The lesson of the flood story in the Torah is why God brought the flood. It was due to the immorality of man. The God of the Torah is not fickle. He acts for a reason.

A Quick Dvar Torah — Parshat Noach

The Flood: A Question of Morality

This week’s parsha is Parshat Noach, and in many ways, it’s a very strange and fascinating parsha.

The Torah begins by telling us that Noach was a righteous man, a tzaddik in his generation.

Now, why does the Torah add those words, “in his generation”? Why not simply say that Noach was a righteous man?

After all, we know that Abraham would have been considered righteous in any generation. Moses would have been considered righteous in any generation. So why does the Torah specifically emphasize that Noach was righteous in his generation?

Our sages offer two very different interpretations.

One interpretation is that Noach was an extraordinary individual. Think about it. He lived in a society filled with corruption, violence, and immorality, and yet he managed to remain righteous. If he could maintain his righteousness surrounded by such wickedness, imagine how much greater he might have been had he lived among righteous people.

But there’s another interpretation, and it’s not nearly as complimentary.

Perhaps Noach was considered righteous only because everybody around him was so terrible. After all, if you live in a society where everybody is a thief, and you’re the one person who doesn’t steal, you’re going to look pretty good. But that’s not exactly setting the bar very high.

Had Noach lived in the generation of Abraham, perhaps nobody would have considered him particularly special.

It’s an interesting question, and one that our sages have debated for centuries.

But there’s something else in Parshat Noach that I find even more fascinating, and that’s the story of the Flood itself.

Now, many people don’t realize that the Torah isn’t the only ancient text that tells the story of a great flood.

There are numerous flood stories from the ancient Near East. The Sumerians had one, the Babylonians had one, and perhaps the most famous appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest surviving works of literature.

The existence of these different accounts suggests that the memory of a great flood was deeply embedded in the cultures of the ancient Near East. Whether they all refer to the same historical event is another question.

But what’s really interesting isn’t simply that these stories describe a flood.

It’s why the flood happened.

In the Mesopotamian traditions, the gods decide to destroy humanity for reasons that have little to do with morality.

In one account, human beings are making too much noise. They’re disturbing the gods. In another tradition, humanity has become too numerous.

Imagine that! The gods decide to destroy the world because human beings are making too much noise!

And what about the man who survives the flood?

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, his name is Utnapishtim. He’s warned about the coming disaster by one of the gods, Ea, who tells him how to build a boat and save himself and his family.

But nowhere is his survival presented as a reward for being a righteous man.

Now compare that with the Torah.

The Torah is very specific about why God brings the Flood.

The world had become corrupt. It was filled with chamas, violence and wrongdoing. People were mistreating one another. Society had descended into a state of moral anarchy.

And Noach was saved because he was righteous.

That’s an enormous difference.

In the Mesopotamian stories, the gods are concerned about their own comfort. In the Torah, God is concerned about how human beings treat one another.

And there’s another fascinating difference.

After the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim offers a sacrifice. The gods gather around the offering because they have been deprived of sacrifices during the Flood.

In the Mesopotamian religious worldview, the gods depended upon human offerings for sustenance.

In fact, one of the gods recognizes that destroying humanity was a terrible mistake.

Why? Because the gods had nearly destroyed the very people who provided their offerings!

Now compare that with what happens in the Torah.

After the Flood, Noach also brings sacrifices.

And the Torah tells us that God smells the pleasing aroma.

But nowhere does the Torah suggest that God needs to eat the sacrifices. God doesn’t need our food. He doesn’t depend on human beings for sustenance.

The sacrifices are about our relationship with God. They express our devotion, our gratitude, and our willingness to serve Him.

God is concerned with the intention behind the offering, not with satisfying some physical need.

And this brings us to what I think is the most important lesson of the entire story.

The ancient flood narratives may share many details. There’s a great flood, a boat, the preservation of life, and sacrifices afterward.

But the theological messages are fundamentally different.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, humanity is at the mercy of gods who can be unpredictable, quarrelsome, and concerned with their own interests.

In the Torah, God acts according to a moral standard.

Human beings are not destroyed because they’re making too much noise. They’re punished because they’ve abandoned morality, because they’ve become violent, because they’ve stopped treating one another as human beings.

And that distinction is revolutionary.

The Torah is telling us that the universe is not governed by arbitrary divine whims. It is governed by a God who demands moral responsibility.

And there’s something else here.

The Torah isn’t simply telling us what happened thousands of years ago. It’s teaching us something about ourselves today.

We are responsible for the kind of society we create.

We cannot simply say that everybody else is doing something wrong, so why shouldn’t we?

Noach lived in a corrupt generation, but he still had a responsibility to behave righteously.

And so do we.

The lesson of Parshat Noach is that righteousness isn’t determined by what everybody around us is doing. It’s determined by whether we live according to the moral standards God expects of us.

And perhaps that’s why the Torah begins by telling us that Noach was righteous in his generation.

Because every generation has its own challenges, its own temptations, and its own excuses for doing the wrong thing.

The question is whether we have the courage to do what’s right anyway.

Something to think about.