Rereading Torah Towards Liberation

“Ruin” and “blamelessness” are paired as the Torah closes and re-opens. The shachet [shin-chet-tav; ruin, corrupt, spoil] and tamim [tav-mem-mem; whole, innocent, blameless] appear together in the Noah story, at the Torah’s start, and in Haazinu, the last regular portion of the Torah cycle. In Lekh-Lekha, the third Torah portion, God appears to Abraham and says to him: “Walk in my presence and be tamim.” (Tamim is translated here as “wholehearted,” “blameless,” “perfect,” and “innocent.”)

God’s covenant, it seems, requires walking through difficult territory and doing it completely.

Ruin and Blame in Noah

The Noah story uses the root shin-chet-tav many times. Here are a few instances in Genesis 6:11-13:

“And the earth was corrupt [v’tishachet] before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
“And God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt [nishchatah]; for all flesh had corrupted [hishchit] their way upon the earth.
“And God said unto Noah: ‘The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them [mashchitam] with the earth.’”
— Old JPS translation; Hebrew and English at Mechon-Mamre)

Everett Fox’s translation emphasizes the root linkage with the compound expressions “brought-to-ruin” and “bring-ruin,” for what the people did and what God does, respectively. That still doesn’t explain what, exactly, is this ruin or how it arose. And the text doesn’t give us much.

Toward the end of the first Torah portion, we learn the following:

• men were multiplying on the earth and had daughters (Gen 6:1);
• bnei-elohim [sons of God, “divine beings”] took daughters of men who were pleasing to them (Gen 6:2);
• God limited the lifespan of humans to 120 years (Gen 6:3);
• “It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim [sometimes: giants] appeared on earth—when the divine beings cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown” (Gen 6:4, New JPS via Sefaria).

That’s all the text says prior to YHVH’s declaration of regret:

“YHVH saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how every plan devised by his mind was nothing but evil all the time.
“And YHVH regretted that He had made man on earth, and His heart was saddened.
“YHVH said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the men whom I created—men together with beasts, creeping things, and birds of the sky; for I regret that I made them.’ But Noah found favor with YHVH.
“…he was blameless [tamim] in his age.”
–Genesis 6:5-9, New JPS translation, via Sefaria

The sparse background that opens Chapter 6 leads many commentators across centuries to assume the corruption God sees is related to all that multiplying; these explanations often find some behavior labeled as sexual perversion or permissiveness among humans. Somehow, commentary usually blames those “taken,” rather than those doing the taking, and it often ignores the role played by “sons of God” entirely. (Topic for another day.)

Tamim is translated in Genesis 6:9 as “wholehearted,” “blameless,” “perfect,” and “flawless.” Tyndale, 1526, uses “vncorrupte” for Noah and for Abraham in Gen 17:1.

Ruin and Blame in Haazinu

In the poem offered toward the end of his life, Moses uses shachet and tamim in reference to humans and God:

“The Rock, Voix work is perfect [tamim];
For all Voix ways are justice;
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
Just and right is [Voi].

“Is corruption Voix? No;
Voix children’s is the blemish;
A generation crooked and perverse.”
— Deut 32:4-5, JPS 1917 translation, substituting Voi/Voix pronouns for God, following Siddur Davar Hadash
NOTE: Fox translation uses “wrought-ruin” for shichet as in Gen 6 above

I am struck this year by the repetition here and in Noah of reference to “this generation” and to God’s children being responsible for the blemish. (See also Haazinu: Crooked, Twisted, Bent and Wet, which started this exploration a ways back; another exploration in Noah and Caste.)