Texts about Righteousness

(15) In my own brief span of life, I have seen both these things: sometimes a good man perishes in spite of his goodness, and sometimes a wicked one endures in spite of his wickedness.

(1) When the righteous come into the world, good comes into the world [with them], and divine retribution is removed from the world, and when they pass away from the world, divine retribution comes into the world, and good is removed from the world.

“These are the generations of Noah; Noah was a righteous man, and wholehearted in his generations,” Rabbi Yoḥanan says: in his generation but not of other generations. And Reish Lakish says: In his generation, all the more so in other generations.

In his generations — Some of our Rabbis explain it to his credit: he was righteous even in his generation; it follows that had he lived in a generation of righteous people he would have been even more righteous owing to the force of a good example.
Others, however, explain it to his discredit: in comparison with his own generation, he was accounted righteous but had he lived in the generation of Abraham he would have been accounted as of no importance.

(3) For when God bade Noah save himself and his household in the ark from the universal destruction at the time of the Flood, he did not intercede on behalf of his generation, but let them perish. It is for this reason that the waters of the Flood are named after him, as it is written, “for this is as the waters of Noah unto me” (Is. 54, 9).

(3) And this is the meaning of: “The path of the righteous is as the gleam of sunlight." It is exactly like the gleam of sunlight! For just as the sun shines constantly, with only the earth creating a barrier, though it is much smaller; so too, Tzaddikim constantly shine. It is only the earth – that is, [the attractions of] this world – that prevents us from seeing their great light. Even though this world is so very small and insignificant in comparison, it still obstructs and prevents us from seeing them, like the example of the coin.

And this is the meaning of: “The path of the righteous is as the gleam of sunlight." It is exactly like the gleam of sunlight! For just as the sun shines constantly, with only the earth creating a barrier, though it is much smaller; so too, Tzaddikim constantly shine. It is only the earth – that is, [the attractions of] this world – that prevents us from seeing their great light. Even though this world is so very small and insignificant in comparison, it still obstructs and prevents us from seeing them, like the example of the coin.

We must refer once more to the distinction between the two ‎categories of righteous people. One category has earned the title ‎‎“tzaddik” because he serves only the one and only true God, the ‎Creator, and believes that this Creator is all powerful and guides ‎the universe in accordance with His wishes...

One of the reasons that he did not pray for his fellow man ‎may have been that he felt inadequate to be able to cancel a ‎decree that God had told him He had issued...

Noach, far from being a boastful individual, proclaiming ‎himself as a major deity, was the very opposite, a humble person, ‎to whom it would not have occurred that a prayer of his would ‎influence God to reverse a decree which He had certainly not ‎arrived at without first having agonized over it.