Commento su Genesi 6:14

עשה לך תבת MAKE THEE AN ARK — There are numerous ways by which God could have saved Noah; why, then, did he burden him with this construction of the Ark? So that the men of the generation of the Flood might see him employed on it for 120 years and might ask him, “What do you need this for”? and so that he might answer them, “The Holy One, blessed be He, is about to bring a flood upon the world” — perhaps they might repent (Sanhedrin 108b).

עשה לך תבת וגו, during the period allocated to them, in order to remind them to do teshuvah.

עשה לך תבת עצי גפר. Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood. In order to understand this verse fully we must refer to Ezekiel 14,14 where the prophet speaks of three men, i.e. Noach, Daniel, and Job who managed to save their own lives due to their personal piety. The prophet there claims that G'd had told him that even if all these three pious men were alive in Jerusalem at that time they could not save the city from disaster though they personally would be saved. The reason all three of these pious men are mentioned is to teach us that even two of them together would not suffice to save themselves at that time in Jerusalem. Some of the earlier commentators wondered that in view of the many pious people who perished during the destruction of the Temple (compare Psalms 79,2 "they have left Your servants' corpses etc."), how was it that if three pious people could have saved themselves that the far more numerous number of pious people who died during the destruction of the city did not manage to save themselves? One of the answers given is that each pious person may have been scattered amongst many sinners, whereas if three pious persons had stuck together they would certainly have been saved by their merits. This may have been the reason that Noach could only be saved after building the ark, i.e. providing a separate environment for himself. As long as he had been surrounded by his compatriots without a מחיצה, dividing wall, he would have been swept away together with them. If Noach had had a few more pious people with him, he and they would have been saved without the need to construct their own environment. Under such circumstances the verse in Psalms 94,15 עד צדק ישוב משפט, that under certain circumstances righteousness could have reversed judgment, would have been applicable. From the fact that Noach was required to build an ark we learn that his sons did not match him in piety. Had they done so, Noach would not have needed to construct the ark but would have been saved in his own habitat. We need to reconcile this with the words of our sages which I have quoted earlier, and according to which Abraham learned from Noach that it was futile to pray for a city with fewer than ten righteous people to be saved. If Noach was the only righteous man in his generation what could Abraham have learned from this? We must therefore assume that though Noach's sons were righteous they were not perfectly righteous people such as their father. When Abraham prayed about righteous people being able to save a town he meant perfectly righteous people, not those whose good deeds barely outweighed their sins. This is the reason that Ezekiel listed the names of outstandingly righteous men such as Noach, Daniel, and Job. He did not refer to three average type צדיקים. We learn from Ezekiel that once the destructive agents have been given permission by G'd to carry out their function, who and under what circumstances someone can restrain them.