Noach: God's Tears

A powerful thread in understanding the destruction wrought in Parshat Noach is a feminist tendency to see God as mourning, even crying, as part of the process of destroying the world in the flood. Rabbi Abigail Treu, writing for JTS, quotes a powerful midrash from Bereishit Rabbah:

ד''א "ויהי לשבעת הימים" א''ר יהושע בן לוי ז' ימים נתאבל הקב''ה על עולמו קודם שיבא מבול לעולם, מאי טעמא "ויתעצב אל לבו" ואין עציבה אלא אבילות, שנאמר "נעצב המלך על בנו

Another interpretation of “And on the seventh day... [[after Noach and his family went into the Ark - A.H.] the waters of the Flood came upon the earth]” (Gen. 7:10): Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Seven days the Blessed Holy One mourned for God’s world before bringing the flood, the proof being the text, “[And God regretted that God had made humans on earth,] and God’s heart was saddened” (Gen. 6:6), and there is no “sadness” that isn’t mourning, as is is said “The king grieves for his son” (II Sam. 19:3).

This midrash attempts to explain why there is a seven-day gap between God sending Noach, his family, and all the animals to shelter in the ark and when the flood actually began. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi casts these days as a shiva, a formal mourning period. Just as the language of God’s sadness over the state of humankind is described as “etzev,” sadness, so too this language is used for King David mourning for his son, and therefore we know that this verbal root connotes official mourning. 

Treu invites us “to imagine God mourning for Creation that is now doomed to die.” She says:

The image of a mournful God is, for me at least, a helpful one. We know the emotional value of a seven day period of mourning in which to come to terms with our loss, and the idea of God “sitting shiv’ah” for the losses of the Flood invites us to imagine a God whose being is complicated and nuanced.

Rabbi Dr. Sue Levi Elwell, writing for ReformJudaism.org, also addresses these themes. She asks us to wonder:

When did the Holy One regret the decision to wipe away all but a remnant of Creation? Was the thunder that shook the earth an echo of God's sobs? How many of the torrents, then and now, are God's tears?

I am struck by these images of God mourning, of the Flood as Divine tears. But what if God’s sadness does not contradict but instead coexists with the fury we so often assign to God in destroying the world with water?

At the beginning of Parshat Noach, we are  told about the moral rot of the earth that has led God to plan its destruction:

וַתִּשָּׁחֵת הָאָרֶץ לִפְנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים וַתִּמָּלֵא הָאָרֶץ חָמָס׃

The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness.

(Genesis 6:11)

Traditional commentators suggest several options for what the “corruption” and “lawlessness” are. One interpretation is offered by the Ibn Ezra:

חמס:" בגזל ועשק וקחת גם הנשים בחזקה”

"Lawlessness:” With thievery and oppression and also taking women by force.

Perhaps Ibn Ezra was picking up on a strange moment at the end of Parshat Bereishit. In the verse before God sees “how great was man’s wickedness on earth” (Bereishit 6:5) and two verses before God regrets creating humankind, we encounter mysterious characters, the Nephilim:

הַנְּפִלִים הָיוּ בָאָרֶץ בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם וְגַם אַחֲרֵי־כֵן אֲשֶׁר יָבֹאוּ בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים אֶל־בְּנוֹת הָאָדָם וְיָלְדוּ לָהֶם הֵמָּה הַגִּבֹּרִים אֲשֶׁר מֵעוֹלָם אַנְשֵׁי הַשֵּׁם׃

It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth—when the divine beings cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.

(Bereishit 6:4)

This verse is hard to parse — what is the exact relationship between the nephilim and the “bnei elohim,” translated here as “divine beings” (or, if you’re frum, perhaps the children of powerful people)? Who are Nephilim? 

What is clear, though, is that seemingly the precipitating incident for God’s sadness and regret, God seeing “wickedness” and wishing to destroy the world, was the interaction between the “bnei elohim” and the “bnot ha’adam,” the human daughters. It seems that the bnei elohim, whether identical to the Nephilim or not, were certainly more powerful than the human women they slept with. This was perhaps a rash of powerful, forceful men coercing women into sexual encounters and relationships. 

Perhaps God’s mourning, and God’s tears that form the flood, is on behalf of these women. God looks out at the world and wants to cry — and scream — because the world God has created has become a place where this kind of violence and harm is endemic. God might be brought to tears by destroying the world, but God’s tears also could be the vehicle by which the world is destroyed.

In the conclusion of her compelling and important book “Rabbinic Tales of Destruction,”* about Bavli Gittin’s stories about the destruction of the Temple, Rabbi Dr. Julia Watts Belser analyzes the theology of the extended “tanuro shel Achnai” story. While I won’t delve into the story here, Watts Belser asserts that

“[this story’s] God is a God who cannot countenance [a person’s] tears, who is overwhelmed by [their] grief, who feels [their] suffering so intensely that the divine response engulfs the entire world. This is a God whose empathy comes utterly unbound, a God whose feeling shatters the earth in the wake of one man’s pain.”

(Page 202)

Later in the chapter, Watts Belser writes that “Bavli Gittin’s God, it seems, is a God who champions the victims of violence, a God so moved by heartbreak that God will let the sanctuary be overrun, let the temple go up in flames, rather than turn away from tears,” (page 206).

Perhaps this is the God of the Flood, too. Not a God who responds in a measured way, but a God who sees pain and oppression and is overwhelmed by it, who cannot help by cry. God “comes utterly unbound” and destruction follows.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I look around at the world and this is the God I need: a God who sees how profoundly wrong things are and simply cannot bear it. I want the fountains of the great deep to burst apart and the floodgates of the sky to break open (Noach 7:11).

After the flood, God gives Noach the rainbow as a sign of Divine covenant:

אֶת־קַשְׁתִּי נָתַתִּי בֶּעָנָן וְהָיְתָה לְאוֹת בְּרִית בֵּינִי וּבֵין הָאָרֶץ׃ וְהָיָה בְּעַנְנִי עָנָן עַל־הָאָרֶץ וְנִרְאֲתָה הַקֶּשֶׁת בֶּעָנָן׃ וְזָכַרְתִּי אֶת־בְּרִיתִי אֲשֶׁר בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵיכֶם וּבֵין כׇּל־נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה בְּכׇל־בָּשָׂר וְלֹא־יִהְיֶה עוֹד הַמַּיִם לְמַבּוּל לְשַׁחֵת כׇּל־בָּשָׂר׃

I have set My bow in the clouds, and it shall serve as a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember My covenant between Me and you and every living creature among all flesh, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

(Noach 9:13-15)

The rainbow is often interpreted as a sign of God’s anger. Rashi, for example, says:

"בענני ענן:" כְּשֶׁתַּעֲלֶה בְמַחֲשָׁבָה לְפָנַי לְהָבִיא חֹשֶׁךְ וַאֲבַדּוֹן לָעוֹלָם:

"When I bring clouds over the earth:” When it occurs to Me to bring darkness and destruction to the world.

In other words, when God wants to destroy the world, instead God sends a rainbow as a reminder that God has promised not to. This is typically taken to mean that the rainbow should cause us to fear, that God has been angered enough to wish God could once again wipe out all of Creation. 

But perhaps the rainbow can be seen as God recognizing the destruction that is already present, and crying out in pain alongside those who are oppressed. God may not destroy the world anymore, but God still finds Godself overwhelmed by the tears and hurt of those who are suffering. 

This is a God who knows that there are things that are worth destroying the world over. Let’s destroy those things. 

*Thank you to the wonderful Rabbi Atara Cohen for gifting me this book!!