Divine Disappointment Reckoning with God Session II November 16th, 2022

The Zohar, volume 1, p 61a, translation by Harry Spering and Maurice Simon, Soncino Press: London, 1934, p. 198-9

And God saw the earth and behold it was corrupt. It was corrupt because “flesh had corrupted its way,” in the sense we have explained. R’ Hiyya adduced the following text: And God saw their works that they turned from their evil way (Jonah 3:10). See now, he said, when the sons of men are righteous and observe the commands of the Torah, the earth becomes invigorated, and a fullness of joy pervades it, because then the Shechinah [G-d’s immanent Presence] rests upon the earth, and there is thus gladness above as well as below. But when men corrupt their way and do not observe the commands of the Torah, and sin before their Master, they, as it were, thrust the Shechinah out of the world, and the earth is thus left in a corrupt state. For the Shechinah being thrust out, another spirit comes and hovers over the world, bringing with it corruption… R’ Hiyya continued: It is written here, in connection with Noah, And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. Contrast this with the verse, And God saw their deeds, that they turned from their evil way (Jonah 3:10). There the earth called to God, reaching out towards heaven

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and beautifying her face, as it were, like a woman trying to please her husband; so the earth tried to please God by raising up for Him righteous children. But here, when the generation of the flood did not repent of its sins, it is written, And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, like a faithless wife who hides her face from before her husband. But when mankind committed sin upon sin openly and flagrantly, then the earth became brazen-faced like an abandoned woman without any sense of shame, as it is said on another occasion, And the earth was defiled under its inhabitants (Isaiah 24:5). Hence this is the connection here: God saw that the earth was corrupted. Why? Because all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.

Beit Yaakov commentary to Genesis 6:11, cited in Torah Shlema and translated by Rabbi Dr. Harry Freedman

“And the earth was corrupted”—va-tishaheth, root shaheth. The use of this particular root, which is the same as that used for the destruction by the flood in verse 14, brings home the fact that this punishment was measure for measure

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch to Genesis 9:15, in The Pentateuch, vol. 1: Genesis, p. 182

"For is the rainbow anything else but the one pure complete ray of light, broken up into seven degrees of seven colours, from the red rays nearest to the light to the violet, most distant from the light, losing itself into the darkness; and from the one to the other are they not all rays of light, and combined all together, do they not form the one complete pure white ray? Could not this perhaps be meant to say: the whole manifold variety of all living creatures from the 'most alive Adam, the 'Adam, 'red one,' 'Man,' nearest to the godly, down to the lowerst, humblest form of life in the humblest worm, 'every living soul that is in all flesh' (v. 16)…God unites them all together in one common bond of peace, all fragments of one life, all refracted rays of the one spirit of God, even the lowest, darkest, most distant one, still a son of the light?