Noach’s builds the tevah to save the animals. He commands the animals to come and thus rescues them. But he does not shut the door – to do so would to be to actively participate in an act of mass destruction. It would destroy what G-d was preserving. The tevah itself has no side-facing windows – only a skylight. Noach cannot witness the destruction and preserve who he is and why he was saved.
Hashem’s method of destruction is not by fire or plague or earthquake. It is by water. Water, again and again, is associated with enabling physical and spiritual potential. The carcasses of unclean sea creatures are not themselves unclean – the water purifies them. Through water, we are cleaned of our symbolic connection to loss of potential. The Jewish people are compared repeatedly to a nachal – a spiritual stream of water bringing spiritual potential to the world. The fish are also ruled by man. But, protected by the water, they can be purified of human evil without death.
The purpose of the water is not destruction, but the preservation of spiritual potential. The flood is not there to destroy, but to restore the positive potential of the world.
The deaths caused by the flood are not the water’s only way of achieving this. The story of the flood is told in a very particular way. There are five dates mentioned in the story – the next time a precise date is mentioned involves the taking of the Pascal lamb. The dates add an aura of immediacy and reality to the story. And the actual act of destruction may be less total than it appears at first blush. In the three verses of destruction (7:21-23), we see careful distinctions being drawn. The first verse uses the root gimel-vav-eyin (gavah). This word is a precursor of death, “Avraham gavah and then died”, “Jacob gavah and then was gathered.” It might mean to physically give out. The second verse uses mem-vav-tet (mait), which means death – but it is only for those creatures which have nishmat ruach chaim – or a living spiritual soul. The last verse uses the root mem-chet-heh (macha) for the blotting out all established things. This word is used for a wife who must marry her husband’s brother so he isn’t macha. It refers to the ‘erasing of legacy’.
The description might describe total death, or it might describe crushing hardship, the death of those with spiritual souls and the erasure of all legacies. The language is frightening – it seems to build curse upon curse. But there is an out that suggests the telling – while entirely accurate – might leave an impression that is worse than reality.
In other words, there is a enduring moral message in the story – a story that long outlasts the flood itself. It is meant to be told and passed from generation to generation. It is meant to serve as an enduring warning.
The goals of preservation are reinforced by the changes that follow the flood.
Noach offers up the pure animals – animals unblemished by connection to human destruction – and Hashem smells their sweet savor. Because human domination of animals did not improve our relationship with the divine, the animals are given their independence. The sins which led to the flood were not theirs and they do not learn from stories or rainbows – and so Hashem promises that the entire earth will never again be punished by flood.
Before the flood, killing animals for food would have been like eating our own arms. It would have been an act which limited our own potential. After the flood, that relationship is gone. We can lay no claim to the blood of animals – which is their animating soul – but we can eat their flesh and thus augment our own bodies.