Questions — Parshah Noach
Parshat Noach Questions
Chapter 6
Who is Noah’s father?
What does JPS translate Tamid Haya Be-Dorotav as “blameless in his generation”?
Who is Noah's wife and why isn’t she named as the mother of his children?
Why are we told, at first, that the earth became corrupt and not that the people on the earth became corrupt? How can the people corrupt the earth? What is lawlessness if there are no laws? If there are laws, where would they have come from? Are we to understand this law to be natural law?
Is natural law a Jewish concept? Does it fit within the realm of Jewish concepts and Jewish law as it is later received from God in the other books of the Humash? It is a Jewish mystical belief that Torah existed(s) before creation. Are we supposed to imagine that the people in Noah’s day should have known and observed Torah law? Isn’t this contradicted within this parshah?
Why would God destroy the earth with its human inhabitants? Would God then also destroy the heavens or what is referred to in Talmud as “the foundations of the world”? Would God give up or try again?
How does Noah know or understand what an ark is? Is Noah able to imagine what the flood might be or does he act on God’s command because he is acting on “faith” as Abraham would later when God told him to sacrifice Isaac? The ark is kind of a strange boat, but Noah doesn’t ask any questions.
Does Noah understand what it is for God to destroy everything? Why does he say nothing to God? He doesn’t even thank God for making a covenant with him and promising him that he will survive with his family. The covenant that God offers him is a little vague. If Noah builds the Ark that will be the thing that keeps him and his family alive, and brings all of the animals and food to keep him and his family and all of the animals, they will all survive, but what life will be like in that time is just a mystery. Why doesn’t God give Noah any promise of future descendants?
Chapter 7
In this chapter, God actually refers to Noah simply as “Tsadik.” Why here does God speak without what earlier seemed like a qualification? What model for Tsadekus would Noah have had from among the other inhabitants of the earth. Is his Tsadekus innovative?
In this chapter there is a distinction between clean and unclean animals that we had not heard before. The laws on this appear only much later in Torah. How does Noah get the information that he would need to make this distinction?
The animals are said to “come into the ark.” This is treated midrashically. Was it Noah’s responsibility to gather these animals or did they come on their own? Did God speak to them as well? When Noah and his family enter the ark are they uniquely human or are they acting on their animal naturess?
Why is the text so specific about how old Noah is on the day that the flood began? As of yet, we have had no information about the ages of any of the other members of his family.
“All of the fountains of the great deep burst part/ And the floodgates of the sky broke apart.” (7:11) Is there an intelligence to the waters as well as to the earth? Do they resent their separation or do they merely have a tropism to join together as one? Does God cause the fountains to burst and the floodgates to break apart or do they simply fail. Was this a flood that was inevitable as an aspect of creation? How is creation restored by God afterwards? Why do we not hear about this aspect of the post-Flood world?
Why is entry into the ark repeated? It becomes unclear whether Noah’s family and the animals entered the ark because they were called to do so or because of the floodwaters themselves.
Why does the Lord shut Noah in? (And why is it phrased this way? Why not name Noah, his family and all of the animals?) What does this say about the relationship that Noah has with God?
Why are all of the male members of Noah’s family mentioned only after they have entered the ark, and why are none of the women mentioned by name?
Why are we told, in addition to the fact that the waters rose that they swelled (Va-yigberu and Gavru)? What does this swelling refer to?
Why is there no reference to the life that was in the sea, only to the life that was on the land? Were the creatures of the sea and the sea itself uncorrupted?
Why does the JPS translation carry the last verse of chapter seven along as the opening of clause of the first verse of Chapter 8?
