Comentário sobre Gênesis 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.

עשה לך, for your needs so that you will be saved from the impending deluge, as well as the other living creatures in the ark with you.,

Make for yourself. He was to carry out the work himself with Heaven’s help.

עצי גופר, “gopher wood.” A word reminiscent of גפרית, sulphur, a means of destroying by fire, the fate which mankind was guilty of experiencing. Compare the fate of Sodom and Gomorrha which were destroyed by sulphur and fire.

Perhaps they will repent. Question: Would not the building of the ark have an opposite effect, for it may cause them not repent? For they could answer Noach: “If the ark’s purpose is really to save you [from the Flood, this makes no sense. For] Hashem has many ways to save you even without an ark!” The answer is: They knew the Flood would come, as Rashi explained in connection with the story of Lemech’s wives (4:24). But they thought it would come in the distant future. His building the ark showed that it was imminent, thus they might repent. (Nachalas Yaakov)

תֵבָה, ein Behältnis, das nur in dieser Erzählung und in derjenigen der Rettung Moses׳ vorkommt, wo es auch zur rettenden Erhaltung eines Menschen im Wasser dient. Die Ableitung ist dunkel. Ob, wie לֵדָה von יָלד, so תֵבָה von dem chald. יתב, sitzen, abzuleiten wäre, ist zweifelhaft. Jedenfalls ist es der Form nach ein Kasten und nicht ein Schiff. Die Form ist ja unten breit und oben spitz zulaufend, somit der Schiffsform entgegengesetzt. Es sollte ja gar nicht zum Durchschneiden der Wellen bestimmt sein, sondern von ihnen getragen werden. — קנים von קנן, das verstärkte גנן, schützen, umfriedigen, woher denn גן der Garten, קֵן: eine noch engere Umfriedung zur Bergung lebender Wesen: Nest, hier im großen: Tierbehälter. Es heißt nicht לתבה sondern את התבה, der ganze Kasten soll קנים sein, nicht zunächst eine Wohnung für Noa und seine Familie und dabei auch Räume für Tiere, etwa zum Nutzen, sondern der ganze Kasten ein Rettungshaus für lebende Wesen.

עשה לך תיבת, “make an ark for yourself etc;” Rashi comments on this by asking the rhetorical question that “seeing that G-d has unlimited space at His disposal, why did He choose such a compact little ark in which to coop up all the creatures He meant to save?” His answer is that if mankind would constantly see that Noach was totally preoccupied with the construction of this ark as a means to ride out the deluge, perhaps they would take this to heart and become penitents. (Based on Tanchuma) Our author finds this difficult, seeing that G-d had known His hopes would be disappointed, and that was hardly a reason to make life in the ark so uncomfortable for all the creatures in it. He therefore prefers to answer the question in a different manner. He claims that G-d wanted to show the attribute of Mercy that He had done all in His power to encourage people to stave off disaster when they saw how seriously Noach took G-d’s warning. In 7,12 Rashi himself mentions this attempt by G-d to stave off disaster by G-d initially allowing rain which was not accompanied by storms and subterranean sluices opening, to serve as an a additional warning. G-d did all this to convince the attribute of Mercy that further delay was quite useless.

(literally, return to God). עצי גופר GOPHER WOOD — Thus is its name. Why of this species (גפר)? Because of the (גפרית) “sulphur” by which it was decreed that they were to be blotted out.

גפר, a type of light wood, like balsam wood, which floats easily on the water. According to Onkelos it is a kind of cedar wood.

מבית ומחוץ בכופר, “overlay it with tar both from the inside and the outside.” According to Rashi כופר is identical with זפת, pitch. The purpose of the pitch was to protect the wooden structure against the waters which would have penetrated and made it disintegrate in a few days. Some commentators understand the word זפת as a generic term for any insulating material which adheres firmly to the surface to which it is applied.

Of cedar wood. That is its name. [Rashi is answering the question:] Why is עצי written in the plural form, when גפר is singular? (R. Yaakov Taryosh)

כפר (verwandt mit קבר ,גבר) Grundbedeutung: eine schützende oder hemmende Bedeckung; schützend, dass auf den bedeckten Gegenstand nichts von außen einwirke, wie hier, so auch כפרת, Deckel; hemmend, dass das Bedeckte nicht nach außen wirke, so כפר פנים. Zorn hemmen, כפר ברית (Jesaias 28. 18) die Wirkung eines Bundes hemmen. In Beziehung auf Sünde kommt es in beiden Bedeutungen vor: כפר על הנפש וגוי מן החטא, die Person, das Volk, das Heiligtum usw. schützen vor den Folgen begangener Sünden, und ebenso כפר על עון ,כפר פשע וכוי, die Folgen der Sünde hemmen, dass sie nicht auf die Person usw. wirke. כְפַר Häuser, die nur die Bedeutung des Schutzes für den Arbeiter haben: Dorf, im Gegensatz zu עיר, wo die Häuser eine selbständige Bestimmung haben, Träger der ganzen städtischen Kultur zu sein; das Haus des Landmanns ist nicht sein עיר. (Siehe oben 4, 17). כְפִיר ein junger Löwe, der schon anfängt, schützender Anführer eines Löwenrudels zu sein. Hier tritt die Verwandtschaft mit גבר hervor. — Der Name des Holzes גפר steht in Lautverwandtschaft mit כפר, und dürfte vielleicht auch schon dem Holze an sich eine gegen den Einfluß des Wassers schützende Eigenschaft inne gewesen sein.

עצי גופר, “gopher wood;” this is the wood the resin of which yields sulfur. It is not soluble in water, and G-d chose it to remind those who watched it. [Noach included according to this interpretation, as it had taken an act of mercy by G-d to save him and his family Ed.] being used that they deserved to be judged by sulfur. (The material used to destroy Sodom some 400 years later. Compare Genesis 19,24)

קנים ROOMS — Separate cabins for each kind of cattle and beast.

קנים, divided into cabins, small rooms, such as the enclosures allocated to individual birds in a dove-cot. G’d commanded Noach to see to it that each species of animal would have separate accommodation in the ark.

Its name relating to sulphur. I.e., boiling water comes from the earth’s sulfur; see Sanhedrin 108b and Rosh Hashanah 12a. You might ask: How did Rashi know that the water [of the Flood] was hot? The answer is: Here (8:1) it is written וישוכו המים, and about Achashveirosh (Esther 7:10) it is written וחמת המלך שככה. There it means subsiding from a previous heat, as it said before, “His anger burnt within him” (ibid. 1:12). And here also it is written וישוכו, meaning that the water subsided from its boiling and cooled off.

וכפרת אותו מבית ומחוץ בכופר, “you are to seal it from the inside as well as from the outside with pitch;” our sages (Sanhedrin 108) comment on this that seeing mankind had sinned with “boiling water,” they were punished by means of boiling water. [The expression is used in the Talmud to describe ejaculation of heated semen in sexually forbidden intercourse. Ed.] If you were to query that in our experience pitch does not withstand boiling water but dissolves in it, this was another miracle [to show that G-d can use even such material to help save the innocent. Ed.] A different exegesis: The water surrounding the immediate proximity remained cool, whereas the waters further away were bubbling hot. If this were not the correct interpretation, how could we explain that Gog, Sichon and his brothers had survived the deluge? (Compare Talmud Niddah 61, according to the opinion in the Talmud that the deluge had also inundated the land of Israel)

בכפר WITH כפר — This is an Aramaic term for the Hebrew זפת “pitch’’, and in the Talmud (Shabbat 67a) we find the noun כופרא “pitch”. In the case of the ark (cradle) in which Moses was placed, since the waters were not rapid it sufficed that it should be daubed with slime inside and with pitch outside; and a further reason for this was that this righteous person (Moses) should not smell the bad odour of the pitch (Sotah 12a). Here, however, because of the rough waters he had to cover it with pitch inside as well as outside.

וכפרת, verbalised from the word כופר, or זפת, waterproof caulking, pitch or tar. Our sages also describe it as such in Shabbat 67.

Because the waters were calm. You might ask: Why does Rashi bring this here? The answer is: Without Rashi’s above explanation [that כופר means tar] we would not have asked why Noach’s teivah had tar inside and outside, whereas Moshe’s teivah had tar only outside. For they seem to be different — here it says כופר and there it says tar. But now that Rashi explained that כופר means tar, we see that Noach’s teivah had tar just like Moshe’s teivah. If so, why did Moshe’s teivah not have tar on the inside and outside, like Noach’s did? Furthermore, without Rashi’s explanation [that כופר means tar] we could say that כופר is something that is stronger than clay but weaker than tar. Therefore, clay on the inside and tar on the outside [Moshe’s teivah] is the same strength as כופר on inside and outside [Noach’s teivah]. But now that Rashi explained that כופר means tar, the question arises: Why were both not [built] the same manner?

מבית ומחוץ, the reason why the caulking had to be applied both from the outside and from the inside, was so that in case the outside would spring a leak or crack due to the violent impact of the waves, the inside caulking would provide insurance against the people inside the ark getting wet.

Another reason... It seems that when Rashi explained that the waters were calm for Moshe’s teivah, therefore clay inside and tar outside was sufficient, it means as follows: Surely the waters were calm, so clay inside and tar outside was sufficient. But with Noach’s teivah it needed tar inside and out. This raises a question: What is wrong with making it that way also for Moshe? Rashi answers with the second reason: so that Moshe would be spared the odor of tar. This raises the question: Noach was also righteous; [why should he not be spared the odor?] Rashi answers: “But, here at the Flood, because of the force of the water, he tarred it on the inside and the outside.” (Maharshal)