Parashat Noach: And the Earth Was Filled with Violence

Mesopotamian texts predating the Torah by centuries describe a flood story almost identical to the biblical account. The crucial difference lies in the motive: in those myths, the gods are angered by human noise; in the Torah, the reason is moral. “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And God said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’” (Genesis 6:11–13).

The sin that changed everything

What is hamas, “violence,” in this passage? Commentators from the early midrashic literature through Rashi explain it means robbery – not murder or rape, but theft. This is the sin that provoked God to destroy all of humanity. In the Talmud, Rabbi Yohanan expresses amazement and rebuke: “Come and see how great is the power of robbery, as the generation of the flood violated every precept, but their sentence to be destroyed was not sealed until they extended their hands and engaged in robbery, as it is stated: ‘For the earth is filled with robbery through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth’” (Sanhedrin 108a).

The Flood generation committed every sin imaginable. Yet it was robbery – specifically – that became the straw that broke the camel’s back. Why?

The petty theft that destroyed a society

I would like to follow the midrash Bereshit Rabbah to unravel this. The midrash distinguishes between ordinary robbery (gezel) and a type of robbery called hamas: “Rabbi Ḥanina said: ‘Injustice involves less than a peruta and robbery involves a peruta’” (Bereshit Rabbah, Noah, 31). If so, our puzzlement only deepens. If hamas is petty robbery, the theft of trivial things, why was the world destroyed because of it? The answer appears later in the midrash: “This is what the members of the generation of the Flood would do: One of them would take out a basket filled with lupin beans [to the marketplace]. One person would come and take less than a peruta worth [of beans] and another one would come and take less than a peruta worth; less than the amount for which one would be able to collect compensation in court. The Holy One blessed be He said to them: ‘You acted improperly; I, too, will act improperly with you.’” (ibid.)

Each theft was tiny – below the legal threshold for prosecution. But the people came in droves, each taking a minuscule amount. The result: the lupin seller lost his property and livelihood, yet no one could be held accountable.

When the system itself becomes corrupt

The Flood generation was not destroyed by powerful crime families. It was destroyed by masses of callous, indifferent people who exploited legal loopholes to impoverish their neighbors. The judges – those meant to protect victims – failed in their duty. The judges should have ensured that unreasonable things did not happen under the cover of the law; that the law would not be made into a spade to dig with, a tool for destroying social relations and for exploiting and harming people. The Flood comes because of a corrupt society that failed to establish a legal system with the freedom to protect the citizen beyond the dry letter of the law.

A word transformed in our time

The word hamas has acquired new, horrifying meaning. There is no connection between the Arabic acronym and the Torah’s hamas – they merely sound the same. Yet as an Israeli Jew, I cannot hear this word without thinking of October 7. Hamas commits atrocities legitimized by ideology: religious justification for some, national liberation for others. Like robbery cloaked in law, terrible crimes are committed through a distorted use of justice itself.

“The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with hamas.” When the earth fills with fervent ideological movements that commit crimes in the name of God and justice, “the end of all flesh” may come.

Lior Tal Sadeh is an educator, writer, and author of “What Is Above, What Is Below” (Carmel, 2022). He hosts the daily “Source of Inspiration” podcast, produced by Beit Avi Chai.

For more insights into Parashat Noach, listen to “Source of Inspiration” (in Hebrew).

Translation of most Hebrew texts sourced from Sefaria.org
Main Photo: The Prophecy of the Flood (engraving by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld from the 1860 Bible in Pictures)\ Wikipedia