Washed Away

Parashat Noach

The divine image

Understanding the sin of the generation of the Flood helps us understand why its punishment was fitting, and how precisely Hashem's justice was carried out.

At the heart of that generation's failure was the desecration of the unique quality of humanness that G-d had given them. Hashem created man in His divine image (Beresheit 1:27). That divine image is the ability to overcome natural urges and direct the world toward the purpose G-d set for it. Without this ability, a person becomes ruled by physical desires rather than guided by the mind.

Each person has unique talents, abilities, desires and a distinct nature. These are expressions of צלם אלקים, the divine image within. Just as people's faces differ, so do their ways of thinking (Bamidbar Rabba 21:2). Our outward individuality reflects something deeper: the spiritual form that makes each person who they are.

The Mishna in Pirke Abot (3:14) teaches: חביב אדם שנברא בצלם. Human beings are beloved because they were created in the divine image. There is an additional expression of love in their being told this, as the Torah says, "For in the image of G-d did He make man" (Beresheit 9:6).

When the inner form is lost

"וירא אלוקים את הארץ והנה נשחתה...והנני משחיתם את הארץ"

"And G-d saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt...behold, I will destroy them with the earth" (Beresheit 6:12-13).

Through their corruption and behavior, people brought destruction upon their world. They allowed their physical and material desires (חמרם) to rule their intelligent minds (שכלם), until they destroyed the divine image that had been given to them.

That image was intended for the opposite purpose: the mind was meant to guide the body. The root השחתה suggests defacing or smudging a form. The punishment was measure for measure. Just as they destroyed their inner spiritual form, Hashem destroyed the outward forms that were meant to express it.

This explains why the punishment came through a מבול, a flood. Rashi connects the word מבול with ruining everything and mixing everything up (Beresheit 6:17). The Flood washed away the outer, physical forms of a creation whose inner spiritual form had already been destroyed.

Beresheit 7:21-23 uses two descriptions: ויגוע, living beings perished, and וימחו מן הארץ, they were wiped from the earth. The destruction involved both life itself and the form through which that life had expressed its purpose.

The body serves the spirit

On the verse ויברא אלוקים את האדם בצלמו, Rashi explains בצלמו as בדפוס העשוי לו, the form prepared for him (Beresheit 1:27). This points to a difference between man and other living beings. In the argument developed here, an animal's physical existence comes first, with its spiritual form serving that existence. For man, the order is reversed: the spiritual form comes first, and the body is there to give it expression.

The divine image is man's essence. The physical body is meant to complete and express it.

With this in mind, we can understand the verse וינחם ה' כי עשה את האדם, Hashem regretted having made man on earth (Beresheit 6:6). The divine image was the foundation of man's creation. When humanity destroyed that image within, the foundation of creation itself was undermined.

The argument is not simply that individual sins required the destruction of the world. Rather, when humanity abandoned the purpose for which it had been created, the world that existed to serve that purpose lost its foundation.

Desire without direction

Rashi describes the corruption of the generation in terms of sexual immorality and idolatry (Beresheit 6:11; see also Pri Tzaddik, Noach 2). The central failure discussed here is the surrender to desire. Idolatry allowed people to justify living however they wished, without answering to Hashem.

The Gemara describes Bnei Yisrael's idolatry as a means of permitting forbidden sexual relationships (Sanhedrin 63b). Rashi also describes corruption spreading to the animal world, with different species mating with one another (Beresheit 6:12).

Rashi says that the generation's judgment was sealed because of theft (Beresheit 6:13). That does not contradict the argument here. The pursuit of desire was the inner corruption; theft was the final expression of cruelty toward one another that sealed the decree.

Why water?

The Midrash cited in the original essay connects the generation's sin through the eyes with its punishment through water. People followed what their eyes desired, setting aside the intellect that should have guided and limited those desires.

Water represents physical substance without a fixed form of its own. It takes the shape of its container. The Hebrew word מים is also plural, suggesting multiplicity: the many separate details of material existence.

Beresheit Rabba (5:1) compares water and man. Before man was created, the waters praised Hashem. The Midrash asks: if water, which has no mouth or speech, can praise Him, how much more should man be able to do so?

Yet the generation of the Flood rebelled. The waters that had praised Hashem first came to cover the earth for forty days and forty nights.

The contrast is the heart of the lesson. Water has no fixed form, yet it fulfills its purpose. Man has been given a spiritual form greater than his physical existence, along with the ability to speak and praise Hashem. When he misuses those gifts, water becomes the instrument that washes away the form he has abandoned.

A world turned upside down

The Gemara (Rosh Hashana 11b) describes Hashem changing the order of the heavenly bodies to bring the Flood. Why was it necessary to change the natural order of creation?

Beresheit Rabba (32:7) explains that people changed the proper order of their behavior, and Hashem changed the order of the world in response. Ordinarily, rain falls and the waters below rise. In the Flood, the waters below broke forth first, and then the windows of heaven opened.

Humanity had reversed its own order, giving desire freedom to rule over the mind. The reversal in nature reflected that reversal within man.

Then came a man named נח.

Noach remembers

Rashi explains Hashem's announcement, "ואני הנני מביא מבול מים על הארץ," as His agreement with the angels who had asked, "מה אנוש כי תזכרנו," what is man that You should remember him? (Beresheit 6:17).

Why is the word אנוש used here, rather than איש? In the reading developed in this essay, אנוש is associated with forgetfulness, like Yoseph's explanation of the name מנשה: "נשני אלקים את כל עמלי," G-d has made me forget all my hardship (Beresheit 41:51).

The generation of Enosh marked the beginning of idolatry and the forgetting of Hashem. Noach moved in the opposite direction. He remembered Hashem and the truth, and Hashem remembered him in the ark: ויזכור אלוקים את נח (Beresheit 8:1).

This remembering is included in the Zichronot section of the Mussaf prayers on Rosh Hashana. It is a remembering of man's purpose and of the possibility of preserving it.

The Maharal connects this idea with the Torah's description of Noach as איש האדמה, a man of the land. Here, איש represents the intellect, and אדמה represents physicality. The spiritual form is meant to guide and rule the material world, rather than become subject to it.

Comfort and renewal

The Midrash (Tanhuma, Beresheit 11) relates that when Adam heard the land would be cursed because of his sin, he asked how long the curse would last. Hashem answered: until a man was born circumcised.

Noach's birth was therefore a sign of comfort: ינחמנו. His name suggests consolation after the regret expressed in וינחם. Being born circumcised represents the mastery of the intellect over physical desire. Berit Mila is a way of bringing the body into the service of Hashem's command.

Noach also brought relief from the difficult work of the cursed ground by introducing tools for working the land (Rashi on Beresheit 5:29). He points toward the repair of Adam's sin and the restoration of the world's purpose.

The Zohar (60a) associates Noach with Shabbat. Shabbat gathers the many details of the world into a point of unity, returning creation to its purpose and completion. Noach represents this same movement: directing the details of physical existence toward spiritual purpose.

The Flood, in this reading, clears the way for that renewal. Hence the phrase כי מי נח זאת לי, "the waters of Noach" (Yeshayahu 54:9).

What can still be washed away?

The Rambam writes that every person has merits and sins. One whose merits outweigh their sins is called a tzaddik; one whose sins outweigh their merits is called a rasha; and one whose merits and sins are equal stands between them. He applies this balance to a community and to the whole world, and describes destruction when sin outweighs merit (Hilchot Teshuva 3:1-2).

How can this be understood alongside Hashem's promise never again to destroy the world through a flood?

The physical Flood will not return, but the spiritual danger it reveals remains. A person can still allow desire to overrule the mind and lose touch with the divine image within. A whole society can lose sight of the spiritual purpose that gives its physical existence direction.

"Washed away" is therefore more than a description of what happened to the world in Noach's time. It is a warning about what can happen within a person when the outer life becomes disconnected from the inner purpose it was meant to express.