Not Too Earthy (Noach #2)

Parshas Noach’s famous narrative is, obviously, the great flood that destroyed the world. As detailed as the narrative is (look at the measurements of the ark and the specification of the numbers of the animals), there are quite a number of pieces to the story that beg for questions. For instance, what actually was so special about Noach? Sure the text says straight out that he was a righteous man in his generation and a man who walked with God, but, to be honest, that doesn’t really give us much insight into what Noach did to be considered righteous and to walk with God. Another interesting question is why a flood? Being perfectly frank, couldn’t God have just clapped his anthropomorphic hands and made everything disappear?

Have you ever noticed that parshas Noach actually begins in parshas Bereishis? The text read for parshas Noach begins with the ninth pasuk of the sixth perek. Perhaps the sages divided it this way to encourage us to look backwards and gain a deeper understanding.

When studying the parshiot, it is very easy to gloss over the long, somewhat repetitive-feeling family trees. Father-son-father’s death, father-son-father’s death … repeat and repeat. Between the begetting and the begats (and of course the truly exciting parts of parshas Bereishis – creation, Adam and Chava, Cain and Hevel), the final portion of parshas Bereishis is easy to miss. And yet Noach’s birth actually has more written about it than just that he was begot: “When Lemach had lived 182 years, he begat a son. And he named him Noach, saying, ‘This one will provide us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands, out of the very soil which Hashem placed under a curse'” (Bereishis 5:28-29). It then states, after recounting Lemach’s years and death, that “when Noach lived 500 years, Noach begat Shem, Cham, and Yafet” (5:32).

Noach was born with a mission, at least according to his father. One could infer from this that Noach held himself aloof from his fellows because he believed that he could be more, that he could make a difference. Indeed, there is a very interesting commentary about the fact that all of the other fathers listed before him named one son and then it is written about them that they “begat sons and daughters.” Noach appears to have only had his three sons. Don Yitzchak Abarbanel says: “Had Noach been given many sons he would have been unable to keep a watchful eye on them so that they don’t mix with their contemporaries and emulate their corrupt ways. He would be unable to raise them in the discipline of self-restraint that was necessary in order to offset the indulgences of that generation.” 

But there is, perhaps, even more one can glean from Lemach’s statement upon naming his son Noach. The populace of the earth, the descendants of Adam and Chava, were struggling. They felt, on a daily basis, the traumatic effects of Adam’s curse. “Cursed be the ground because of you; By toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it sprout for you. But your food shall be the grasses of the field; By the sweat of your brow shall you get bread to eat, until you return to the ground— For from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Bereishis 3:17-19).

Taking a step back, let us remember that Adam was created from the adama, the earth, and given a Divine spirit with the breath of God. According to tradition, until he ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad, his physical and spiritual sides cohabitated perfectly, so to speak. Once Adam and Chava ate from that fruit, their spiritual side was, one might say, suppressed by their physical side. Perhaps this was why Hashem punished Adam by cursing the earth, because now that the physical was his dominant aspect, Hashem did not want to make it too easy for Adam to allow his more natural – perhaps more animalistic – side to conquer his being all together.

Living in the wake of this punishment was difficult, and we can’t really imagine how difficult. One could speculate that perhaps the corruption of humankind was a result of “cursed be the ground because of you.” It was too hard. Life was too completely physical with its toil. Perhaps they lost any spiritual/moral compass because their spiritual side was suppressed and their physical side was disconnected and at odds with its source (the earth).

This is the significance of the flood. As noted in many places, water is often connected, metaphysically, to Torah, which is the apex of spiritual power in the world. God sent the rain…so much rain that the whole world flooded. What happens during the flood? The topsoil was washed away. The adama, the land, cursed by Hashem was cleansed by its immersion in Heavenly water. In washing away the effects of the trauma of Adam, Hashem preserved the one man and his family whom he knew could survive the transformation of the world because this was the relief he had been striving toward his whole life. This was the goal he had taught his sons and trained them to seek.

When Lemach named his son, his words were like a prayer. He knew that this son would be part of a generation that would not have seen Adam, not have been affected by understanding what they had lost. More than that, as the commentator Chizkuni points out: “Seeing that he had been born after the death of Adam, the curse decreed on earth as being effective during Adam’s lifetime could now be lifted.”

Many people assume that Noach’s name refers to comfort. However the Malbim points out that it can also be connected to the root of the verb for changing a mindset (one’s own or that of another). “The general concept of nechamah as a change of attitude is the clue to Lemach’s prayer … Lemach hoped and foresaw that his son Noach would work to inspire mankind – mired as they were into emptiness and depravity ten generations after the Creation – to turn their actions around. Lemach prayed that Noach would reverse the curse of the ground, a curse which resulted from the deterioration of people’s behavior.”

The words of Lemach at the birth of his son add a wealth of insight into our understanding of Noach. Noach’s father seems to have raised him to be less physically rooted than his peers, allowing his spiritual side a little more space. This freedom for his soul was, perhaps, the reason that he could “walk with God,” and that characteristic offered God the opportunity to “wash the earth,” for he knew that from Noach there might come the people who could bring back the equilibrium of body and soul.