What A Prophet Is(n't)

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The second thing God differentiated in the Creation story—after separating the light from the darkness—was the waters. The waters above (shamayim) from the waters below (mayim), with just that thin firmament holding everything at bay.

And then, a few generations after all of this, when

“God saw how great was humanity’s wickedness on Earth, and how every plan devised by their mind was nothing but evil all the time,” (Genesis 6:5)

God decides to do an almost total hard restart on humanity by way of water—rain for 40 days and 40 nights, covering up everything. Water from the heavens (mayim from shamayim, dig?) filling up the waters (yep, mayim again) down below. Un-differentiating in order to undo.

And who is tapped to be saved? This one guy, Noah (and his family, sure. Though his wife isn’t named in the Torah text, the Rabbis tell us that her name was Naamah).

“Noah was a righteous man; he was blameless in his generation,” (Genesis 6:9)

Genesis tells us. And, a chapter later, God says to him,

“you alone have I found righteous before Me in this generation.” (Genesis 7:1)

The Rabbis are split on what to make of this. “He was the best of his generation” means… what exactly? Was he actually righteous? Or just, like, righteous compared to all the immorality all around him? Was he good, or just less-bad?

With regard to the verse: “These are the generations of Noah; Noah was a righteous man, and wholehearted in his generations” (Genesis 6:9), Rabbi Yoḥanan says: Relative to the other people of his generation he was righteous and wholehearted, but not relative to those of other generations. (Talmud Sanhedrin 108a).

Is it good enough to just be… mediocre?

The Zohar, a Kabbalistic text that emerged in 13th c. Spain, compares Noah to Moses. That is to say, after the Israelites build and start worshipping a Golden Calf in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt, God suggests to Moses that the two of them start the Israelites over—let’s zap these jerks and try again. But Moses argues back, makes the case for saving the people, God relents, agrees to go back more or less to the original plan.

On the other hand, here, when God tells Noah to go build a boat because most of humanity is about to get offed? Noah is silent. As the Zohar notes,