B'reshith/Genesis
Noakh was the tenth generation from Adam, so we are not very far into the history of man. (Noakh was born only 126 years after Adam died.) Before approaching this teaching, let us back up and set the stage. We will begin with Noakh’s great-grandfather:
[Year 687 / 3313 BC]
Genesis 5:21. And Hanokh lived 65 years and fathered Methushalakh.
22. And Hanokh walked with Elohim for 300 years
after he fathered Methushalakh, and he fathered more sons and daughters.
Walked with: Hanokh is the first who was said to walk with Elohim. This is more than was said for Adam, who hid when he heard YHWH walking toward him. He did not just call on YHWH’s Name, like those who came before him (4:26); he actually walked with Him. I.e., he was more after what YHWH wanted, and YHWH played a larger role in his life. The sages say that YHWH is the name that emphasizes His compassionate side. The Name essentially means “I will be whatever I need to be”, and the tense denotes that He is in the process of becoming—i.e., He is already there well in advance of us when we need consolation, understanding, correction, or deliverance. He administers the antidote before we encounter the poison. The term Elohim emphasizes the fact that He is a judge. Adam was approached by “YHWH Elohim”, suggesting that he had a choice of which side of Him he wanted to encounter. He could expose himself, admit his guilt, and see YHWH, or he could hide it and be judged, which he did. Hanokh made the other choice. What made him special was that he walked in YHWH’s judgment. He judged as YHWH judged, but also judged himself, which is where all judgment must begin.
23. And all the days of Hanokh were 365 years,
24. and Hanokh walked with Elohim, then he was not [there], for Elohim took him.
Was not: The key is in the meaning of his name: “dedicated”. He was consumed by his walk with YHWH that the person he had been previously “no longer existed”. As in the famous story of the footprints in the sand, there ends up being only one set of footprints, not because YHWH carried us, but because we have begun walking in the same steps as He.
[Year 874 / 3126 BC]
25. And Methushalakh lived 187 years and fathered Lamekh [“powerful” or “despairing”].
26. And after he fathered Lamekh,
Methushalakh lived 782 years, and he fathered more sons and daughters.
27. And all the days of Methushalach were 969 years, and he died.
Methushalakh’s name is a prophecy that means "His death shall send (it)." Send what? Simple math shows that he died the year of the Deluge. Jewish tradition says that the reason the flood did not come for seven days after YHWH shut the door of the ark is that these were the days of mourning for Methushalakh.
[Year 1056 / 2944 BC]
28. And Lamekh lived 182 years and fathered a son,
29. and he named him Noakh ["Comfort"], saying,
"This child shall comfort us concerning our work and the hard labor of our hands, because of the ground which YHWH has cursed."
CHAPTER 6
...5. And Elohim saw that the wickedness of humankind was great on the earth, and that every inclination of the contrivances of his heart was only evil all the day long.
6. And Elohim sighed because He had put mankind on the earth, and He was gouged to His heart.
7. And Elohim said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, off the face of the earth, from man to beast to creeping thing to bird of the heavens, for I regret that I have made them."
8. Noakh, however, found favor in the sight of YHWH.
Noakh came from the line of Hanokh and Methushalakh, the one family on earth that walks in YHWH’s judgment. Therefore, He decides to destroy the rest of creation, but not Noakh.
(Portion Noakh begins here)
9. These are the chronicles of Noakh:
Noakh means "rest" or "quietness".
* * *
Noakh, a righteous man, had remained without blemish in his generations. Noakh walked with Elohim.
Righteous: Doing the right thing for the right reason—that is, because it pleases YHWH—and in the right season. Without blemish: complete, perfect, unimpaired, a person of integrity, or fully developed and mature. This does not mean one is serious all the time, but he is serious in season. He understands his own strengths and weaknesses, and his walk with YHWH is based on that. He has studied enough to know where he fits in. He lives the examined life. Yaaqov is described by the same word in the singular form (25:27), and David made this claim (2 Shmu’el 22:24ff), because he kept from his iniquity—the particular idiosyncracies of his own evil inclination, and when he realized he had slipped into it, he repented. It is walking in YHWH’s word that makes us complete. (22:31) YHWH told Avraham—a 99-year-old man--to walk before Him and be mature (17:1) . Perfection does not require one to be perfect, but to walk as blamelessly as is possible for mortal men. It does not mean he is sinless, but that he is honest about where he misses the target, and then fixes what he broke and tries again to hit the mark, rather than going off into despair and depression; that is childish, not mature. The Torah offers us a way to deal with sin: admit it and turn in the other direction so as to do the right thing the next time. To be around someone who never made a mistake would be rather intimidating, but one who fixes what he broke is honorable.
10. And Noakh fathered three sons: Shem, Cham, and Yefeth.
Here is another reason Noakh found favor with Elohim: he was fruitful. Noakh brought forth others to walk with YHWH, as we also can in more ways than just through procreation. It is said that one is judged not by his own life, but by what his children teach their children to be. But the pattern changes here: Thus far we have been told of one firstborn, through whom the promise traveled, and none of the other children’s names have been mentioned in the Book of Life. Now we have three, and the tense suggests they are all born at the same time. In ancient cultures, even twins were considered either very holy or a curse. But triplets are a real anomaly. The Hebrew word for “twin” is related to the word for “perfect”, for it is easy to see both the better and worse inclinations in them more clearly. With triplets, this is even more true, as the three books—of the righteous, the wicked, and the yet-to-be-decided—are clearer still. All three sides of man, which show up in everyone, are vividly demarcated in these three. Shem means "name" or "reputation"; he is the teacher. Cham means "hot", and he is wicked because of his son Kanaan. (See chapter 9.) Yefeth means "opened up" or "made spacious", indicating his openness to learn to go in either direction. Noakh gave him a push in the right direction by blessing him in regard to learning in the tents of Shem, which are alluded to all through Scripture when it says an individual is a man of “tents” (plural).
11. But the [rest of] the earth had become corrupt before the Elohim, and the earth was filled with violence.
12. And Elohim looked at the earth, and, indeed it was decayed, for all flesh had corrupted His way upon the earth.
13. And Elohim said to Noakh, "All flesh has reached its limit before Me, for through them the earth is filled with violence, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
14. "Make for yourself an ark of gofer wood. Make cages inside the ark, and cover it inside and out with a sealant.
15. "And this is how you shall make it: the length of the ark will be 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits.
16. "You shall make a skylight in the ark, then finish it within a cubit of the highest part, and the door of the ark in its side. Put lower, second, and third [stories] in it.
17. "And I—mark My words—I am causing a deluge of waters to come over the earth in order to destroy all flesh in which is the spirit of life from under Heaven. Everything which is on the earth shall expire.
18. "But I will establish my covenant with you. So come inside the ark—you and your sons and your wife, and your sons' wives with you.
19. "And bring into the ark two each (that is, male and female) from every living thing of all [kinds of] flesh—
20. "from the birds, according to their kind [species], from livestock according to their kind, from everything that crawls on the ground according to its kind—bring two of each into the ark to keep them alive.
21. "And take for yourself every kind of food that is to be eaten, and assemble it for yourselves, and let it be for both you and for them to eat."
22. So Noakh did so, according to all that Elohim had commanded him.
The same thing would be said of Moshe. Noakh did not ask others' advice, but did things the way YHWH told him to. What higher compliment could someone be given? In keeping all these animals, he may have had to do something he was unfamiliar with. Certainly building a ship so large was not a common thing in his day, when there was only one continent and rivers may have been the only water people had to navigate on. But salvation was brought to him when he did. Avraham was one who stood against sacrificing one's own children, yet to stretch him beyond "status quo", YHWH asked him to do just that. (ch. 22) In growing into a responsibility he might not think he should be held accountable for, he became a truly faithful servant, not just a decent one.
CHAPTER 7
1. Then YHWH said to Noakh, "Come into the ark--you and all your household--for I have seen that you are righteous before Me among this generation.
I have seen: Now that he had fully obeyed (6:22), YHWH knew that he was righteous. But with Methushalakh no longer present, there were not enough righteous on earth to hold back judgment. One person is never enough of a covering left to merit YHWH’s relenting, as in the days of S’dom and ‘Amorah. Despite all the rhetoric about grace being unmerited, it is still a gift from YHWH that He allows the merit of righteous people like Yahshua to reverberate for centuries after they are gone. We also need community so that we can benefit from the merit of those we associate with. We can cover one another and even people who are not present with us, through our prayers. The Torah commands you are keeping may be the very thing that is preserving the world right now. We can do more than preserve it; we can restore what is broken in it rather than just putting a “financial band-aid” on problems that cannot be solved outside of a context of keeping Torah as a whole people. As in Noakh’s day, makind is becoming more about self, thus serving the evil inclination and becoming completely unbalanced. In Noakh’s day, men learned from animals rather than from YHWH, and so even the animals were affected because men could no longer be distinguished from them. Animals are becoming too important to many people again today; if they focused as much on their children as they do on their animals, it might really make a difference. Today there is great disappointment and great hope at the same time. There is a great inclination toward wrong; 50% of Americans no longer oppose homosexual marriage—a fruitless pursuit which for that reason must never be part of Israel—but there is reason to be thankful, because there is also a great spark of spiritual recovery, and it is the ferment from dead and rotting material that makes a garden grow best. Even a flashlight can be blinding when everyone’s eyes are used to darkness. The Midrash says the problem was that men had invented much technology, as well as numerous forms of entertainment—dance, music, even camping. We are commanded to do all of these unto YHWH, but they did it for self, so they would not have to toil with the tilling of the soil. They had too much wealth and too much leisure, so they began looking for new ways to get their “kicks”. Some of them waited hundreds of years to have children. Did they put off growing up and being tied down? They multiplied ways to stay amused instead of being fruitful. Looking for the Lost Sheep of Israel among the Gentiles might sound as preposterous as expecting water to fall out of the sky did in Noakh’s day, but our faithfulness now will build the kind of “arks” that are needed for Israel to be delivered back home.
2. "So take with you, of every clean animal, seven each [of] the male and his female; and from the animals that are not clean, two, the male and his female.
Noakh knew, long before the Torah codified the rules (mainly from Hevel’s example), which animals were appropriate at least for offering to YHWH (see Lev. 11:3), if not for eating.
3. "And seven each of the birds of the heavens, in order to preserve seed alive on the face of the earth.
Heavenly things should have a much higher representation in us than the earthly. It takes more of the clean things to keep enough of their offspring alive, for like Hevel, they are often consumed by the unclean. But community—the propensity to be shepherded in flocks--is granted to the clean so they can guard each other. Ritual purity is a picture of unselfishness, but how can one remain selfless if there is no community in which to work it out?
4. "Because after seven more days, I will cause a downpour upon the earth for forty days and forty nights, and will wipe away from off the face of the earth every living substance which I have made."
Which I have made: YHWH therefore had the right to do anything He wanted with it, even destroy it. Anyone who was perceptive would be asking, “What will Methushalakh’s death send?”. They should have been expecting a great change in the world at this time; Yahshua holds us responsible to be watchful in a way Noakh’s contemporaries were not. (Mat. 24:37-39; compare 1 Thessalonians 5:2-4 and 2 Kefa/Peter 3:3-12) Note that while there were seven additional days allowed for the whole world to turn from their violence to kindness, it does not tell us that YHWH told him to warn anyone other than his family. Avram prayed for S’dom to be spared, but mainly because his relative was in it. While 2 Kefa 2:5 says Noakh did preach righteousness, we have no indication that he asked YHWH to relent, as Avraham did—a righteous thing in his generation, but apparently it was too obvious to Noakh that there were not enough righteous for the earth to be spared, so he just kept preparing. Men were doing whatever suited their tastes, and now there was too much intimacy with evil for the world to survive; it needed to be washed clean. Yahshua said that the coming of the Ben Adam would be like in Noakh’s day—men would still go on having weddings and parties even as the rain begins to fall. (Mat. 24:37ff) They were not paying attention to the signs of what YHWH was doing in the earth.
5. And Noakh did according to everything that YHWH had commanded him.
6. Noakh was 600 years old when the deluge of waters came over the earth.
[Year 1656 / 2344 BCE; date corroborated by the historian Josephus.]
7. And Noakh, along with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives, came into the ark because of the presence of the waters of the deluge.
Even the righteous apparently waited until it was already beginning to rain to enter the ark, just as Israel waited until Pharaoh drove us out before leaving Egypt. In both cases, though, they were prepared in advance to go immediately, and that made all the difference. They prepared by gathering together. If we find reasons to put off doing what YHWH is calling us to, we will also be “rained on” to some extent, but the crucial thing is to begin gathering for the exodus back to the Land that YHWH has told us is coming. We need to respond quickly and not take the margins YHWH gives us as excuses to delay and walk in at the last minute, or we may be left behind.
8. And of [both] the clean animals and the animals which were not clean, and of the fowls and of everything that crawls on the earth,
9. they came inside the ark to Noakh, two by two, the male and the female [of each], as Elohim had commanded Noakh.
10. And so it was, that to the seven days, the deluge of waters came upon the earth.
11. In the 600th year of Noakh's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this particular day, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of the sky were thrown open.
12. And the rain continued on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.
13. At this same time Noakh and Shem and Cham and Yefeth, Noakh's sons, and his wife, and the three wives of his sons who were with them, entered into the ark—
14. they, and every sort of animal according to its kind, that is, every herded beast after its kind, and every creeping thing that crawls on the earth according to its kind, and every flying creature according to its kind, and every bird of every wing.
15. And they came into the ark to Noakh, two by two of all [kinds of] flesh, in which is the breath of life,
16. and those that went in were male and female of all [kinds of] flesh, as Elohim had commanded him. And YHWH shut [the door] tightly at his heels.
17. And the deluge continued upon the earth for 40 days, and the waters increased, and carried away the ark, and it was lifted up from its position on the land.
The number 40 in Scripture always speaks of a time of transition or testing. As with Nin’weh, YHWH gave the earth 40 days to change. Before the waters became deep enough to drown everyone, they may have been trying to harness the water or find a way to make money off it, instead of thanking YHWH for the breath they were about to lose and admitting their error. Who knows? He might have relented. But no one did this, so the plan went forward. YHWH did not enjoy destroying what He had made; He was at His wit’s end. Just like Adam and Chawwah, no one wanted to fix what they had broken, so in stubbornness and self-seeking they were the ones who chose to drown. Rather than being quick to judge them, we ought to remember how often we do the same thing.
18. And the waters grew more forceful, and were greatly increased upon the earth, and the ark moved on the surface of the waters.
19. And the waters swelled on the earth, stronger and stronger, until all the high mountains which are under the whole heavens were concealed.
Yet what seemed the highest mountains were NOT the highest:
20. The waters rose up yet another 15 cubits, hiding the mountains.
This seems redundant, or might seem to say the ark had a 15-cubit clearance above the highest mountains. But if, as it will be in the "Time of the Restitution of All Things", the holy mountain which would be the site of the House of YHWH (and thus the site of the only gateway back to Eden), was higher than all other hills (Yeshayahu 2:1ff; Micha 4:1), this and the "daughters of Yerushalayim" that surround it would be worthy of additional mention. It will again be exalted above the rest. Will another crustal tide swell the ground under Yerushalayim and push it higher, or will all the other hills simply be lowered? (Yeshayahu 40:4) Yerushalayim may be where the ark was built, and Noach watched these particular mountains be covered. There were 15 steps from the Court of Women to the Court of Priests. But the entrance to the Temple was 14.5 cubits (29 steps, ½ cubit each) above the level of the Court of Women, meaning that even the level of the Holy of Holies would also have been washed clean by this giant immersion. These 15 cubits correlate with the 15 songs of ascent (Psalms 120-134) sung during pilgrimages to the Temple. One of them, Psalm 124, alludes directly to this deluge: "Had it not been for YHWH who was on our side, ...the waters would have engulfed us; the raging waters would have swept over our soul"; the level of the Temple itself was only covered by half a cubit (9 or 10 inches) of water--not an overwhelming inundation as in the rest of the earth. Though Yerushalayim will receive some strong chastening in the coming judgment, YHWH’s presence will be our only refuge while it is going on, so return there for protection under the wings of the One carrying it out. There are many additional allusions to the flood in these 15 psalms.
21. And all flesh that moved about on the earth perished—everything among the fowl and the beasts and the living creatures and the swarming insects and all mankind.
This is a Sunday-school story, for both Jews and Christians. Can modern men believe it? Ask the people in Haiti—or New Orleans, or the victims of the tsunami. Disasters that wreak havoc are on the increase. Men may say it is “global warming”, but it is the breath in YHWH’s nostrils getting hotter and hotter! There are many signs that another “flood” is coming. Again there may be much destruction in the process, though not to the ultimate extent (9:11) but it is again meant to purify and restore the earth. How many righteous will it take to restore the fullness of the relationship with YHWH? Build the “ark” and we will find out.
Commentary on
Parashat Noakh
To Walk With
Elohim
and Be Perfect
