The Genesis of Justice (10 page)

What is the message we are supposed to take from this display of naked, uncalibrated power? We know that God is capable of
bringing floods—any second-rate God can do
that!
But why is this God incapable of a rational, proportional, and individual response to evil? Why must He destroy with so broad
a brush? There are few satisfying responses to this question among the commentators.

Again, there is the “just so” story explanation: There may actually have been a flood in the Near East that wiped out much
of human and animal life in the region. Many ancient cultures include accounts of a huge and destructive flood.
⁴
This terrible event became part of the consciousness and tradition of the biblical writers. A religious explanation was necessary;
hence the story of Noah’s Ark. As anthropological history, this sort of folktale is understandable. As part of a narrative
of divine justice, it cries out for further normative explication.

The traditional commentators focused on several possible justifications: first, the flood was delayed punishment for Cain’s
murder of Abel. If so, such a punishment would truly be unjust, for the guilty murderer himself becomes a builder of cities
and is allowed to live a long, successful life, while his descendants—the innocent along with the guilty—are killed en masse
several generations later. Second, there was what can best be characterized as the “eugenics” argument, namely that “the divine
beings”—whoever they were—had taken “the human women” as wives and procreated with them. There is also a reference to “the
giants” (
nephilim
) who were on the earth in these days. Some have speculated—despite any scientific support—that this bizarre reference may
represent a deep, past, collective memory of a time when early
Homo sapiens
roamed the earth alongside late Neanderthal man or other primitive beings. In any event, God needed to “cleanse” the earth
of such overpowering hybrids, if humanity was to thrive. Any such eugenic solution obviously required the destruction of innocent
babies along with guilty adults, but it sounds indefensible to the contemporary ear.

A midrash analogizes the flood to a natural “epidemic [which] visits the world [and] which slays both good and bad.”
⁵
But the flood was not an epidemic; it was a deliberate punishment inflicted by God.
⁶
Some commentators claim that God did, in fact, give the people a warning and an opportunity to repent. According to this
interpretation, God’s reference to the days of man being 120 years is a veiled threat: Humans have 120 years to shape up or
God will destroy them. A variation on this argument holds that Noah tried to get his fellow humans to stop their violence.
Only when he failed did God carry through with His threat to “blot out humankind.”

The defense lawyer commentators reject the possibility that God’s destruction of the entire world was unjust. God’s justice
is a constant with these commentators; everything else is variable.
⁷
But the God of the Jewish Bible is a
learning
God as well as a
teaching
God, and perhaps He was wrong in flooding the world. He seemed to have acknowledged His error by “repenting” his decision
to destroy the world just as He had earlier “repented” His decision to create man.

When God made His covenant with Noah after the flood, He promised never again to bring any floods to destroy the world. Yet
He knew that people would turn bad again. Indeed, He expressly promises never to “curse the soil again on humankind’s account,
since what the human heart forms is evil from its youth” (8:21). Nevertheless, He absolutely precluded Himself from bringing
another flood. This certainty suggests that God may have realized He made a mistake, one He did not want to repeat. When God
saw how evil man could be, He had a shock of self-realization: He had created this evil creature in His very own image, so
maybe
He too
has the capacity to do evil—a capacity He must learn to control. Like a person who understands that he needs to make a public
promise in order to control his destructive instinct, God bound Himself never to flood the earth again. Even God needs rules.

After
the flood God did what He should have done
before
He killed everybody: He enacted a code of laws that explicitly punished murder by death. “Whoever now sheds blood, for that
human shall his blood be shed.” By doing so, God recognized that the evil inclinations of human beings can be controlled,
or at least in part by law. From now on God would deal with evil in a more calibrated and individualized manner, rather than
by indiscriminate destruction. Moreover, His laws would grow out of the experiences of both man and God, rather than mere
fiat. Man would now understand the need for law, as a result of seeing the consequences of lawlessness.

The image of a God who teaches not only by His successes but also by His failures is an appealing one. Every good teacher
knows that acknowledging mistakes and learning from them is an excellent pedagogical technique—better in many respects than
pretending to be all-knowing or perfect. In my initial year as an assistant professor, I asked a first-semester student a
question about a judge’s instructions to the jury in a case we were studying. He gave me a perplexed look and stammered unresponsively.
I then realized that I had made a mistake in framing the question—I had assumed the case had been tried to a jury, when in
reality it had been tried to a judge. I immediately acknowledged my faux pas. From that point on, the class was much more
relaxed and open. Students were more willing to risk being wrong now that their professor had acknowledged making a mistake.
For several years thereafter I deliberately repeated my mistake.

An important part of the wonder of the Jewish Bible, and especially of Genesis, is the imperfection of every character in
the drama, including the One who plays the leading role. The Jewish God is great and powerful, but even He is not perfect—at
least not in the beginning.

For those who believe that God must be perfect, there is a religiously correct variation on this argument: The perfect God
understands that in order to be a good teacher, He must
appear
to humans to be an imperfect, learning God, open to mistake, argument, persuasion, and repentance. So He speaks in the language
of man, “repenting” His creation.
⁸
We will soon see that He is willing to argue with a mere mortal and even be bested in debate with His creatures. A God who
can admit that His mind has been changed by mere humans is a truly great teacher. Those of us who try to be good teachers
can learn a great deal about pedagogy from the ever-learning God of Genesis.

The story of the flood, therefore, is the story of God’s overreaction to evil; His failure to deal with it in a just manner;
His eventual realization that He did wrong; His promise not to make the same mistake twice; and His enactment of a legal code
to punish individual wrongdoing. Indeed, God’s learning—and teaching—process continues in the next episode of the Bible, when
God seems to backslide and Abraham teaches Him an important lesson about the individualization of justice. The teacher becomes
the student and the student the teacher. After all, somebody had to straighten God out about justice before matters really
got out of hand.

1.
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 1, p. 221.

2.
This question is raised in the midrash by a Gentile and answered evasively.
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 1, p. 222.

3.
The midrash justifies even the killing of the animals on the ground that they too had engaged in copulation with different species.
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 1, p. 228.

4.
The Akkadian and Babylonian civilizations also depict a great flood in their respective histories.
Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 349.

5.
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 1, p. 214.

6.
A divine punishment can, of course, take the form of an epidemic or plague, as it did in Pharaoh’s day. But if it were punishment, as distinguished from a natural phenomenon, it would raise the same moral questions. The flood, as deliberate punishment, is indistinguishable from the fire and brimstone threatened against Sodom and Gomorrah that Abraham protested. God did not make any analogy to an epidemic in that instance. He acknowledged that it would be unjust to sweep away the innocent along with the guilty.

7.
Compare Rabbi Levi Isaac of Berditchev. There is also a tradition suggesting that Noah was wrong for not arguing with God—as Abraham subsequently did—about his plans to destroy the world. Bodoff, Lippman, “The Real Test of the Akedah: Blind Obedience Versus Moral Choice,”
Judaism
42 (winter 1993): 74-75.

8.
In the Book of Job, God says that Satan “incited Him against Job.” Maimonides interprets this divine variation on “The Devil made me do it” excuse—as another example of God speaking in the language of man. See Job 2:3-5, Art Scroll edition, Miesorah Publications (New York, 1994), pp. 22-23.

Now YHWH had said to himself:

Shall I cover up from Avraham [Hebrew for Abraham] what I am about to do? For

Avraham is to become, yes, become a great nation and mighty [in number],

and all the nations of the earth will find blessing through him
.

Indeed, I have known him
,

in order that he may charge his sons and his household after him:

they shall keep the way of YHWH
,

to do what is right and just
,

in order that YHWH may bring upon Avraham what he spoke concerning him

So YHWH said:

The outcry in Sedom and Amora—how great it is!

And their sin—how exceedingly heavily it weighs!

Now let me go down and see:

if they have done according to its cry that has come to me—destruction!

And if not—

I wish to know
.

The men turned from there and went toward Sedom
,

but Avraham still stood in the presence of YHWH
.

Avraham came close and said:

Will you really sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?

Perhaps there are fifty innocent within the city
,

will you really sweep it away?

Will you not bear with the place because of the fifty innocent that are in its midst?

Heaven forbid for you to do a thing like this,

to deal death to the innocent along with the guilty,

that it should come about: like the innocent, like the guilty, Heaven forbid for you!

The judge of all the earth—will he not do what is just?

YHWH said:

If I find in Sedom fifty innocent within the city
,

I will bear with the whole place for their sake.

Avraham spoke up, and said:

Now pray, I have ventured to speak to my Lord,

and I am but earth and ashes:

Perhaps of the fifty innocent, five will be lacking—will you bring ruin upon the whole city because of the five?

He said:

I will not bring ruin, if I find there forty-five
.

But he continued to speak to him and said:

Perhaps there will be found there only forty!

He said:

I will not do it, for the sake of the forty.

But he said:

Pray let not my Lord be upset that I speak further:

Perhaps there will be found there only thirty!

He said:

I will not do it, if I find there thirty
.

But he said: