In last week’s parsha, we learned that the first rain in history waited for Adam. Only when a person understood that rain is a need of the world, and davened for it, did the rain come down. This week, in Parshat Noach, rain destroys the world.
This coming Motzei Shabbat, the night of the seventh of Cheshvan, Jews in Eretz Yisrael begin adding וְתֵן טַל וּמָטָר לִבְרָכָה to Shemoneh Esrei. So it is a good week to ask: what turns rain, the gift we daven for, into a mabul (flood)?
וַיְהִי הַגֶּשֶׁם עַל הָאָרֶץ אַרְבָּעִים יוֹם וְאַרְבָּעִים לָיְלָה׃
The rain fell on the land for forty days and forty nights. (Bereishit 7:12)
Rashi – It Started as Rain
Rashi notices a change in the Torah’s language. Here it calls the water גֶּשֶׁם, rain. A few pesukim later (7:17) it says וַיְהִי הַמַּבּוּל, “and the flood was.” Why the change? Rashi, based on the Midrash, explains that when Hashem first brought the water down, He brought it down b’rachamim, with mercy. If the people would do teshuva, it would become גִּשְׁמֵי בְרָכָה, rains of blessing. Even at the lowest depths of evil, Hashem leaves the door open to return. The same waters that brought the flood could have been for a blessing.
120 Years to Ask a Question
That was not the first chance the evil people were given. Rashi (6:14) asks why Hashem troubled Noach to build an ark (teyvah) at all. Hashem had many ways to save him. The answer: so that the people of that generation would see Noach busy with it for 120 years and ask him what it was for. He would tell them that Hashem is about to bring a flood on the world, and maybe they would change their ways (freedom of choice).
Rashi and the Ramban – Sealed Because of Theft
וַיֹּאמֶר אֱ-לֹהִים לְנֹחַ קֵץ כָּל בָּשָׂר בָּא לְפָנַי כִּי מָלְאָה הָאָרֶץ חָמָס מִפְּנֵיהֶם וְהִנְנִי מַשְׁחִיתָם אֶת הָאָרֶץ׃ (6:13)
The generation of the flood was guilty of terrible sins. Rashi himself mentions immorality and idolatry on this very pasuk. Yet when Hashem tells Noach why the end has come, He names only one: חָמָס. Rashi, quoting the Gemara (Sanhedrin 108a), says: לֹא נֶחְתַּם גְּזַר דִּינָם אֶלָּא עַל הַגֶּזֶל, “their sentence was sealed only on account of theft.”
Why theft, more than everything else? The Ramban says, chamas, which means robbery and oppression (the similarity of this word to the name of a modern-day organization Hamas is pretty obvious – המבין יבין), is a מִצְוָה מֻשְׂכֶּלֶת, a mitzvah that human reason understands on its own. We understand inherently that taking what belongs to someone else is wrong. רע לשמים ולבריות, theft is also a wrong toward Heaven.
The Sforno – Everyone Stole From Everyone
The Sforno describes what this chamas looked like. It was not one group of criminals. Everyone stole from everyone else. The owner of a field took from his sharecropper openly, by force, and the sharecropper took from the owner quietly, by trickery. In the end, everything the land grew ended up in the hands of thieves.
The Or HaChaim asks: if the sin was theft, why were the victims punished together with the robbers? One answer he offers matches the Sforno exactly: there were no innocent victims. All of them were robbing, each one to the extent of his ability.
Kli Yakar – Too Small for Any Court
The Kli Yakar adds a point that should make every one of us think. On the words וַתִּשָּׁחֵת הָאָרֶץ לִפְנֵי הָאֱ-לֹהִים (6:11), he explains that “Elohim” here means the judges. The people of that generation stole amounts smaller than a perutah (the smallest coin), and a beit din cannot order the return of less than a perutah. So the stealing happened “before the judges,” in the plain sense. The judges watched it with their own eyes and had no power to answer.
The laws on earth were not matched to the heavenly expectations. This detail hits home with all of us. Haven’t we all, at some point (maybe with a towel from a hotel room), caught ourselves rationalizing that no one would mind?
Malbim – Chamas Breaks the Whole Society
The Malbim explains why chamas brought destruction on the entire world, and not only punishment on individuals. When a person is corrupt in his beliefs or in his own private conduct, the damage is to himself. Chamas is different. It is a sin between a person and his fellow, and it tears apart the very thing that turns a crowd of people into a society: that they function like one body, helping one another and keeping the basic laws that allow them to survive together. When the land is filled with chamas, the community as a whole has been ruined. So the destruction came upon the whole.
Rain and Chamas
Let’s get back to the rain. The Gemara in Taanit (7b) quotes Rabbi Ami: אֵין הַגְּשָׁמִים נֶעֱצָרִין אֶלָּא בַּעֲוֹן גָּזֵל, “rain is held back only because of the sin of theft.” His source is a pasuk in Iyov: עַל כַּפַּיִם כִּסָּה אוֹר, “because of the hands, He covers the light.” The Gemara explains that “hands” means chamas, as the navi says about the people of Nineveh, וּמִן הֶחָמָס אֲשֶׁר בְּכַפֵּיהֶם, “and from the chamas in their hands.” The Gemara further explains that in Iyov 37:11 it says יפִיץ עֲנַן אוֹרוֹ Hashem’s light is another expression of rain (such as a rain-bearing cloud).
In Noach’s time, chamas turned rain into a flood. In every generation, chamas holds back the rain we daven for. And Nineveh, whose story we read in Sefer Yonah at Mincha on Yom Kippur just a few weeks ago, shows the other side: when they let go of the chamas in their hands, Hashem canceled His decree.
The Last Traveler – Seven Cheshvan
Why do we wait until the seventh of Cheshvan to ask for rain in Eretz Yisrael? The Mishnah (Taanit 1:3) brings the view of Rabban Gamliel, and the Gemara (10a) rules like him: we begin on the seventh of Cheshvan, fifteen days after Sukkot, כְּדֵי שֶׁיַּגִּיעַ אַחֲרוֹן שֶׁבְּיִשְׂרָאֵל לִנְהַר פְּרָת, so that the last Jew who came up to Yerushalayim for Yom Tov can reach the Euphrates River before the rain begins. (Whereas, in the Diaspora, they generally wait until Dec 4, which is approximately 60 days after Tekufat Tishrei עַד שִׁשִּׁים בַּתְּקוּפָה (Taanit 10a), which coincided with the start of the rainy season in Bavel.)
The whole land needs rain. Every farmer is waiting for it. And we hold back our own tefillah for rain for a few extra days, so that one person still on the road home will not be caught in it.
That is the exact opposite of the generation of the flood. They took from one another even when the amount was too small to count. We give up something we truly need for the sake of the last person on the road. When that is how we treat each other, the rain we ask for comes as a bracha.
According to Rabbi Eliezer (Rashi 7:11), the mabul began on the seventeenth of Cheshvan, just eleven days after Shabbat Noach this year. MarCheshvan is the month when rain can arrive as a flood or as a blessing. Parshat Noach teaches us that the difference is “in our hands.”
May we be zocheh (merit) גִּשְׁמֵי בְרָכָה in their proper time.
Shabbat Shalom,
Moshe
MarCheshvan 5787