God saw that the earth was corrupt and that it was filled with violence. (6:12) |
The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth ... that their thoughts were continually bad. He was sorry that He had made them. (6:5-7) |
Noah walked with God. (6:11) |
Noah found favor in the sight of the LORD. (6:8) |
God said to Noah, "Make yourself an ark ... and of every living thing, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark." (6:14-22:) |
The LORD said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your household ... Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals ... seven pairs of birds ... and a pair of the animals that are unclean." (7:1-5) |
| ... two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. (7:9) |
Noah with his sons, his wife, and his sons wives entered the ark, and the LORD shut him in. (7:11-16) |
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the foundations of the great deep (the water below) and the windows of the heavens (the water above) were opened. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, everything on dry land that had the breath of life in it. HE BLOTTED OUT EVERY LIVING THING THAT WAS ON THE FACE OF THE GROUND. Only Noah was left and those that were with him in the ark.
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| But, God remembered Noah and made a wind blow over the earth, and the fountains of the deep and the windows of the sky were shut up again. And God said to Noah, "Go out of the Ark." |
Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took of the clean animals and birds and offered a burnt offering on the altar for the LORD. |
| God blessed Noah and his sons. And God made a covenant with him and with all flesh never to destroy all flesh, and never to destroy the earth with a flood." (9:1-17) |
And when the LORD smelled the savory odor, he said in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, and I will never again destroy every living creature as I have done." (8:20-21) |
When the Torah speaks of the LORD, it is his heart that we see: he is sorry, he shuts the door of the ark, he smells the offering which prompts him to vow never to destroy everything because humankind is not perfect. The Torah uses the personal name of G-d for this intimate portrait. This is a glimpse of the "merciful" nature of G-d. (HESED)
When the Torah speaks of G-d, we see his legal nature: the earth was corrupt and full of violence so that it had to be destroyed. When the flood has finished its work, G-d 'remembers' Noah and dries up the water. Then he 'blesses' Noah and makes a 'covenant' with him. The Torah uses the word "Elohim", which denotes power and majesty. This is a glimpse of the ' nature of G-d as a judge and king. (DIN)
In the very nature of one Divine Source of Being there are two traits that work as one: justice and mercy and each is tempered by the other and reflects a perfect balance bewteen the two. One day, when the inclination toward evil is destroyed, the LORD's name will be ONE. Even in these seemingly parallel stories, the center reminds us that HE blotted out life and that the LORD-G-D has promised never to destroy the world again by water.
There is also a little preview of the flood Hidden in the Hebrew of Genesis 1. If you will remember, on day three G-d separated the waters above from the waters below. The waters above he called heavens and the waters below he called seas, and he made the raqi'a to separate them from one another. On every other day of creation, the Torah records that G-d "saw" that what he had done was "good." Yet, it is only on the day when the waters were separated, that those words are missing. Why? Because they were not then permanently separated, and their coming together was a disaster beyond measuring for all flesh and for the ground itself. When the story of the flood ends, the promise never to let the waters merge again is symbolized by the rainbow, a sight that is seen in the firmament - in the space between the waters called "raqi'a" in Hebrew.
FOR MORE READING ON THIS WEEK'S PARASHA:
Bar Ilan University: commentary on Parashat Noah
PBS feature on "Noah's Flood"
Simthsonian Magazine: Noah's Flood?
National Geographic: the Black Sea Archaeologists and Noah's Flood
JTS: Windows in the Flood
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