Talmud Class: What Does the Coda to the Noah Story Say About Noah, About Israel and About Us?

The weekly Torah portion always speaks to our world, but never more so than now. The word hamas is in the third verse of the portion. The presence of hamas spells the ruination, death, destruction of the entire world. "The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness (hamas)." Genesis 6:11 In his JPS Commentary on Genesis, Nahum Sarna observes “hamas here refers predominantly to the arrogant disregard for the sanctity and inviolability of human life.” A violent society will meet a violent end. The world filled with hamas must come to an end. Innocent people will die. That is our portion. Tragically, that is our world. The story is well known, but it is the less well-known coda to the story that also speaks so loudly to our times. Noah and his family survived. They were alive and well. Plus, God promised repeatedly that God would never again destroy the world. The first never again is spoken by God. You might think that Noah was in for better days. The flood is behind him. The death and destruction are behind him. His family is intact. He can now rebuild the world in blessing. Happy days are here again. But the coda tells us precisely the opposite is the case. He gets drunk. He commits some kind of embarrassing sexual immorality, the details of which are deliberately vague. He repeatedly curses his grandson. He sews discord and hatred among his sons and grandchildren. He dies rageful and broken. Oh, and this sad coda chapter lasted hundreds of years, a third of his life. What does Noah’s sad end—after he and his family had survived the flood and the destruction of the world—say about him and, more importantly, about Israel and about us now?