Parshat Noach5 min read

Noah Waited Until the Flood Reached His Ankles

Rabbi Yohanan said Noah lacked faith and would not board until the flood reached his ankles, even as Falsehood waited at the door with a plan.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Forty Days Were a Measured Reply
  2. Falsehood Found a Mate at the Door
  3. God Mourned Before the Sentence
  4. Og Clung to the Outside
  5. The Calendar of Water and Return

Noah would not board until the water reached his ankles.

Noah Waited Until the Flood Reached His Ankles Click for full size

Rabbi Yohanan said it plainly, without cushioning. The verse says Noah came into the ark because of the waters of the flood, and Rabbi Yohanan read that because as an admission. Noah was lacking in faith and would not have entered unless the water forced him to. The man Scripture calls righteous, the sole survivor of his generation, the father of the world that came after, hesitated at the edge of belief and needed the flood to make the first step for him.

The Forty Days Were a Measured Reply

Why forty days of rain? Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai connected the number to the Torah, given over forty days at Sinai, which that generation had trampled. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai pointed instead to the human embryo, which takes form across forty days in the womb, the very form that generation had corrupted with its violence and its crossing of every boundary. The punishment matched the shape of the sin. Rain for as long as the Torah, ruin lasting as long as it takes to form a human being from nothing.

The waters themselves came from two directions. The rabbis called the rainfall above the male water, and the waters of the deep bursting from below the female water, and the two locked together with a force meant to unmake the world that humanity had unmade through its conduct. The flood was not random weather. It was a sentence delivered in the language of the crime.

Falsehood Found a Mate at the Door

When the animals filed aboard two by two, Falsehood arrived alone, without a pair. Noah turned it away. The command was clear: two by two. A single traveler, however clever, had no place in an ark organized around partnership.

Falsehood walked out and found Corruption and proposed a deal. "We travel together, and whatever you gain you will share with me." Corruption agreed. They entered together. That is why, the sages said, Falsehood and Corruption have traveled as companions ever since: they made their arrangement at the door of the ark before the waters came, when partnership was the only currency that bought passage.

God Mourned Before the Sentence

Before a single drop of rain fell, the Holy One was in mourning. The verse says God was grieved at His heart, and grief, the rabbis insisted, is the language of bereavement, the word used for a king who has lost his son. For seven days God mourned the world before destroying it. The Judge wept before passing sentence, and the seven days of divine mourning became the seven days of sitting shiva that Israel has observed for the dead ever since.

Rabbi Tzadok mapped the catastrophe onto the calendar. On the tenth of Marcheshvan Noah entered the ark. On the seventeenth the waters came. The world had one week of preparation, one week of mourning, and then the flood began.

Og Clung to the Outside

Three exceptions survived the flood. Noah, named in the verse. The Land of Israel, which the prophet calls a land not rained upon with ordinary rain. And Og, the giant king who would later be Israel's enemy at Bashan, who clung to the outside of the ark and rode the floodwaters on its hull. Noah fed him through a window every day for the year of the flood.

Why was the giant spared? Because even a figure who would become Israel's enemy could be preserved when the world needed repopulation, and because the flood was about total judgment of a wicked generation, not about every creature that had ever drawn breath being unmade. Og survived by proximity to righteousness, riding the ark without being in it, sustained by Noah's daily provisioning through the same plank that separated salvation from the flood.

The Calendar of Water and Return

The sages read the flood like a ledger, both in its justice and in its dates. Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua argued about whether the flood began on the seventeenth of Marcheshvan or the seventeenth of Iyyar, each tying the date to when the Pleiades rises and the springs swell. They tracked the hundred and fifty days the waters prevailed, the slow ebb of a cubit every four days, the ark settling on the mountains, the window opened, the dove sent and returned, sent and not returned. Every detail was counted because the flood was a sentence with a structure, and a sentence has a beginning and an end, and knowing the structure is part of understanding the justice.

Noah waited for the command to leave with the same faith he had needed to board. The door could have been forced. It was not. He sat in the ark like a servant waiting for the owner to return, and when the owner returned and swore never to flood the world again, Noah stepped out into a world that was wet and empty and ready for a second beginning.

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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 56:1Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

Translation of the source text.Torat Emet (Yalkut Shimoni) · CC-BY-NC

"For in seven more days I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days" (Genesis 7:4). Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai said: they transgressed against the Torah, which was given in forty days; therefore forty days and forty nights. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai said: they corrupted the form [of the embryo], which is given form in forty days; therefore forty days and forty nights. "And I will blot out all existence" (Genesis 7:4). Rabbi Berekhiah says: its sustenance. Rabbi Avin said: its standing things. Rabbi Levi and Resh Lakish said: this is Cain, who was hanging in suspension, and the flood came and washed him away, as it is said, "and He blotted out all existence" (Genesis 7:23). "And Noah did according to all that the LORD commanded him" (Genesis 7:5) - this refers to the gathering of animal, beast, and bird.

"And Noah was six hundred years old, and the flood was water" (Genesis 7:6). Rabbi Judah and Rabbi Nehemiah: Rabbi Judah says the year of the flood does not count in the reckoning. Rabbi Nehemiah said to him: even though it does not count in the reckoning of his years, it does count for the seasons and calculations. "And Noah came... because of the waters of the flood" (Genesis 7:7). Rabbi Yohanan said: Noah was lacking in faith. Had the waters not reached his ankles, he would not have entered the ark.

"Two by two they came to Noah" (Genesis 7:9). Falsehood came and wished to enter. Noah said to it: you cannot, unless you take yourself a mate. It met Mishap [Calamity] and said, "Where do you come from?" It answered, "From Noah, where I went wishing to enter the ark, and he would not let me in, but said: if you have a mate you may enter. Would you like to be my mate?" It said, "And what will you give me?" It answered, "I undertake with you that all I acquire, you shall take." They made a pact between them that whatever Falsehood gathers, Mishap shall take. The two of them entered the ark. When they came out, Falsehood would go and gather, and Mishap would take whatever came first. Falsehood said, "Where is all that I acquired?" It answered, "Did you not make a pact with me that whatever you gather I shall take?" And Falsehood had no opening to reply. Therefore it is said, "He conceives mischief and gives birth to falsehood" (Psalms 7:15). "And it came to pass after the seven days" (Genesis 7:10). Rava said: these were the days of mourning for Methuselah the righteous, to teach you that the eulogy of the righteous holds back calamity.

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Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 56:6Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

Translation of the source text.Torat Emet (Yalkut Shimoni) · CC-BY-NC

Another interpretation: For seven days the Holy One, blessed be He, mourned over His world before He brought the flood. What is the reason? "And it grieved Him at His heart" (Genesis 6:6), and grief means nothing other than mourning, as you say, "The king was grieved over his son." Rabbi Tzadok says: On the tenth of Marcheshvan he entered the ark, and on the seventeenth of it the waters of the flood came down from heaven, which are male waters, and the waters of the deep rose up, which are female waters, and these joined with those and grew mighty to destroy the world, as it is said, "And the waters prevailed" (Genesis 7:19). And all that existed was wiped out except Noah, as it is said, "And only Noah remained," and except Og king of Bashan, for he sat himself upon one beam beneath the ladder of the ark and swore to Noah and to his sons that he would be a perpetual servant to them. What did Noah do? He bored a single hole in the ark and would hand him his food every single day, and so he too survived, as it is said, "For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the Rephaim" (Deuteronomy 3:11). And except the Land of Israel, upon which the waters of the flood did not come down, as it is said, "Son of man, [say to her,] you are a land that is not cleansed, [it is] not rained upon in the day of indignation" (Ezekiel 22:24).

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Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 56:7Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

Translation of the source text.Torat Emet (Yalkut Shimoni) · CC-BY-NC

"And the waters of the flood were upon the earth." They sinned with the eyeball, which resembles water; therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, punished them only with water. They corrupted their channels; therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, changed for their sake the order of the world. The way of the world is that rain comes down and the deep rises, but here, "On this day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth" (Genesis 7:11). "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life." Rabbi Eliezer says: That day, the seventeenth of Marcheshvan, was a day on which the constellation Pleiades rises by day and the fountains grow strong; and because they changed their deeds, the Holy One, blessed be He, changed things for them and took two stars from the Pleiades and brought a flood upon the world. And Rabbi Yehoshua says: That day, the seventeenth of Iyyar, was a day on which the constellation Pleiades sets by day and the fountains diminish; and because they changed their deeds, the Holy One, blessed be He, changed for them the orders of creation, and raised the Pleiades by day, and took two stars from the Pleiades, and brought a flood upon the world. It works well for Rabbi Yehoshua, for thus it is written "second [month]"; but according to Rabbi Eliezer, what is "second"? Second to judgment. It works well for Rabbi Yehoshua, since He changed; but according to Rabbi Eliezer, what is "changed"? It is as Rav said: The generation of the flood corrupted with boiling heat and with boiling heat they were judged, for it is written here "And the waters subsided [vayashoku]," and it is written elsewhere, "And the king's wrath was assuaged [shakhakha]" (Esther 7:10). "And the rain was upon the earth." Until the twenty-seventh of Kislev. "And the waters prevailed a hundred and fifty days" (Genesis 7:24), until the first of Sivan, and the waters stood still and motionless, and the wicked were judged in them, each one according to his deeds, from the twenty-seventh of Kislev until the first of Sivan. "And the waters abated at the end of a hundred and fifty days" (Genesis 8:3); from the first of Sivan they began to diminish, as it is said, "And the waters went on diminishing until the tenth month, in the tenth, on the first of the month"; the tenth from the falling of the rains is Av, since part of a day counts as the whole. And the waters were fifteen cubits high; they were spent over sixty days, a cubit every four days, a handbreadth and a half each day. "And the ark rested in the seventh month" (Genesis 8:4); this is Sivan, when you begin to count from when the rains ceased falling; the ark is found to rest on the sixteenth day, so how high was it above the earth? Four cubits; and submerged within the water, eleven cubits. "And it came to pass at the end of forty days" from the end when the waters began to diminish, on the tenth of Tammuz. "And Noah opened the window of the ark," "And he sent forth the dove" (Genesis 8:8). He waited seven days, "And he sent forth the dove again." He waited another seven days, and he sent forth the dove, and it did not return to him again, but went and settled upon one of the mountains. "In the tenth month, on the first of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen" (Genesis 8:5); so when you begin to count from the first of Av until the first of Tishrei, the waters were absorbed. "And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first of the month"; we learn that one day entering a month counts as the whole month, and one month of the year counts as the whole year. One day enters the month, they count it a full month; one month enters the year, they count it a full year. "The waters were dried up from off the earth"; they were absorbed in their place, and the earth was still moist and like a thick paste; they waited and did not sow until rains came down for them, because the waters of the flood were for a curse and not included in blessing. "And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month" (Genesis 8:14), this is Marcheshvan, "the earth was dry," and it became bare ground. So there are twelve months and eleven days. And those eleven days, what is their nature? They teach that the days of the solar year exceed the days of the lunar year by eleven days. "And the windows of heaven were opened." He took two stars from the Pleiades and brought a flood upon the world, and He took two stars from the Bear and restored them to the Pleiades. "And He filled it from its own"; the cistern is not filled from its own rim. The measure of good is greater than the measure of punishment: regarding the measure of punishment He says, "And the windows of heaven were opened"; but regarding the measure of good, what does He say? "And He commanded the skies above and opened the doors of heaven" (Psalms 78:23). "On this very day Noah came" (Genesis 7:13). Had Noah entered the ark by night, his whole generation would have said, "In such and such a way we did not know; had we known of it, we would not have let him enter." Rather, "on this very day," and let him who has the strength speak. "They and every beast" (Genesis 7:14). They are the essence, and all the rest are secondary to them. "Every bird, every wing"; this excludes those plucked, maimed, castrated, and lacking limbs, which are unfit for the sons of Noah as offerings. "And they that came in, male and female" (Genesis 7:15-18). He said to Him, "I am a hunter." He said to him, "It is no concern of yours"; it is not written here "those that were brought in" but "those that came in," of their own accord they came. "And the flood was forty days upon the earth." So was Noah's ark submerged in the water like a ship that stands in the harbor. "And the waters prevailed." So was Noah's ark floating upon the face of the waters as upon two beams, as from Tiberias to Susita.

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