Noah Warns the Generation of the Flood for a Hundred and Twenty Years

"And Noah was six hundred years old." From here we learn that he was occupied with the ark for a hundred [and twenty] years, and he would say to the generation of the Flood: Why do you not return in repentance, for the Holy One, blessed be He, is destined to bring a flood upon the world and to destroy them? And therefore He commanded him to make an ark, so that he might be saved within it. But they would mock him, and say: It will fall [only] upon his house and upon that man, as it is said, "A torch of contempt for the thought of him who is at ease" (Job 12:5). "A torch" — for Noah was proclaiming to them that they should make repentance. "Contempt" — for they treated him with contempt at the time that he reproved them, for they were at ease and hard as blocks of iron. "Ready for those whose foot slips" (ibid.) — this is Noah, who was ready for the slipping of the feet of the generation of the Flood.