Judaism
Parashah of the week: Noach
“The waters swelled and increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark drifted upon the waters” Genesis 7:18
October 31, 2024 10:46
“The waters swelled and increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark drifted upon the waters” Genesis 7:18
October 31, 2024 10:46He is enclosed in dry safety amid the destructive force of watery chaos on either side. Thanks are owed to God for the miracle of survival. On the other hand, God is the reason the watery chaos is potentially a threat in the first place.
I am speaking, of course, of Jonah.
Jonah was not an obedient man. He ran from the call of the Divine and was therefore tossed amongs turbulent waters, until he was thrown overboard and found himself swallowed by a giant fish. Noah, on the other hand, is known primarily for his obedience. Where Jonah silently turns and flees from God’s command, Noah silently gets to work.
Nonetheless, the narratives hold curious parallels. Both men will find themselves encased in dry safety among destructive waters. Both stories hold underlying themes of universalism and the God of all: Nineveh with its people and its king and its beasts in sackcloth, and Noah with his family and his animals nestled two-by-two and seven-by-seven.
Importantly, despite their many similarities, Jonah is not the story of Noah retold. In Jonah’s version, it is only the man himself who descends into the destructive waters; the corrupt people of Nineveh are not destroyed but rather redeemed. God reminds Jonah at the end of the story: You care so much about this plant that you didn’t even grow. Can’t you imagine My own feelings for Nineveh, with all its people and all its animals?
Instead, perhaps we can read Jonah as a commentary on Noah. Where God’s response in the story of Noah’s Ark was to bring in the destructive waters of chaos and start over with Noah’s family, by the narrative of Jonah, it is the protagonist who needs to experience a reset. God will take any excuse to avoid destruction. Redemption is, indeed, possible.
Nahum Sarna (the modern American scholar) famously adds a third narrative point to this arc of societal corruption and divine response: Sodom and Gomorrah. Sarna points out that it is, once again, a moral failing on a societal level that leads to the divine destruction, indicating an underlying sense of moral universalism to the story of Israel’s God. But this destruction is on a much smaller scale. This time, God is willing to hear the case presented by Abraham that, perhaps, destruction is not the way forward.
In a divine narrative arc from Noah to Abraham to Jonah, we witness the development of a divine yearning for redemption. It simply needs us, on the soil of God’s world, to yearn for it, too.
Rabbi Natasha Mann