Reb Noach

In looking over the Parshat Noach I noticed a leitmotif resting on forms of the word hashchatah - destructiveness. In Breishit 6:11, it says that "vatishachet ha'aretz - "the world had become corrupt/morally destroyed." Verse 12 adds that "G-d saw the land and beheld that it had been morally destroyed by its inhabitants who had all become corrupt/destructive - "Vayar Elokim et ha'aretz, vehinei nishchatah, ki hishchit kol basar et darko al ha'aretz." Therefore G-d decides (line 13), "I am about to destroy them from (Rashi) - or with (Kaplan) the earth" - "ve'hineni mashchitam et ha'aretz."

It dawned on me that what seems to be conveyed here that the flood was more a consequence than a punishment. And it was only the final part of a consequence that the people had already set into motion. They had already destroyed the moral center of the world, there was no civilized world left, just a pathetic distraction of an imitation. G-d had to recreate the world that the people had destroyed and at this point a tragic housecleaning was sadly in order. Even the final form of the word that G-d uses when He says that he will destroy the earth's inhabitants, seems to connote that they had destroyed themselves.

For more, longer, Noach pieces of mine search in Noach in this blog and at parshapost.blogspot.com.

Shabbat Shalom