Noach (parsha)

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Noach or Noah (נח – Hebrew for the name “Noah,” the third word, and first distinctive word, of the parshah) is the second weekly parshah or portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. It constitutes Genesis 6:9-11:32. Jews in the Diaspora read it the second Sabbath after Simchat Torah, generally in October or November.

Noah's Ark (painting by Edward Hicks)

1 Summary
2 In Rabbinic interpretation
3 Commandments
4 Haftarah
5 Further reading
6 External links

[edit] Summary

[edit] The flood

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his age, who walked with God. (Gen. 6:9.) Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Gen. 6:10.)

God saw that all flesh on earth had become corrupt and lawless, and God told Noah that God had decided to bring a flood to destroy all flesh. (Gen. 6:11–17.) God directed Noah to make an ark of gopher wood and cover it with pitch. (Gen. 6:14.) The ark was to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high, and have an opening for daylight near the top, an entrance on its side, and three decks. (Gen. 6:15–16.) God told Noah that God would establish a covenant with Noah, and that he, his sons, his wife, his sons’ wives, and two of each kind of beast — male and female — would survive in the ark. (Gen. 6:18–20.)

The Deluge (illustration by Gustave Doré)

Seven days before the flood, God told Noah to go into the ark with his household, and to take seven pairs of every clean animal and every bird, and one pair of every other animal, to keep their species alive. (Gen. 7:1–4.) When Noah was 600 years old, the flood came, and that same day, Noah, his family and the beasts went into the ark, and God shut him in. (Gen. 7:6–16.) The rains fell 40 days and 40 nights, the waters swelled 15 cubits above the highest mountains, and all flesh with the merest breath of life died, except for Noah and those with him on the ark. (Gen. 7:12–23.)

Return of the Dove (painting by John Everett Millais)

When the waters had swelled 150 days, God remembered Noah and the beasts, and God caused a wind to blow and the waters to recede steadily from the earth, and the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. (Gen. 7:24–8:4.) At the end of 40 days, Noah opened the window and sent out a raven, and it went to and fro. (Gen. 8:6–7.) Then he sent out a dove to see if the waters had decreased from the ground, but the dove could not find a resting place, and returned to the ark. (Gen. 8:8–9.) He waited another seven days, and again sent out the dove, and the dove came back toward evening with an olive leaf. (Gen. 8:10–11.) He waited another seven days and sent out the dove, and it did not return. (Gen. 8:12.) When Noah removed the covering of the ark, he saw that the ground was drying. (Gen. 8:13.) God told Noah to come out of the ark with his family and to free the animals. (Gen. 8:16.)

Then Noah built an altar to God and offered burnt offerings of every clean animal and of every clean bird. (Gen. 8:20.) God smelled the pleasing odor and vowed never again to doom the earth because of man, as man’s imaginings are evil from his youth, but God would preserve the seasons so long as the earth endured. (Gen. 8:21–22.)

God blessed Noah and his sons to be fertile and increase, and put the fear of them into all the beasts, which God gave into their hands to eat. (Gen. 9:1–3.) God prohibited eating flesh with its life-blood in it. (Gen. 9:4.) God would require a reckoning of every man’s and beast’s life-blood, and whoever shed the blood of man would have his blood shed by man, for in God’s image did God make man. (Gen. 9:5–6.) God told them to be fertile and increase. (Gen. 9:7.) And God made a covenant with Noah, his sons, and every living thing that never again would a flood destroy the earth. (Gen. 9:8–11.) God set the rainbow in the clouds as the sign of God’s covenant with earth, so that when the bow appeared in the clouds, God would remember God’s covenant and the waters would never again flood to destroy all flesh. (Gen. 9:12–17.)

Noah Cursing Canaan (illustration by Gustave Doré)

[edit] The curse on Canaan

Noah was the first to plant a vineyard, and he drank himself drunk, and uncovered himself within his tent. (Gen. 9:20–21.) Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers. (Gen. 9:22.) Shem and Japheth placed a cloth against both their backs and, walking backward, covered their father, without seeing their father’s nakedness. (Gen. 9:23.) When Noah woke up and learned what Ham had done to him, he cursed Ham’s son Canaan to become the lowest of slaves to Japheth and Shem, prayed that God enlarge Japheth, and blessed the God of Shem. (Gen. 9:24–27.)

Noah lived to the age of 950 and then died. (Gen. 9:28–29.)

[edit] Noah’s descendants

Genesis 10 sets forth the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, from whom the nations branched out over the earth after the flood. Among Japheth’s descendants were the maritime nations. (Gen. 10:2–5.) Ham’s son Cush had a son named Nimrod, who became the first man of might on earth, a mighty hunter, king in Babylon and the land of Shinar. (Gen. 10:6–10.) From there Asshur went and built Nineveh. (Gen. 10:11–12.) Canaan’s descendants — Sidon, Heth, the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites — spread out from Sidon as far as Gerar, near Gaza, and as far as Sodom and Gomorrah. (Gen. 10:15–19.) Among Shem’s descendants was Eber. (Gen. 10:21.)

Tower of Babel (painting by Pieter Bruegel)

[edit] The Tower of Babel

Everyone on earth spoke the same language. (Gen. 11:1.) As people migrated from the east, they settled in the land of Shinar. (Gen. 11:2.) People there sought to make bricks and build a city and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for themselves, so that they not be scattered over the world. (Gen. 11:3–4.) God came down to look at the city and tower, and remarked that as one people with one language, nothing that they sought would be out of their reach. (Gen. 11:5–6.) God went down and confounded their speech, so that they could not understand each another, and scattered them over the face of the earth, and they stopped building the city. (Gen. 11:7–8.) Thus the city was called Babel. (Gen. 11:9.)

[edit] The line of Terah

Genesis 11 sets forth the descendants of Shem. Eight generations after Shem came Terah, who had three sons: Abram (who would become Abraham), Nahor, and Haran. (Gen. 11:10–26.) Haran had a son Lot and two daughters Milcah and Iscah, and then died in Ur during the lifetime of his father Terah. (Gen. 11:27–28.) Abram married Sarai, and Nahor married Haran’s daughter Milcah. (Gen. 11:29.) Sarai was barren. (Gen. 11:30.) Terah took Abram, Sarai, and Lot and set out together from Ur for the land of Canaan, but when they had come as far as Haran, they settled there, and there Terah died. (Gen. 11:31–32.)

[edit] In Rabbinic interpretation

The Mishnah concluded that the generation of the flood and the generation of the dispersion after the Tower of Babel were both so evil as to have no share in the world to come. (Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:3.) The Tosefta taught that the generation of the flood acted arrogantly before God, thinking that because they had great rivers, they did not need God’s rain, so God punished them using those same waters. (Tosefta Sotah 3:7–8.) The Tosefta taught that the flood killed people before animals (as seen in the order of Gen. 7:23), because man sinned first (as shown in Gen. 6:5). (Tosefta Sotah 4:11.)

The Rabbis interpreted Genesis 9:1ff to set forth seven Noahite laws. The Tosefta instructed that Israelites should thus not tempt a violation of the Noahite law. (Tosefta Demai 2:24.)

Rabbi Shimon ben Eleazar deduced from Genesis 9:2 that even a one-day-old child scares small animals, but said that the corpse of even the giant Og of Bashan would need to be guarded from weasels and rats. (Tosefta Shabbat 17:19.)

Rabbi Akiva said that it demonstrated the value of human beings that God created us in God’s image, and that it was an act of still greater love that God let us know (in Gen. 9:6) that God had created us in God’s image. (Mishnah Avot 3:14.) And Rabbi Akiva also said that whoever spills blood diminishes the Divine image. (Tosefta Yevamot 8:7.) Rabbi Eleazar b. Azariah and Ben Azzai both said that whoever does not have children diminishes the Divine image (as demonstrated by proximity of the notice that God created us in God’s image (Gen. 9:6) and the command to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 9:7). (Tosefta Yevamot 8:7.)

Rabbi Meir taught that while it was certain that God would never again flood the world with water (Gen. 9:11), God might bring a flood of fire and brimstone, as God brought upon Sodom and Gomorrah. (Tosefta Taanit 2:13.)

The Mishnah taught that the rainbow (of Gen. 9:13) was one of ten miraculous things that God created on the sixth day of creation at twilight on the eve of the Sabbath. (Mishnah Avot 5:6.) Rabbi Jose and Rabbi Judah disagreed whether verses of remembrance referring to the rainbow (Gen. 9:15–16) needed to be said together or individually. (Tosefta Rosh Hashanah 2:14.)

The Talmud deduced two possible explanations (attributed to Rav and Rabbi Samuel) for what Ham did to Noah to warrant Noah's curse of Canaan. (B. Talmud Sanhedrin 70a.) According to one explanation, Ham castrated Noah, while the other says that Ham sexually abused Noah. The textual argument for castration goes this way: Since Noah cursed Ham by his fourth son Canaan, Ham must have injured Noah with respect to a fourth son, by emasculating him, thus depriving Noah of the possibility of a fourth son. The argument for abuse from the text draws an analogy between “and he saw” written in two places in the Bible: With regard to Ham and Noah, it was written, “And Ham the father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father (Noah)”; while in Genesis 34:2, it was written, “And when Shechem the son of Hamor saw her (Dinah), he took her and lay with her and defiled her.” Thus this explanation deduced that similar abuse must have happened each time that the Bible uses the same language. (See also Genesis Rabbah 36:7; Leviticus Rabbah 17:5.)

The Tosefta taught that the men of the Tower of Babel acted arrogantly before God only because God had been so good to them (in Gen. 11:1–2) as to give them a single language and allow them to settle in Shinar. And as usage elsewhere indicated that “settle” meant “eat and drink” (see Ex. 32:6), this eating and drinking was what led them to say (in Gen. 11:4) that they wanted to build the Tower. (Tosefta Sotah 3:10.)

[edit] Commandments

According to Maimonides and Sefer ha-Chinuch, there are no commandments in the parshah. (See, e.g., Maimonides, Charles B. Chavel (trans.), The Commandments: Sefer Ha-Mitzvoth of Maimonides, 2 vols. London: Soncino Press, 1967. ISBN 0900689714. Charles Wengrov (trans.), Sefer HaHinnuch: The Book of [Mitzvah] Education vol. 1, 85. Jerusalem: Feldheim Pub., 1991. ISBN 0873061799.)

[edit] Haftarah

The haftarah for the parshah is:

for Ashkenazi Jews, Yemenite Jews, and Maghrebim: Isaiah 54:1–55:5
for Sephardi Jews: Isaiah 55:1–10
for some Yemenite communities: Isaiah 54:1–55:3
for Italian Jews: Isaiah 54:1–55:5
for Karaite Jews: Isaiah 54:9–55:12
for Frankfurt am Main and Chabad Lubavitch: Isaiah 54:1–10

The parshah and haftarah both tell the power of God’s covenant. The parshah (in Genesis 6:18, and 9:8–11) and the haftarah (in Isaiah 54:9–10) both report God’s covenant with Noah never again to destroy the earth by flood. In the parshah (in Genesis 6:13) and the haftarah (in Isaiah 54:7–8), God confesses to anger at human transgression. In the wake of God’s punishment, Genesis 9:11 and 15 and Isaiah 54:10 and 55:3 all use the words “no . . . more” (lo’ ‘od). The “righteousness” of Israel’s children in Isaiah 54:14 echoes that Noah is “righteous” in his age in Genesis 6:9.

[edit] Further reading

The parshah has parallels or is discussed in these sources:

Atra-Hasis in, e.g., W.G. Lambert and A.R. Millard, Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1999. ISBN 1-57506-039-6
Epic of Gilgamesh tablet 11 in, e.g., James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 93–95. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. ISBN 0691035032
Genesis 1:28.
Isaiah 54:9–10.
Jeremiah 18:1–10; 23:3.
Mishnah: Sanhedrin 10:3; Avot 3:14, 5:6.
Tosefta: Demai 2:24; Shabbat 17:19; Rosh Hashanah 1:3, 2:14; Taanit 2:13; Yevamot 8:7; Sotah 3:6–10, 4:11, 10:3; Bava Kamma 9:31; Sanhedrin 13:6–7.
Genesis Rabbah 30:1–38:14.
Qur'an 3:33–34; 4:163; 6:84; 7:59–64; 9:70.
Zohar 59b–76b.
Thomas Mann. Joseph and His Brothers. Translated by John E. Woods, 5, 8–12, 15–16, 19–24, 35–36, 64, 68, 71, 73, 88–89, 107, 109, 154, 337, 341. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. ISBN 1400040019. Originally published as Joseph und seine Brüder. Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer Verlag, 1943.
Mario Brelich. Navigator of the Flood. Marlboro, Vermont: Marlboro Press, 1991. ISBN 0910395802
Norman Cohn, Noah's Flood: The Genesis Story in Western Thought. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1996. ISBN 0300068239
David Maine. The Preservationist. St. Martin's Press, 2004. ISBN 0312328478.