Noach - The Comforter-Messiah
“These are the generations of Noah. Noah was in his generations a man righteous and wholehearted; Noah walked with God.” (Genesis 6:9)
In parshat Noach, this week’s Torah portion, we learn about Noah (or Noach in the Hebrew transliteration), and about how God used him to save mankind and all land animals from extinction. The story of Noah alludes to the Messiah. In the days of Noah, God had a universal judgement day. In the days of Noah, everyone was corrupt and evil, but Noah “walked with God.” Noah tried to warn everyone of the coming destruction and he gave them a way to be saved.
The name “Noah” also alludes to the Messiah. When Noah was born, his parents named him “Noach”, saying, in Genesis 5:29, “This same shall comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands, which cometh from the ground which the LORD hath cursed.” The name Noach means comforter, and it’s a form of the word “menachem”. According to the Talmud, “menachem” is one of the names of the Messiah. Lamentations 1:16 refers to the Messiah as “Menachem” or “The Comforter.” Yeshua told his disciples that God would send them another Comforter, meaning that up until that time, he was the Comforter.
The apostles compared the salvation God brought through Noah to the salvation God brings through the Messiah. There is one key difference however, Noah only saved himself and his family, while the Messiah is going to save the whole world. Two texts, one from the Genesis Rabbah and one from the Midrash Tanchuma, expand on this. Genesis Rabbah 11:13 says,
“It is as if two ships encountered a storm on the sea. Two pilots steered the two ships. One managed to save himself but not his ship, but the other saved himself and his ship. Which one received admiration? Surely the one who saved himself and his ship. Similarly Noah saved only himself, whereas Moses saved himself and his generation.
Midrash Tanchuma, Noach 9
“Though Noah was righteous, he was not wholly righteous. The Holy One, blessed be He, nevertheless performed miracles in his behalf ... How many more miracles would He have performed in his behalf if he had been wholly righteous!”
Yeshua compared the generation of Noah to the generation that will witness God’s final judgement. As it says in Luke 17:34-36:
“I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed — one will be taken and the other left behind. There will be two women grinding grain together — one will be taken and the other left behind. Two men will be in a field — one will be taken and the other left behind.”
Contrary to popular belief, being taken away does not refer to being taken up to heaven with the Messiah, it refers to being taken away in judgement. This is why, when the disciples, or Talmidim in Hebrew, asked Yeshua “Where, Lord?”, in Luke 17:37, Yeshua answered, “Wherever there’s a dead body, that’s where the vultures gather.”
The Hebrew word for vulture is “nesher”, but “nesher” can also refer to the word eagle. It’s possible that Yeshua might have said “eagles” instead of “vultures”, in reference to the Romans, who used the eagle as a symbol of their empire. In that sense, Yeshua might have referred to “eagles” in the sense of Roman legions. Wherever there’s a dead body, that’s where the eagles (or Roman legions) gather.
In Genesis 6:19-20 it says:
“And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of the fowl after their kind, and of the cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.”
It is tradition that, when Noah brought the predators onto the ark, the normally vicious killers, that usually hunted in order to survive the next day, instead acted like calm and domesticated animals. This is reminiscent of the Messianic Era, as stated in the Hasidic Jewish commentary, Yalkut Moshiach V’Geulah al haTorah, citing Isaiah 11:6 and 11:9, “For behold, in the ark all the animals lived peaceably together, as in the prophecies that state, ‘the wolf will dwell with the lamb’ and ‘they will not hurt or destroy on My holy mountain.’”
Tradition also states that God miraculously cared for Noah, his family, and the animals on the ark, by giving them sufficient food and water to last them through the flood. This miraculous provision also alludes to the Messianic Era, as Menachem Shneerson says in the writing, “In the Garden of the Torah”, “There will be neither famine nor war, neither envy nor competition, for good things will flow in abundance.”
Genesis 7:4
“For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I blot out from off the face of the earth.’”
God gave Noah a seven-day warning for the flood. Some say that this seven-day period corresponds to the seven-day mourning period for the death of Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather. Before Methuselah died, his righteous merit was enough to stop God’s judgement. As it says in Avot DeRebbi Natan 32:1:
“As long as Methuselah was alive, the flood did not come upon the world; and even when Methuselah died, it was still held off for another seven days”
The Targum says that God gave those seven days so humanity could have a chance to repent:
“Behold, I give you the space of seven days; if they will repent, they will be forgiven, but if they will not repent, seven days from now, I will cause rain to come down upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”
Rabbinic legend predicts seven years of tribulation, likened to birth pains, before the coming of the Messiah. Pesikta Rabbati 35 states,
“In the year in which King Messiah will be revealed, all the kings of the nations of the world will provoke each other ... and pangs will take hold of them like unto the pangs of a woman in childbirth. And Israel will tremble and fear, and they will say: ‘Where shall we come and go, where shall we come and go?’”
The story of Noah is a precursor of the Messianic Era. In the year that Noah entered the seventh century of his life, the floodgates of heaven opened, and God’s judgement began. In Daniel 9:26, Daniel predicts a time of war and distress that will come before the Messianic Era, just like the flood, “And after the threescore and two weeks shall an anointed one be cut off, and be no more; and the people of a prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; but his end shall be with a flood; and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.”
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