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Rabbinic tradition in Genesis Rabbah follows earlier Jewish traditions, found in the book of Jubilees, that explain the reason for the Genesis flood, describing that generation as corrupt, lawless, and unmerciful.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Jubilees 7:20
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
20 And in the twenty-eighth jubilee [1324-1372] Noah began to enjoin upon his sons' sons the ordinances and commandments, and all the judgments that he knew, and he exhorted his sons to observe righteousness, and to cover the shame of their flesh, and to bless their Creator, and honour father and mother, and love their neighbour, and guard their souls from fornication and uncleanness and all iniquity. 21 For owing to these three things the flood came upon the earth, namely, owing to the fornication in which the Watchers against the commandments prescribed for them went whoring after the daughters of men, and took themselves wives of all which they chose: and they made the beginning of uncleanness. 22 And they fathered sons, the Naphidim, and they were all unlike, and they devoured one another: and the Giants killed the Naphil, and the Naphil killed the Eljo, and the Eljo mankind, and one man another.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Genesis Rabbah 33:5
Aggadah
Rabbinic
Rabbi Akiva delivered a homily in Ginzak regarding the generation of the Flood, and they did not weep, but when he mentioned to them the story of Job, they immediately wept. He applied this verse to them [to the generation of the Flood]: “The womb will forget him; he will be sweet for the maggots; he will no longer be remembered, and injustice will be broken like a tree” (Job 24:20). “The womb [reḥem] will forget him” – they caused mercy [raḥamim] to be forgotten among mankind; the Holy One blessed be He, too, caused His mercy to be forgotten from them. “He will be sweet for the maggots” – their flesh will be sweet for the maggots. “He will no longer be remembered, and injustice will be broken like a tree” – Rabbi Abbahu said: It is not written, “will be uprooted,” but rather, “will be broken” – like something that is broken and does not produce a replacement. What is it? It is the generation of the Dispersion.
Date: 500 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... R. Aqiva is also our earliest authority to employ a verse from Job 24, in his discourses on the Generation of the Flood. When this scholar expounded on the fate of the Antediluvians to a congregation in the Median city of Ginzak he failed to evoke any sympathy from his audience for this wicked generation. Whereupon he applied to them 24:20 ... Presumably, R. Aqiva was alluding here to another ancient tradition, recorded in earliest apocryphal sources, regarding the lawless and violent character of the Antediluvians. (see Jubilees 7:20, and particularly Sybilla i, 177-201) This theme is developed more extensively in conjunction with the opening verses of chapter 24, in the following two passages ..."
Irving Jacobs, The Midrashic Process: Tradition and Interpretation in Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 28–29.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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