Parashat Noach (Genesis 6:9–11:32)
The Relationship Goes Bad
The end of Genesis 5 introduces us to Noah and (in the final verse) to his three sons – the three sons whom tradition would identify with Asia (Shem), Africa (Ham), and Europe (Japheth). This is the last paragraph of Adam’s family tree, so it is reasonable to assume that “when humanity began to multiply on earth” begins a new subject. That is how the Christian chapter division takes it, identifying those words as the beginning of Genesis 6.
In Jewish tradition, though, the first eight verses of chapter 6 are at the end of last week’s episode, Parashat Bereshit. They introduce the upcoming destruction of almost all life, and they end by re-introducing Noah as this week's main character. He is the hero of the Israelite version of the Flood story. Be grateful; in the Sumerian version, the hero is named Ziusudra, and in the Akkadian version, Utnapishtim. (I’ll admit that “Utnapishtim” – accent on the pish – is a lot of fun to say.)
Note: I’m capitalizing the word Flood here and throughout because this is not the word an ancient Israelite would have used if the barley field flooded. The Hebrew word for Noah’s Flood, מבול (mabul) occurs only once in the Bible outside this week’s parashah, and that is in a reference to this Flood in Psalm 29.
What signals that Parashat Noach should begin with Gen 6:9 rather than where the Christian chapter begins? It is the phrase אלה תולדות aleh toledot (“these are the generations” or “this is the story”). This phrase is well worth a longer discussion, which I’ll provide another time. What’s important for now is that it occurs ten times in Genesis, providing the book with a certain structure.
This is the second occurrence of the phrase. The first introduced Gen 2:4, the hinge verse between Version 1 and Version 2 of the story of creation, as we saw last week. Scholars find those two biblical voices in the Flood story as well, but interwoven rather than separate as they are at the beginning of Genesis. You can learn more about that in my book The Bible’s Many Voices or by listening to this episode of the Many Voices podcast. That’s not what I want to talk about this week.
The question I want to address this week is why God has decided to bring this Flood on the planet. The answer given in the Jewish reading is a little bit different than what you hear if you include the beginning of Genesis 6 in the Flood story. Gen 6:5 says the Lord saw that humanity’s evil on earth had grown great and everything devised by his mind was just evil all day long. So the Lord regretted that he had made human beings.
He literally says נחמתי niḥamti ‘I regret’ having made them – using the same 3-letter Hebrew root with which Lamech, Noah’s father, had explained his name in Gen 5:29. In fact, all life that depends on earth is to be destroyed: humans, animals, and birds, all the creations of Days 5 and 6 as reported in Genesis 1.
At the beginning of Parashat Noach, however, a different Hebrew root comes to the fore. We are briefly reintroduced to Noah and his three sons, after which we learn more about the evil that has somehow appeared on the earth that originally seemed so טוב tov, so good. That root is שׁחת. It’s a letter combination that appears in multiple forms, starting with Gen 6:11.
The Semitic root שׁחת does not lend itself to a single obvious English translation, and the task is made more difficult by its being used here in three different binyanim, Hebrew verb conjugations or patterns. One way to suggest its overall flavor is to say that it suggests various kinds of ruination.
I am saving ultra-close reading of the text for my “Bible Guy” Substack, but I do want to look quickly here at the first two occurrences of this root in the Bible, in Gen 6:11 and 12. In these verses, I’ll use the translations of שׁחת that you are likely to find in most English versions of the Bible, but with the Hebrew word showing so that you can see there is really a musical theme being played along with this story:
11 The earth became corrupt [וַתִּשָּׁחֵ֥ת] before God and the earth filled up with violence. 12 And God saw the earth, and it was corrupted [נִשְׁחָ֑תָה], for all flesh had destroyed [הִשְׁחִ֧ית] its way on earth.
It’s not clear whether “violence” in v. 11 is meant to explain the corruption; the Hebrew suggests that it is a consequence of the corruption rather than an explanation. Do pay attention to those words “God saw,” though. All through Genesis 1 “God saw” that creation was good – but now it is not.
What definitely is a consequence is this: God will repay the human beings in kind:
13 God told Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth has filled up with violence. And I am going to destroy them [מַשְׁחִיתָ֖ם] along with the earth … 17 I am going to bring the Flood, water over the earth, to destroy [לְשַׁחֵ֣ת] all flesh in which is the breath of life.”
That is, God is going to do to the inhabitants of earth exactly what they themselves are doing. The verbs in vv. 12 [הִשְׁחִ֧ית] and 13 [מַשְׁחִיתָ֖ם] are in exactly the same verbal pattern. God is planning to give humanity its own medicine, and more than just a taste of it. When God promises, at the end of the Flood story, not to destroy “all flesh,” the language of v. 17 is repeated: “Never again will there be a Flood to destroy [לְשַׁחֵ֥ת] the earth” (Gen 9:11; see similarly 9:15).
But this is a promise not to ruin the entire earth again with a Flood, not a promise that God wield never again wield the power of שׁחת. The same root is once again a theme verb in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Despite what you might think, it isn’t the people in Sodom and Gomorrah (and, not to let them off the hook, those in Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar) who are doing this horrible verb of ruination, corruption, and destruction, as the humans before the Flood did. God does all the destruction in that story.
When Abraham is negotiating with God in Genesis 18 about the fate of the cities of sin, the root occurs four more times, and in Genesis 19, when the angels who have been sent to do the dirty work warn Abraham’s nephew Lot to get out of Dodge they use the word three times. The perpetrator of the verb changes in their warning in an interesting way in vv. 13–14 there:
• “we are going to destroy [מַשְׁחִתִ֣ים] this place”
• “YHWH has unleashed us to destroy it [לְשַׁחֲתָֽהּ]”
• “YHWH is going to destroy [מַשְׁחִ֥ית] the city”
The same root occurs with regard to Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen 13:10 (where’s it’s a kind of spoiler) and Gen 19:29.
Why exactly God decided that the correct reaction to human beings corrupting or destroying the earth – where the word is being used metaphorically – was to use the word literally and destroy all living flesh is a puzzle I don't have the answer to. But this verb is not used “merely” to indicate ruination. It’s a word about God in his role as Destroyer.
We will find it again in a place far more critical to what the Bible is trying to say than the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Flood story is really the story of Creation 2.0, and the story of Creation 3.0 is the beginning of the book of Exodus, telling how the Israelites became a people. In Exodus 12, on the night of the exodus, when the Israelites put blood on their doorposts so that their firstborn will not be killed along with those of the Egyptians, the explanation given to Moses is this:
Exod 12:23 When YHWH comes through to smite the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and YHWH will pass by the entrance and not let the Destroyer [הַמַּשְׁחִ֔ית] enter your houses to smite you.
There is a curious dissociation between YHWH and “the Destroyer” here, and at least one major dictionary of Biblical Hebrew turns it into a separate word, but it is exactly the same verb used when the angels tell Lot that “YHWH is going to destroy [מַשְׁחִ֥ית] the city.”
This is quite a contrast from the God who wants to make sure that humans do not ascend to his level – in Genesis 2 and 3, by eating from the tree of knowledge and the tree of life; in Genesis 11, in this week’s parashah, by building “a tower with its top in the sky” (Gen 11:4). Here, in the story of the Flood, the use of the Hebrew root שׁחת seems rather to show us a God who is sinking to their level.
Perhaps the temptation to repay them in kind was so great that God was desperate to get rid of the temptation. The story of the Tower of Babel, where שׁחת is not used, moves the plot forward far enough to introduce the story of Abram, who will be featured in next week’s reading.