Parshat Noah - The Ark
by Rabbi Lobel

Rashi (1040 – 1105; Genesis 6:14) asks the following - God has many ways to offer salvation and relief. Why did he make Noah build an Ark? The project took one hundred and twenty years of hard labor and, during construction, people ridiculed Noah and called him crazy. (500 CE; Talmud Sanhedrin 108B)

Rashi answers the Ark was for people to see Noah and ask him what he was doing. Noah would answer, “In the future, G-d will bring a flood upon the world.” The answer was intended to prompt people to repent.

Would building an ark and predicting a flood over a hundred years away prompt people to repent? After a while, wouldn’t people just ignore him? In fact, they did ignore Noah.

That brings us back to Rashi’s original question. Why build an ark for 120 years?

To answer, we must first understand why the generation of the flood deserved to be destroyed.

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 108A) explains that even though humanity was corrupt of moral values, God destroyed the world on the account of “thievery”. The Medrash Rabba (30 CE - 200 CE; Bereishit Rabba 31:5) explains that people didn’t steal outright; they would take tiny bits at a time and then claim each bit they took didn’t constitute theft.

Imagine a customer in a farmers market asking permission to taste a grape but then takes a couple extra. Or an office worker making personal copies or “borrowing” a pen. In each case, the person understands that he’s “technically” stealing but then rationalizes why it’s not “really” stealing or that it’s harmless or that everybody does it, so it’s okay.

As the Path of the Just (1707 – 1746; Chapter 2) explains, man’s inclination blinds him from seeing his wrongdoings. The Path of the Just quotes Jeremiah (600 BCE; 6:8) “No man regrets his sins... They continue in their course like a horse headlong into battle.”

By Noah constructing the Ark he was reminding everyone that G-d was watching and He would “bring a flood upon the world.” In other words, Noah was giving everyone the opportunity to reflect upon their actions and, hopefully, repent.

The first step to toward improvement is to open our eyes and acknowledge we’re acting improperly. Without that, even 120 years of reminders won’t help.