It's easy to point to general "wickedness," but the details, as always, are far more interesting, and speak to timeless human failings.
Bereshit Rabbah, that incredible collection of rabbinic interpretations of Genesis, delves into the nuances of their sins. It all starts with the phrase, “God said to Noah: The end of all flesh has come…” (Genesis 6:13). But what, exactly, pushed God to this point?
One explanation, as Bereshit Rabbah 31 points out, hinges on Noah himself. He wasn't just building an ark; he was also a prophet, a moral voice crying out in the wilderness. "He would say to them: ‘Worthless people, do you forsake the one whose voice “shatters cedars” (Psalms 29:5), and bow down to a shriveled tree?’" Noah was calling them out for their idolatry, for turning away from the power and majesty of God to worship false idols.
But the people, sunk deep in their ways, hated him for it. The verse from Amos (5:10) hits hard: “They hated the admonisher at the gate, and they despised the speaker of uprightness.” Think about that. They didn't just disagree with him; they hated him for trying to steer them right. That's a powerful indictment. And, Bereshit Rabbah makes it clear, it was their immersion in robbery, in taking what wasn't theirs, that ultimately led to their destruction.
But there's another layer to this, a second interpretation that’s even more unsettling. It's not just about idolatry and ignoring Noah. It's about the very fabric of their society, the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed.
The text draws on Job 35:9: “They cause people to cry out from their great oppression; they shout out from the strong arm of the multitudes.” In this view, the generation of the Flood wasn't simply divided into good and bad. Both the oppressors and the oppressed were culpable.
Bereshit Rabbah explains: “'They cause people to cry out from their great oppression' – this refers to the oppressed ones; 'they shout out from the strong arm of the multitudes' – this refers to the oppressors. These surpassed those and those surpassed these." It's a chilling symmetry. The oppressors were wicked in their actions, in their greed and abuse of power. But the oppressed? They were wicked in their speech.
Now, what does that mean? Well, the text says they "spoke words of blasphemy because of their plight." Imagine the despair, the anger, the utter hopelessness of being crushed under the weight of injustice. It drove them to curse, to deny God, to lose faith. As a result, "sentence was passed against them. Oppressor and oppressed alike."
So, according to this interpretation, everyone was complicit. The oppressors for their actions, the oppressed for their response. And again, the root cause? Robbery. A society built on injustice, on taking and hoarding, ultimately destroys itself.
It's a stark and sobering reminder, isn't it? It's not enough to simply avoid being an oppressor. We also have to be mindful of how we respond to oppression, to ensure that our pain doesn't lead us down a path of despair and denial. Because, as the story of Noah’s generation shows us, sometimes the flood comes not just to punish the wicked, but to cleanse a world that has lost its way entirely.