Shabbat Noah

Written by Peter Radvanszki Friday, 31 October 2008

Noah, the Man of the Earth

“And the Lord smelled the sweet savour; and the Lord said in His heart: I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth…” (Gen. 8:21).

It is clear that God talks here about everyone. Anyone can be the person who has evil inclinations. We all have our bad side. But why does the Eternal say after the smelling of the wonderful fragrance, after such a wonderful gift, that humanity is evil?

The first mention of yetzer ha-ra (the “evil inclination”) is in Genesis 6:5, before sending the Flood. In fact, the wickedness of humankind is the reason for the Flood: “And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. And the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth…” (Gen. 6:5–7).

Evil seems to be connected with the earth in the stories of the Bible. The earth is cursed because of the disobedience of the first man: Adam has to work the cursed earth. Then Cain’s sacrifice of agricultural products is not accepted. Slightly ironically, Noah is named as ish ha-adamah, “the man of the earth” (Gen. 9:20). This can be interpreted as “peasant”, as he works on the fields after the Flood, like Cain or Adam. Or figuratively: he is a material man, a pragmatic man, who doesn’t give any comments or show any feelings in seeing the annihilation of most of humankind. Who doesn’t tell any other people that he has a boat to escape from the Flood.

After the Flood, he steps out of the ark, builds an altar, starts to work the earth, grows a vine, and gets drunk. By him, a righteous and simple farmer, the ish tzaddik tamim (Gen. 6:9), who obeys his Creator’s commands, the Earth loses its curseedness.

Why?

Perhaps because immediately after leaving the ark, he demostrates his gratefulness by offering a sacrifice. He gives thanks to his Creator. He is not jealous like Cain and not selfish like Adam. The first man takes the forbidden fruit despite the divine command, Noah gives sacrifice without a divine command. He doesn’t just show his feelings, but he also acts. He is grateful because he knows that he could have been easily killed. He is aware of his smallness.

But the story also shows progress in God’s personality. Before the Flood God couldn’t accept the fact that everybody has evil inclinations. It seems that by smelling the wonderful fragrance of the sacrifice, God could finally accept this unchangeable reality. Because of his offering and despite his materialistic mentality, Noah finds grace in God’s eyes. The Eternal recognizes the complexity of human beings, the yetzer ha-ra and the yetzer ha-tov at the same time. He finally accepts humans as they are.

We frequently see only one part of a personality. Either we see someone as nice, or as nasty. But in fact everyone’s personality has many sides and colors. It is incredibly hard to accept people as they are. From this story we can learn that this is the best we can offer to the people we encounter.