Ten Generations (Noach #2)

At the end of parshas Bereishis, the Torah records the genealogical line from Adam to Noach. Adam (1) - Seth (2) – Enosh (3) – Kenan (4) – Mahalalel (5) – Jared (6) – Enoch (7) – Methusaleh (8) – Lamech (9) – and Noach (10). There were 10 generations between Adam and Noach. When you think about it in the context of over 5,000 years of human history, 10 generations is actually not such a big span of time. Indeed, for those who marry and procreate young, ten generations from now may be only a little over two hundred years.

This may seem like just a quaint and interesting idea…until one recalls that the sages state the “deadline” year for the arrival of Moshiach is the Hebrew year 6,000. One month ago, the Jewish New Year 5780 began. So that’s just 220 years left until 6,000 – approximately 10 generations!

Can the two generations at opposite ends of the arc of time be compared? That might be a bit of a terrifying thought given what everyone knows about Noach’s generation, that “God saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth and how every plan devised by his mind was nothing but wicked all the time” (Bereishis 6:5). There are many commentaries about what exactly was meant by their “wickedness” (ra’ah), although most of these are connected to verse 6:11 and the Torah’s statement: “The earth became corrupt before God, the earth was filled with lawlessness. God saw how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth.”

Rashi explains that this corruption infers lewdness and idolatry and that lawlessness means robbery. Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch says more clearly, “Shachas (corrupt) is the conception of corruption, not destruction. It is the overthrow of a good condition, and the impeding of progress, and the changing into the opposite of anything which was meant to thrive and prosper.…Chamas (lawlessness) is a wrong too petty to be caught by human justice but if committed continuously can gradually ruin your fellow-man.” Knowing that the world was full of corruption and lawlessness, one can better understand Rav Hirsch’s comment on verse 6:5’s use of the word ra’ah (wicked), to which he says: “In the word ra’ah lies the conception of ‘broken,’ in contrast to shalaim (complete) and tamim (whole)…. God had created the world and set Man to be his representative, His agent, on it. But, through what was happening, a ‘large break’ had been made in the harmony of the world.”

What did mankind break that it can be called ra’ah? To understand this, it is important to recognize that Hashem created the world with a balance of justice and mercy. He created humankind because He wanted to give to them, and He created them in His image so that they could connect to him through the shared capacity to give and to create. The wickedness that God saw was a subtle build up of the chamas, lawlessness. Don Yitzchak Abarbanel explains it beautifully:

A wicked person who has acquired a wicked trait, and has allowed it to permeate his character until it has become his second nature, will not see any wrong in his wicked behavior. On the contrary, in his eyes it will be normal, and he will pursue it, and will look with disdain at all the people who refuse to emulate his lifestyle. Furthermore, he will justify his behavior by finding rational excuses for it, in order to convince himself and others that it is the right way of life. Such is the progression of sin, once people develop the habit of sinning, they gradually lose their shame, and their immoral behavior becomes the accepted norm…On this type of behavior the Torah says, “the earth became corrupt before God,” meaning before God it was corrupt but not before the people, because they had lost all sense of right and wrong, and had sunk down so low in their sinful ways that this corruption seemed all but normal in their eyes.

Before contemplating whether the lawlessness of the dor hamabul (generation of the flood) has any reflection on our generation, it is interesting to also note that Nimrod, Noach’s great grandson (3 generations later) was responsible for the building of the Tower of Bavel. Bavel was an incredible moment for humanity, for all of the people were unified and working together – unfortunately they were doing so with the intention of going to war against God. In contemplating the inversion of the generations, it is a little startling that just this past week was the 50^th anniversary of the creation of the first iteration of the internet, which has unquestionably brought people together across innumerable international borders.

What the internet has also started to do is to break down societal standards of right and wrong. Some of those standards were twisted and harmful, but some of those standards were boundaries that have defined civilization from the beginning of time. This is not a declaration that the world is completely corrupt or that the internet is bad. But isn’t it interesting how our society is now driven by likes and popularity? If enough people share a lie over social media, that lie becomes truth. If enough people condone an act that is clearly unjust, somehow it is no longer considered wrong.

One could certainly ask the question: Can we go back? There is no foreseeable way to alter the course of modern technology. But we can recognize that we only have a limited expanse of time before Hashem will send Moshiach, and it is our actions that will determine whether the entry into the next stage of the world is gentle and calm or harsh and destructive.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Hirsch, Rabbi Samsom Raphael. The Pentateuch: Volume V Deuteronomy. Translated by Isaac Levy, Judaica Press, LTD, 1999.

Abarbanel, Isaac. Abarbanel: Selected Commentaries on the Torah, Volume I Bereishis/Genesis. Translated and Annotated by Rabbi Israel Lazar, Self Published with CreateSpace, 2015.