In this week’s parsha we learn about the generation of the flood: the antediluvian riff raff that was swiftly done away with, using what one midrash calls boiling waters of the deep. Eek.
As of recent I have been learning some material from Kings I—about the transition of power from King David to King Shlomo, and also the tarnished luster of Shlomo’s reign. The text outlines deals that Shlomo made with local kingdoms in exchange for lavish materials and artisans to fashion the Beit Hamikdash (God’s holy temple) and the King’s palatial holdings. I’ve also learned that difficult truths pulsate under this saga.
Now I’m not the type of person who enjoys “guilting" people. Quite the contrary, actually, because God loves all of God’s creations, as we’re about to see, even when we anger God. Shlomo must have had a good press agent, because even he comes out OK, despite his not-so-nice qualities. Firstly let’s examine conditions for the workers Shlomo hired; those tens of thousands who were employed to fell trees, construct, craft, and mine stones, were forced laborers. Plain and simple. If one was conscripted to do service for the King, he didn’t have much of a choice. It’s not as though he could say, “well Shlomo, let me check my calendar and get back to you.” Yes, it’s true, we’re not perfectly analogous to King Shlomo. For certain. But there are important things to consider.
Our flawed hero King Shlomo goes on to dedicate statuary and temples to other gods. I have to pause here to inject, that if I ever learned these facts about Shlomo in Hebrew School, then there must be massive holes in my memory, and that’s just disturbing. Curiously, I recall that my dad Shmuel Shalom Zynger z’l was very hip to both the exotic genius and the excesses attributed to King Shlomo: that he could talk to animals, like an ancient Dr. Doolittle, and that he had hundreds of wives.
This got me thinking about what it means to be a king in general. Kings have access to sumptuous resources, and can summon most anything their whims desire, be it the object of a fad or otherwise. Kings get what they want, and they will pay great sums to acquire stuff and status. But what if there were a king who checked, for example, if the metals used in his new iPhone 4S, were mined humanely? I suppose I sort of feel like a king when taking a moment to examine the comforts I enjoy.
Oddly, this got me thinking about the generation of the flood, and now we’re back in this week’s parsha. Genesis 6:5-6 reads,
“And the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.”
So this is pretty heavy. God is not pleased with these people, but it also sounds like God loves these people. Anyhow, we know what happens. God decides to bring about a flood and destroy everything that lived on dry land. And let’s not pretend that God was ready to be merciful. For example, lest someone fought for dear life by floating on a scrap of driftwood , eating dead seagulls, like up in Halifax or somewhere. Nope. The waters of Genesis 6-8 remained for 150 days . . . I guess that 150 days was just to make sure.
With all this however, I do not posit that we today are the generation of the flood, nor are we all living lavishly on the backs of the poor and oppressed, like some despotic rulers do. Well not intentionally or callously at least. Seriously though, I do think there is something to be considered in all of this. That while we are not constructing palaces to false gods, we do find comfort in all the things which distract us from the glory of God’s creations, and that glory includes each one of us. The generation of the flood must have been pretty bad for God to have taken actions ensuring that the whole generation perished. Indeed, God would start over again with people like Noah. Cue double rainbow.
What does it mean? Good question! It means that humans earned a ribbon, and that banner was God’s form of a promise written in the sky, so to speak, when it reads in Genesis 8:21
'I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.
Thousands of years after the flood of Genesis, Shlomo’s massive building projects in Jerusalem lent notability and glory to the history of Israelites and their land. But Shlomo was a complicated character. He took for himself, and apparently thought little about the servitude by his workforce. Was Shlomo good for the local economy? Undoubtedly yes. Was he a fair employer? Not so clear. The passage above from Genesis shows God’s surrender to the evil of humanity, as if to say, “you’re rotten from the core, but gosh darn it, I love ya.” Useful here is juxtaposing ancient epochs of human development, against our current one. What questions does this raise for you?
