Noah

It is incomparably more difficult to remain morally pure in an age of immorality than it is to remain honest in an age of dishonesty…Noah was a righteous man because of his moral purity, which in turn was rooted in the fact the he permitted himself to be led by the hand of God. Great men of later generations were described as having walked before God, as His messengers, but Noah is characterized as having walked with God. Foregoing all contact with his contemporaries, who ridiculed him Noah clung fast to God, thereby (giving) mankind, which at first had no prospects, a new future. ..(this is because) the moral condition of all flesh has reached a state at which it demands that I put an end to it. If I do not intervene, all flesh will perish of itself; its end has already come before Me.

Samson Raphael Hirsch (19^th Century)

God regretting that he had made man on the earth does not present God as having second thoughts about creating man as such. The accent in our verse in on “the earth.” God grieved at placing man’s rational soul into a coarse earthly vessel, and not into something more precious and refined. Our Sages compared this to a sculptor who made a beautiful iron statue. Had he used silver instead, the results would have been all the more impressive. This comment likewise intimates that God deplored forming man from the dust of the ground, and not his creating man as such.

Don Isaac Abravanel (15^th Century)

It is true that human history has been such that one of the greatest historians stated that it is nothing but the account of the crimes, follies and disasters of the human species. This historian (Edward Gibbon) told the truth, but did not tell the whole truth. It is true that history is the account of the crimes, follies and disasters, but it is also the account of the struggle of people against the crimes, against the follies, and against the disasters, and the fact that this struggle exists in all times and in all human societies is what grants moral significance to the history of mankind.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (20^th Century)

The word God uses for destruction is “I will blot out”. Rashi translates to a different effect. “He is dust, so I shall bring water upon him and dissolve him.” This is to be a watery destruction, not a dry one. The original dust-earth of man – his relation to the “adama” (earth) – is to be radically annulled by the over application, as it were, of water. It then transpires that man’s destruction is also to be the destruction of all life – animal, reptile, and bird – again under the rubric of the cosmic regret of the creative God.

Aviva Zornberg (Contemporary)

God gave Noah the explanation that the flood was due to the fact that the earth is filled with violence and did not mention the corruption of the way (as recorded in the preceding verse) because violence is a sin that is known and widely publicized. Our Rabbis have said that it was on account of the sin of violence that their fate was sealed. The reason for it is that the prohibition against violence is a rational commandment, there being no need for a prophet to admonish them against it, besides, it is evil committed against both heaven and mankind. Thus he informed Noah of the sin for which the end is come – the doom is reached.

Nachmanides (13^th Century)