Howard's Notes Detail - What Evil?

24 January 2009 – Genesis 6:11:13
• 6:11, ארץ(ה) typically means the land or the earth. In this context, the word applies to the land, not the sea. Consequently, the upcoming flood will destroy the only land animals and sea animals will not be affected.
• In 6:11-13, ת-ח-שׁ (sin, corruption, evil) repeats in various forms in these verses. The root also connotes decadence, perversion, destruction, and damage. What exactly was the “sin?”
- According to Rashi, וַתִּשָׁחֵת is an expression of [sexual] immorality and idolatry (other editions add immorality, “for all flesh had corrupted (הִשְׁחִית) its way,” and idolatry), as in (Deut. 4:16):“Lest you deal corruptly (תַּשְׁחִיתוּן).” - [Sanhedrin 56b, 57a] [underlining is mine based on what Rabbi Marder said]
- The extent of evil was so widespread that God’s actions were justified. Further use of inclusive terms such as שרבּ כל, all flesh, illustrates the worldwide totality of the sin. Fox, using the translation “ruin,” writes that repetition of the word suggests not only the “sorry state of society,” but the justification for appropriate and just punishment, i.e., “bring ruin” on the earth (6:13).
- Sin progressed from private acts to accepted public practices, beginning with covert immorality and idolatry and progressing to accepted norms. While in the private, covert phase, people still had a sense of right and wrong. Once people became accustomed and habituated to this behavior, it eventually became publicly accepted.
- There are many answers to the question of what was the sin. Some say the sin was miscegenation between sons of God and Daughters of humans (6:1-4). For others, it was the refusal to have children until late in life (see Sefer Ha-Yachar below); Noah was 500 before his first son was born. Regardless of what the actual sins were, the flood’s purpose was to “cleanse Creation of the flaw that led to its corruption.”
- The “sin” of not bearing children is derived from Sefer Ha-Yachar, an 11th or 12th century work of mythic history. Sefer Ha-Yachar suggests that the flood occurred because people did not “value children” and in effect contradicted the first mitzvoth of procreation. Furthermore, the Torah’s bias in favor of bearing and raising children actually defines happiness. Drawing parallels with today’s society, not everyone wants to bear and raise children, but that is no excuse for not supporting institutions that nurture children such as schools and synagogues. Noah supposedly refrained from having children so as not to bring them into a cruel, sinful world that might be destroyed. Noah’s world was violent, depraved, without role models, and likely without such nurturing institutions.
- See further discussion of חמס below.
• In 6:11, האלהים לפני, before God, refers to the fact that the sin of people mistreating people (as opposed to sinning against God) was an affront to God. God was offended by human immorality. In other ancient epics, no reason for the flood was given. God took responsibility for His creations and punishes them for their sins.
- God was the “ultimate arbiter of human conduct.” Before, “willful self-interest” determined human conduct. Presumably, such “willful self-interest” brought about the sinful behavior and the flood.
- The behavior could also have been in open flagrant defiance of God.
- God’s is typically seen as “slow to anger and abounding in kindness.” In this case, “humanity exhausted God’s limitless patience.” The corruption was so great that God became thoroughly disgusted.
• “חמס“


- Sarna’s definition: a flagrant subversion of law; an arrogant disregard and indifference to human life; a breakdown of society. Sarna’s actual words are “this term … is a synonym of ‘falsehood,’ ‘deceit,’ or ‘bloodshed.’ In means in general, the flagrant subversion of the ordered process of law [and] refers to the arrogant disregard for the sanctity and inviolability of human life.
- To Rashi, it’s robbery, based on Jonah 3:8 [above] and “dishonest gain … which is in their hands.”) - [Sanhedrin. 108a]. See Zornberg below.
- According to S R Hirsch, corruption was flaunted so much that no human institution was able to deal with it. Only the human consciousness could control the crimes that were committed. Such conditions led to disrespect of the law and norms and eventual breakdown of society. A modern-day analogy is that the IRS or California Franchise Tax Board cannot audit every tax return. Governments rely on honesty and voluntary enforcement in tax paying. If not, governments’ revenue would be severely affected and they would be unable to fund services.
• Hirsch also points out that חמס is related to חמץ, vinegar, in that crimes and sins not caught by the human justice system will continue and lead to the ruin of mankind over time, just as turning of wine into vinegar occurs step by step.
• Hirsch’s steps to death of the human conscience and the burial of human society.
o Corruption of morals through sins that no one believes would affect society as a whole and could not prevent continued commerce and business dealings.
o Human institutions’ could deal with robbery through penal codes and prisons. However, once cunning is added to the picture, i.e., sins that can be controlled only by human conscience and moral scruples (not by human institutions), the foundation for destruction of society is laid.

Rabbi Marder carefully pointed out carefully that חמס, pronounced “Khamas,” has no relation to the similarly pronounced Arabic acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement.

• Rav Abraham Isaac Kook [1865–1935], the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine [under the British Mandate], attempted to bridge the gap between secular and religious Zionists, arguing that he could discern the religious yearnings and sparks of holiness in the work of the young socialist Zionist pioneers. His underlying philosophy was one of "fusion," attempting to heal the rift between heaven and earth, between the sacred and the profane.
Kook applied his view of the secular-religious split in the British Mandate in Palestine to comment on the Noach story. Kook perceived a split between heaven and earth, sacred and secular/profane. He saw it in his own time, he saw it in the behavior of the flood generation, and he believed that the supreme religious effort was to work to mend that split.
In his discussion of the Noah story, Rav Kook argued that this rift originated when Cain slew Abel, and became worse in the generations preceding the flood. The men and women of this era were sexually promiscuous and obliterated all standards and boundaries. In support of this idea, he quoted the midrash in Genesis Rabbah stating that men were married to men and even to animals, and that beasts of different species mated with one another. Rav Kook also citeed another midrash in Genesis Rabbah (and quoted by Rashi) that says: When sexual immorality runs rampant, the innocent were punished along with the guilty. He argued that sexuality is a divine gift, with the potential to bring us closer to other people and also to God. The generation of the flood misused this precious gift, exploiting and harming one another, which led also to their estrangement from God.

• Aviva Zornberg speaks of the “pathology of the flood generation.” This generation’s communication among each other “degenerated into a babble of indiscriminate voices.” If sexuality is a means of communication, then a “sexual pandemonium” reigned in which humans lost the ability to openly communicate their sexual differences. Hence, there were perverse relations between man and beast and between men (Sanhedrin 108b). Humans lost the ability to distinguish among themselves, animals, nature, and God. Passing swept away all boundaries.The sin that resulted in the flood, according to Rashi, was sexual sin and idolatry, but what set the process in motion was robbery. This sounds similar to a court conviction for sexual behavior and idolatry followed by a judge’s discretionary sentence based on the seriousness of the crime -- robbing a rape victim of her identity. In other words, the verdict was sealed with a flood.
Robbery is related to these sexual sins through the theft of a victim’s identity. Zornberg called this sexuality “rapacious egotism” based on divine beings taking daughters that pleased them and on Rashi’s observation of the Lord of the Manor taking brides just before their wedding day. This was robbery of the bride’s sense of self that could not be reconstituted. The divine being or noble waited at the bride’s threshold and snatched her away in a fit of arrogant passion and need to master his world. Instead of erotic love, the incident became robbery, barbarism, and sexual cruelty, characterized by “lack of curiosity.” The perpetrator denied the existence of anything beyond his obsession.

• Other observations:
- Lawlessness was no pervasive and taken for granted that God washed away the deadwood after humans destroyed themselves. In other words, mankind effectively destroyed itself with rampant sexual perversion; all God did was wash away the detritus.
- “Curiosity” as defined above seems to be how you treat others, i.e., one way to learn about the world is to ask questions; if not you are lowered to animalistic behavior: eat, drink, sex and little else.

References
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