God is all primed to zero out his entire life-on-earth project but changes His mind when He observes the behavior of one 600-year-old man. This man is named Noah, a person, the Torah describes, as blameless in his time.
Was he good in comparison to the bad actors who lived around him or was he good because he met a universal, timeless definition of goodness?
We don’t know for sure, but I’m going with both — he was good in his time and met a universal standard. I base this on the Torah telling us right from the get-go that Noah “walked with God.”
Does that mean they took a stroll together through the forest primeval?
Maybe.
But more likely it means Noah was aligned with the Almighty. Or to put it another way, Noah stuck to the straight and narrow.
That he was a decent man in an indecent age makes his character all that much more remarkable.
And here’s the bigger point — one that Dennis Prager has made many times — that it was his goodness that attracted God’s attention. This is what separates the Noah story from other ancient flood stories. Not that he was handsome or showed prodigious strength, but that he was good.
Here you have the entire theme of the Torah: God is concerned, first and foremost, with actions, specifically ethical behavior.
Back to the narrative:
God tells Noah that a flood is coming and will wipe out everyone and everything.
If Noah is to survive, he’ll have to build a very large vessel — an ark. God lays out the dimensions, describes what materials should be used, and gives Noah the guest list.
Aside from his family, Noah is to bring seven pairs, male and female, of every clean — presumably kosher — animal, two pairs of every unclean animal, and seven pairs of every bird species into his ark. Plus — and this not usually noted — every species that crawls on the earth.
Yeah, it’s gonna be a bit tight for space. But it’s that or extinction.
Noah has seven days to get it all done.
The sexagenarian doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t express any doubts. Doesn’t ask for a three-day extension.
He immediately goes to work. This is why we know he wasn’t Jewish. If he were Jewish, he would have negotiated. He would have said, “Alright, God, but I’m not taking cockroaches. No roaches. I hate those things.”
As soon as it starts to rain, Noah and his family, and the animals and the insects hustle into the hastily constructed floating zoo.
After they’re all onboard, God shuts the door. This is my favorite part of the whole story — God shuts the door, as if He was tucking in the whole world for the night. It’s an act, in contrast to the holy fury He’s about to unleash, of pure love.
The flood comes up from the deep and down from the sky.
It doesn’t cease until the water rises over the top of the highest mountain.
All life on earth, all breath is extinguished.
Except for those in Noah’s Ark.
Day after day, month after month, Noah and cargo float adrift. Finally, the waters stop rising and the ark comes to rest on the top of Mount Ararat.
Noah sends a dove out to look around, but the poor creature can’t find a place to land so returns to the vessel. Seven days later he sends out another dove and this one comes back with an olive leaf.
This is the all-clear sign Noah has been looking for.
God confirms the good news and tells His servant that it’s time to repopulate the planet.
The Creator of All Things vows that even though He knows that human beings are inclined to evil from their youth, He won’t destroy mankind again. The rainbow will serve as a symbol of this promise.
All the earth and all its animals He deeds to man.
He does add a couple of critical caveats, however.
1) You must not mistreat these animals.
2) You must not take innocent human life.
These are evils He will not forgive. Furthermore, anyone who takes innocent life must forfeit his life: “whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.”
This is first time in the Torah that capital punishment for murder is proclaimed. It will not be the last.
After a few basic rules are established — these are the seven laws of Noah — the ark-builder and his family settle into their new life. Noah plants a vineyard. One day he samples a little too much of his own product and falls down unconscious.
Noah’s son Ham sees that his sleeping father is naked. He tells his two brothers, Shem and Japheth. They react with horror and, wishing to preserve their father’s dignity, cover him with a blanket.
When dad wakes up and learns what has happened — that Ham reported his nakedness — he feels humiliated. He curses Ham and all his descendants.
Noah lives on for many more moons, dying at the ripe old age of 950. Side note: if that were to happen today, he would have collected Social Security for 883 years.
A 10-generation genealogy of Noah’s sons then follows, until we reach the point where the neighborhood has been pretty well re-established, i.e., there are a lot of people around.
And they all seem to get along pretty well. Maybe too well.
One advantage is that everyone speaks the same language. The people decide they want to build a city and a tower, literally, a skyscraper, in order that “they might make a name for themselves.” We know this as the infamous Tower of Babel.
God is not thrilled with this plan. He’s seen what happens when men try to act like gods; and He doesn’t want that same scenario to play out again. So, He confounds their plan by introducing new languages into the various communities.
Soon they can’t understand each other, and the building plans fall by the wayside, each community going off on its own.
Here is yet another example of the Torah’s eternal relevance. One-world government – let’s use the contemporary term, globalism — is not a Torah concept. Individual nations pursuing their own best interests — let’s use the contemporary term, nationalism —appears to be the better and wiser path.
Ten more generations come and go until we meet a man named Terah who has a son who will start a world-changing tribe of his own.
History knows him as Abraham.
And that is a brief summary of Torah portion Noah.
Allen Estrin is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of PragerU.
