Les Psaumes 78:21 Midrash : Aggadat Bereshit

[3] Another explanation for "And God remembered Noah", The righteous man knows the soul of his animal, etc. (Proverbs 12:10) The righteous one of the world knows the soul of his animal even in its death, even when he is angry, the attribute of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like the attribute of flesh and blood. Flesh and blood [edit. Ruler, like Cesar], when a nation rebels against it, sends legions to destroy it, and it does with it a great destruction and kills the good and the bad. There is no difference between, saying "So-and-so was righteous, so they spared him" and "They killed everyone." But the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like this. When the generation angers Him, He has compassion on them. There is only one righteous person who knows Him and is saved, as it says, "The righteous man knows the soul of his animal in its death." And so it says, "The Lord is good as a stronghold in the day of trouble," etc. (Nahum 1:7) And "The mercies of the wicked are cruel" (Proverbs 12:10) - these are the people of the generation of the Flood, who were more cruel than the floodwaters. Our rabbis said, when the waters rose upon them, as it is written, "The fountains of the great deep burst forth" (Genesis 7:11), and they saw the fountains rising above them, what did they do? They had many children, and each of them would take his son and put him on the abyss and press him down with stones, and the waters would rise over them. And again, when the waters increased, they would take other children of theirs and place them on the abyss. See how the mercies of the wicked are cruel. And how do we know that they did this? Because Job says, "May his compassion be forgotten" (Job 24:20) - his compassion for his children. And what did the Holy One, blessed be He, do to them? He sent a flood upon them from above and broke them, as it is written, "And it broke apart like a tree rising from the earth" (Genesis 7:17).Rabbi Berachiah said, "The harshness of the generation of the flood was greater than any other generation, and their stature was higher. If not for the fact that God punished them from above, they could not have been destroyed, as it is said, 'If we had not been left like a few survivors' (Isaiah 1:9). How was this done? When the Lord saw that they did not die in the depths below, He sent down fire from above and burned them, as it is written, 'fire broke out against...' (Psalms 78:21). Once they saw that they were lost, they sought to overturn the ark. What did the Lord do to them? He encircled them with lions and killed and ate them, as it is said, 'And the Lord shut him in' (Genesis 7:16), and there is no closing in, except with lions, as it is written, 'The God sent His angels and shut the mouths of the lions' (Daniel 6:23). End.