoral lesson from Enoch's assumption: this is what repentance looks like at its fullest flowering. The Hebrew term underlying "repentance" () carries its full weight of , of radical reorientation away from sin and toward God. Enoch becomes the paradigm not because he was sinless, but because his life demonstrated that a human being turn fully and persistently toward God — and that God honors such turning with the ultimate gift of life beyond death. His translation is the eschatological on his conversion.