Not just the big picture of Noah and the ark, but some of the why and the how behind this cataclysmic event. It's a story we all know, but Bereshit Rabbah 32 offers some pretty fascinating layers.
The verse says, "It was after the passage of seven days, and the water of the Flood was upon the earth" (Genesis 7:10). Now, why seven days? What's the significance? Well, one explanation is incredibly poignant: the seven days of mourning for Methuselah. – according to some calculations, Methuselah, the oldest man in the Bible, died the very year the Flood began. The Holy One, blessed be He, gave humanity a final reprieve, a chance to repent during this time of mourning. But, tragically, they didn't.
There's another, even more profound interpretation from Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. He suggests that the Holy One Himself mourned the destruction of His world for seven days before the Flood even began. How do we know this? "He was saddened in His heart" (Genesis 6:6). And sadness, Rabbi Yehoshua argues, is a form of mourning. He points to the verse, "The king is saddened over his son" (II Samuel 19:3) as evidence. Can you imagine the weight of that? The Creator, grieving for what was about to happen to His creation.
But what exactly was so terrible that it warranted such a drastic measure? Rabbi Yosei ben Durmaskit offers a stark answer: "They sinned with the orb of the eye." In other words, they coveted what wasn't theirs, using their eyes to desire and ultimately steal. And because their sin was connected to water (tears of desire, perhaps?), the punishment, measure for measure, was also with water.
Then we have the verse describing the onset of the Flood itself: "In the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, during the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the wellsprings of the great depth were breached, and the windows of the heavens were opened" (Genesis 7:11). Rabbi Levi adds another layer to our understanding here: "They acted corruptly with their conduits." He's talking about sexual perversion, specifically infidelity. As a result, the natural order itself was disrupted.
Normally, rain falls, and then the underground depths rise to meet it. As it says in Psalms 42:8, "Depths call to depths to the sound of your conduits." The rain calls out to the underground water to rise up. But in this case, the Bereshit Rabbah points out, the opposite happened. First, "the wellsprings of the great depths were breached," and then "the windows of the heavens were opened." A complete reversal of the natural order, reflecting the moral inversion of the world.
So, what do we take away from all this? The Flood story isn't just about punishment. It's about a Creator who mourns the loss of His creation, who gives humanity every opportunity to repent, and who ultimately responds to the corruption of the world by disrupting its very foundations. It's a powerful reminder that our actions have consequences, not just for ourselves, but for the entire world around us. And perhaps, a call to consider what "conduits" in our own lives might need some attention.