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Noah’s flood and its significance in Jewish tradition
When Noach was born, his father prophesied that Noach would be the one who would take away the curse on the earth. Before the Flood, agriculture was extremely difficult, nearly impossible to do. The waters washed away the curse Adam’s sin on the ground and after the Flood, the practice of agriculture flourished.
In the Torah section נֹחַ Noach (Genesis 6:9-11:32), we see that Noah’s actions, particularly his obedience to God in building the ark and saving his family and the animals through the Flood that led to the ground being de-cursed, allowing for easy crop growth.
Not only was the land uncooperative and tough, but the curse also made people uncooperative and tough. The curse on the ground that started after Adam’s sin was also the inspiration and source of the rampant violence in the world in Noach’s time. We have some hints, mainly from the Apostle Paul, as to how bad the violence was in Noach’s generation.
Violence in the Bible and its relevance today
“Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.
Genesis 6:11–13 NASB
Then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth.”
Noah’s flood was caused by violence and distortion, with a threshold for God’s intervention unknown. The Hebrew word that is translated in English as violence is חָמָס chamas (H2555). That word also carries the meaning of “highly excited action, whether physical or moral” as well as vehemence, impetuousness and force.
In Arabic, a semitic language like Hebrew, chamas means hardness, strictness or severity. In modern times, it’s the name of the infamous terrorist group (Hamas) that had controled the Gaza Strip leading up to the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israeli towns bordering the territory, killing over 1,400 mostly civilians.
All of the people living on the earth in Noach’s time, with very rare exception, were twisted, corrupted and depraved. God had made it the responsibility of Adam’s descendants to take care of the earth, instead, they distorted it and mangled it so God had to destroy them and the earth they had desecrated so as to clean it back up. Mankind had corrupted the world, and destroyed it so God had to destroy the corrupt world to restore it.
It took centuries from the time of Adam to Noach for humanity to descend into such profound violence that God had no choice but to destroy most of humanity and start new with Noach and his family. Humanity was too far gone to let things continue as they were going. The generation that was washed away violently in the Flood reaped what they had sowed. They lived by violence and died violently, but that judgement belongs to God, not to man.
Violence is a tool. It’s something that should be used in a measured manner to push back against violence that is used to oppress and destroy innocent people. If violence is the goal in and of itself rather than just a tool of self-defense, then the innocent have every right to push back, using violence in a targeted fashion to restore order and defend the innocent.
Going back to the Romans and their coliseums with their gladiatorial games, which used extreme violence to entertain the masses, glorifying violence. For a gladiator, their occupation was violence, their endgoal was violence and they usually died violently, not for any righteous cause, but merely to entertain the spectators watching them.
Violence and its impact on society
Imagine Noach in Gaza City right now or imagine Noach at that music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, during the festival of Shemeni Atzeret, where Hamas used violence for violence’s sake to butcher innocent teenagers and young adults. They murdered people just because they could do so and be rewarded for it.
Now, God loves human beings on both sides. He loves those who carry the blood guilt and the innocents whose blood was shed. How can one witness such violence without becoming utterly desensitized and hardened by it? Think of the coroners who have had to autopsy and document their deaths and provide scientific details of the desecration of the innocent for the historical record. It’s a challenge to be a righteous individual surrounded by evil.
The human instinct to revenge or attack back in response to evil, is natural and carnal but it’s important to understand God’s love for all people and not to take pleasure in the death of the wicked.
When mankind, the caretakers of the earth, become twisted and pursue violent, how does that affect others? Are we bystanders or participants or complicit? Now put yourself in the shoes of a friend of Noach. Maybe this theoretical friend of Noach was not directly participating in the violence around him but he was complicit because he remained silent as it was going on. Everyone alive in that day grew up and marinated in the rampant violence and it would be impossible for it to not affect you in some fashion.
Noach understood that God gave mankind the duty to take care of creation, but God saw that so many were not taking care of HIs creation, but abusing it and desecrating it instead.
You can’t unsee what you see, you can’t unexpose yourself from what you have been exposed to.
Noah’s flood and baptism as a new start
“For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you — not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience — through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to Him.”
1Peter 3:18–22 NASB
The Apostle Peter is telling us how long-suffering Noach was. Baptism does not miraculously prevent us from sin. The purpose of baptism is to clean our conscience, our soul. The Flood was sent for a similar reason, to wash away the violence, to wash away the evidence of the wicked culture that created and encouraged the violence. The destruction of God’s creation was a result of humanity’s failure to take care of it.
Violence for violence’s sake had come into the world through the example of Cain and Lamech, but God did not kill them in return for their crimes.
But just as baptism doesn’t take away all our memories of our past lives and our prior experiences, the Flood didn’t take away all the memories of Noach and his family’s experiences from before the Flood. Not too long after the Flood, we see that Noach and his sons were still committing sins. The Flood did not make humanity sinless.
Violence in the Bible and its relevance today
After the Flood, Noach and his family touch ground on a new earth and they had the responsibility to take care of the earth. They understood that violence was supposed to be a tool, not an end goal in and of itself, but unfortunately, later generation again descended into glorifying violence. Now, what is our responsibility when we are exposed to violence? We have to push back with measured violence to protect ourselves and others.
Paul gives Timothy a list of sins that will be common in the last days. He warns Timothy that in the last days, the world will again be steeped in sin.
“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.”
2Timothy 3:1–5 NASB
Paul warns Timothy and his readers of perilous times in the last days, characterized by selfishness and disobedience. On the surface the behaviors Paul calls out to Timothy don’t sound so bad, they don’t seem so extreme, but that’s because these behaviors are so common that we have desensitized ourselves to them. These behaviors that Paul is bring up to Timothy were supposed to be the worst of the worst, yet to us, most of the sins on this list are very tame. We have become just as desensitized to these sins as Noach and his generation had become to the violence and evil in their generation.
“For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Jannes’s and Jambres’s folly was also.”
2Timothy 3:6–9 NASB
These things seem so minor and Paul’s exhortation to avoid them is what seems extreme, which shows how desensitized those of us who live in 2023 are to sin. Does watching violence, either real or fake, make us complicit in the corruption of our own souls?
We live in a culture full of both violence, like it was in the days of Noach, as well as immorality, like it was in Paul’s day in the Roman Empire. All of these sins are grotesque, the only reason we don’t see them as grotesque is because they are so common. “That’s just how it is.” We have allowed ourselves to be so entertained by these sins that they can’t help but form us and not in the way God wants to form us. Violence and the glorification of violence produces more violence.
Combating evil with good
How do we prevent ourselves from becoming corrupted by violence? How do we exercise the wisdom necessary to understand when we need to use violence as a tool of righteousness rather than using it as an end to itself?
“Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.
Genesis 8:20–22 NASB
“While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease.””
When Noach and his family left the ark, they celebrated their salvation, thanking God for their deliverance from the violence of the people around them. Noach’s act of love, gratitude and humility are some of the tools we can use to protect us from the urge to acting in a violent manner towards ourselves or others.
If I respond with death and evil, with more death and evil, what does that do to me? It affects my soul, my mind my conscience, to be accepting or tolerant of death and evil.
Coping with tragedy through joy and compassion
Luke records Yeshua’s teaching about the days of Noach and Yeshua mentions that the people were marrying and celebrating marriage. Some use this to mean that we should not be getting married, but that doesn’t make sense. Marriage is a good thing, but what is Yeshua critiquing?
I would submit to you that what Yeshua was saying that the people in Noach’s day were celebrating and partying while completely ignoring the death and evil going on around them. Their souls and minds were seared. If we respond to death and evil with more death and evil, we become more tolerant of death and evil.
Our greatest tool to prevent us from falling victim to violence or becoming violent ourselves is to celebrate life and cry in joy, by mixing one’s tears of sorrow with tears of joy. When you are in the midst of an evil scenario, you aren’t able to cry and process what you’ve suffered the moment because you are in survival mode, but when you witness a joyous event, like a wedding, the tears of joy can cleanse the mind and restore one’s humanity, giving us permission to also release our tears of mourning and sadness. It resets our humanity, our ability to give and receive love and compassion. It’s important to find joy in life’s moments, even in the face of trauma and evil, to retain one’s humanity and love of one’s fellow man.
We have to remain sons and daughters of God, regardless of what we experience. Noach’s maintained his sense of duty and compassion as he was building the ark. The very act of building the ark condemned the rest of Noach’s generation. Noach refused to act with violence, he was acting with compassion. The fact that Noach was able to act with compassion despite the evil of his generation showed that others could have too but refused. Noach was showing compassion in a most unexpected way and his compassion not only saved his family, but also saved many animals from death, too.
Noach knew people who died in the Flood and that is a hard thing to carry. God, in His mercy, was the One who closed the door on the Ark so Noach didn’t have to carry that decision.
We are called to maintain our ability to love others and have compassion even when we are afflicted by violence, fear and death. How we respond to evil really matters. We don’t want to respond to blind violence inflicted on us with more blind violence targeted at others. We also don’t want to react to blind violence inflicted against those we love with blind violence, even on those who we may think deserve it.
Our emotions may tell us to fight back when someone acts with evil and malice against us, and to harbor hatred against them, but we are called to respond to evil with love informed by wisdom.
God’s response to suffering and evil
“But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided.”
Genesis 8:1 NASB
During the midst of the Flood, while Noach and his family were in the Ark, we are told that God “remembered” Noach. We also see that He “remembered” the slaves in Egypt in Exodus. It doesn’t mean that God forgot them. God, for a period of time, ignored the evil and death that was going on outside the Ark until it came to its full and then He addressed it. God ignored the evil, suffering and death for a long time, to give opportunity for repentance, but it was only after their hearts were so hardened that they could no longer repent, that He stepped in and wiped the evil away. He ignored the sin, not because He wants people to suffer, but because He wants all to repent and to do what is right.
Noach’s animal sacrifices after he got out of the Ark seems quite foolish, but Noach was offering them in celebration. It seems antithetical to kill 1/14 of all the clean animals which came off the Ark when God went to such effort to save their lives. However, we don’t know how many weeks or months after the Flood that his offering took place. Also, the point of presenting sacrifices to God was to give thanks to God for sparing them. This is a their expression of joy in the midst of great sorrow and loss.
The Flood removed the curse of Adam on the land, which was the goal. The Flood also washed away the culture of evil and violence, creating a clean slate for Noach’s children and descendants.
Summary: Tammy