Noah’s Ark’s Under-Appreciated Passengers

What about Noah’s wife? While the faithful hero of the flood story gets all the fame, often overlooked is his devoted spouse, there with their children amidst the floating zoo.

In the Bible, Noah’s wife is mentioned but not named. But a passing reference in Genesis 4:22 to a sister born to Tubal-Cain named Na’ama led the ancient rabbis to suggest that she was Noah’s spouse — the worthy wife of the architect of the ark. The medieval sage Nahmanides, punning off the Hebrew meaning of the name, “pleasant,” added that “her deeds were pleasant and pleasing. What they intended was that she was known in those generations for she was a righteous woman and gave birth to righteous ones.” Targum Yonatan adds that she innovated “elegies and songs” in humanity’s early years. The 16th century rabbi known as the Maharal of Prague wondered how she, in contrast to that later unnamed biblical wife, the spouse of Lot who ended up ensnared (or rather, en-salted) in the surrounding destruction of Sodom, survived God’s wrath. Must be, he affirms that Na’ama “was fitting and righteous and that her actions were pleasant.” 

Not all rabbinic opinions were in agreement that the Na’ama named in that verse was actually Noah’s spouse. Her music? Must have been for idol worship, they argued. Furthermore, she preserved the genealogical line of history’s first murderer, Cain. 

Perhaps she was so evil that she caused even angels to sin, suggested another interpreter. The Zohar viewed Na’ama as a demonic figure associated with the enigmatic “children of God” and the equally mysterious fallen angels, Nefilim, who appear in Genesis’ sixth chapter, the preamble to the flood story.

Others combined the belief in Na’ama’s sordid past with her later-in-life righteousness. The contemporary scholar Rabbi Ari Kahn notes, “Even after the great flood which purges the world of sin and restores purity and equilibrium, Na’ama carries the line of Cain into the world. Na’ama, the wife of Noach, survives; the line of Cain lives on.” 

 So, Kahn wonders, “Is Na’ama a demon-like temptress [luring people to worship idols], or a fitting spouse for the great tzaddik, the most righteous man of the generation?”

Kahn concludes that Na’ama was, in fact, a paradigm of repentance. As he puts it, “despite the violent, oppressive nature of the surrounding society, despite the extremely challenging family history, despite the genetic and genealogical challenges with which we are born, we are all capable of making choices for our own lives.”

There was, after all, plenty of time for Na’ama to have turned her life around. The devoted couple was quite ancient — and she was the older of the two. The chronology in Sefer HaYashar said when they wed, Na’ama was 580 years old. Her husband? A sprightly 498.

Speaking of comeback stories, there was another underappreciated passenger on the ark, according to rabbinic tradition. The Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin recounts a conversation between Shem, one of Noah’s sons, and Eliezer, Abraham’s beloved servant. Shem recounted about his family’s adventures with animals at sea: “With regard to the phoenix, my father found it lying in its compartment on the side of the ark. He said to the bird: Do you not want food? The bird said to him: I saw that you were busy, and I said I would not trouble you by requesting food. Noah said to the bird: May it be God’s will that you shall not die, and through that bird the verse was fulfilled, as it is stated: ‘And I said, I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the phoenix’” (Job 29:18). As a reward for holding its hunger in check aboard the ark, the phoenix had been blessed by Noah.

Rashi, based on a midrash, comments on that verse in Job and adds an Edenic element. “This is a bird named ‘phoenix’ upon which the punishment of death was not decreed because it did not taste of the Tree of Knowledge, and at the end of 1,000 years, it renews itself and returns to its youth.” After Eve ate the forbidden fruit, she gave it to all of the animals to partake. Only the phoenix refused, earning itself eternal life.  

If the bird had gained immortality in Eve’s era, what was the point of Noah’s blessing? The second Rebbe of Chabad, Dovber Schneuri, offered that the original reward for the phoenix still involved dying and being reborn from an egg. So Noah blessed it that in the future it wouldn’t need to die at all.

The rabbinic elaborations of the ark’s underappreciated passengers offers, amidst the disagreements over details both mystical and minute, a reminder of the lesson that Noah himself well appreciated. Faith in second chances, the belief that we can change our lives for the better, can often serve as just the life-raft we need. 

The rabbinic elaborations of the ark’s underappreciated passengers offers, amidst the disagreements over details both mystical and minute, a reminder of the lesson that Noah himself well appreciated. Faith in second chances, the belief that we can change our lives for the better, can often serve as just the life-raft we need.

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” which examines the Exodus story’s impact on the United States, “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”