Noach’s role in bringing the animals to the tevah (Ark) seems very odd. Hashem says to Noach, “…two of each you shall bring.” Noach seems to be commanded to have the animals come. They don’t come of their own volition and Noach doesn’t go out and fetch or trap them. Later the Torah continues: “Two by two they came to Noach to the ark… as Hashem had commanded Noach.”
In other words, they come to the ark – and Noach, somehow, brings them.
Today, we can call a domesticated animal which is already within view. We can call a dog. But we can’t ask a caterpillar halfway around the world to come to us. A lion in Africa is unlike to listen to come to us – unless we are close by and seem tasty. But the relationship between mankind and animal kind is fundamentally different in Noach’s time.
When G-d created man, he said: “Let us make man in our image… and they will yirdu the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky and the animals in all the earth and every creeping thing…”
The word “yirdu,” comes from the root “yud-dad-heh.” We are specifically prohibited from “tirde-ing’ Hebrew slaves with crushing labor. This word refers to total domination – the absence of independent agency. In the case of slavery, we can achieve this through crushing labor, like breaking a horse. The spirit is eliminated and the slave is made into an extension of our own will. In the case of animals, Hashem gifted us with this power – we did not need to crush the animal’s spirit.
Before the flood, we literally dominated the animals. They did not have their own agency.
The animals thus became extensions of ourselves. Our power over them was an imitation of G-d’s power over the natural world. They became tools for our spiritual development; tools by which we could imitate and thus relate to G-d.
As discussed last week, murderous men took advantage of the clemency of G-d and rose to great power. Their children’s children became nephilim, literally fallen ones. As I understand it, they had fallen from great spiritual potential to zero-sum thoughts of glory and fame. In a world without limits to what mankind could do, man turned to murder and destruction in pursuit of fame. Their goal was to be worshipped by others and to, in turn, honor and worship themselves. They sought to be ‘idols’ in the most modern sense of the word. Mankind turned away from creative goodness and towards destructive evil. And the animals, their tools, were turned with them.
Later, clothing or vessels which are impure due to the plague of human conceit (as a later analysis of tzarat will show) are destroyed.
The animals are the same.
The entire earth was polluted and Hashem wanted to eliminate all the animals and birds and men.
But one man stood out.
Noach found favor in G-d’s eyes. In the finding of favor, Noach was the actor; Hashem did not simply grace him, Noach sought favor and thus found it. Because Noach sought a relationship with G-d, he was ish tzadik tamim haya bedorotav, he was the ‘man who was righteous and perfect in his generation’. He was righteous – he wasn’t looking to manipulate the world for his own benefit. And he was perfect. Imperfection implies loss and destruction, but there was no imperfection with him. Sadly, he was the perfect man in his generation. He was the only one not infected by the disease of competitive destruction in pursuit of personal glory.
And so he was the only one who was rescued.