GEN562 Since it is clear that man fails to live up to his obligations, it was strictly out of grace that the Creator, in His love and compassion for man, gave him the ability to correct his error and make up the loss in his service, by repenting and returning to Him.  He then emphasized its importance and gave assurances concerning it, through His servants, the prophets.  He allows us wide-ranging excuses when we stray from the path of His service, and has promised to accept [our repentance] and quickly favor us, even if we have long defied His word and violated His covenant, as He clearly stated in the passage that says, “When a wicked man turns from his wickedness and executes justice and righteousness, because of these he will live’ Ezekiel 33:19.  DUTIES 605-7

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GEN563 See [[GEN487]] Genesis 4:7 rule BOROJMV 173-4

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GEN564 According to Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz (1550-1619) [the Kli Yakar], it was the generation of Noah’s constant greed for more and more to satiate their endless desires that made this generation evil.  In the end, despite the myriad other sins that this generation committed, God decided to destroy the entire world only because of the sin of greed.  AMJV 337

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GEN567 In order to maintain man’s free will, God intentionally implanted in all human beings both the good inclination and the inclination to do evil.  But both tendencies are not equal within each person.  Left unchecked, the Torah seems to say that the evil inclination will win out every time. However, shouldn’t a person born with good tendencies be able to overcome his evil side and do kind acts?  The Talmud Sukkah 52a answers by saying that God made sure that the opposite is true: The more righteous a person is, the greater his or her evil inclination.  Therefore, it is even more difficult for naturally good people to actually do good things.  The Talmud continues and says that each day, the propensity for evil wins out most of the time. Therefore, it is quite understandable that even though people know what the right thing to do, actually doing it while battling the evil inclination is quite difficult.  AMJV 161

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GEN566 God sees that [this verse] and so resolves to destroy the world, but Noah, who is “a just man and perfect in his generations,” Genesis 6:9, is saved.  The emphasis on humans’ responsibility for their actions, of course, is pervasive throughout the biblical tradition, and prophetic literature in particular focuses on Israel’s failure to observe basic standards of moral behavior.  PASTIMP 124

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GEN565 From here it is derived that the (evil) inclination is called “evil” Chagigah 16a TEMIMAH-GEN 34

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GEN568 In rabbinic Judaism, the two central concepts were the One God and His Revealed Law. And each concept was itself the product of a synthesis of the mystical and the rational approaches. God was remote in transcendental, above and beyond all the forces of nature: “He is the place of the world, but the world is not His place.” Genesis Rabbah 68:10 How then are we to understand the many biblical passages which speak of His coming and going, His descending in ascending, His seeing and His wrath and delight? Genesis 7:6, 11:5, 35:13; Exodus 32:14, 34:51 Numbers 11;25, 12:5. One answer was to delegate these activities to the Divine Presence, or Schechinah, or to His Word, Memra, or to Glory, Kavod. The paradox of the all-knowing God, changing His Mind, as it were, and regretting the creation of man, is softened in Targum Onkelos where the feelings of regret are attributed to His Word [this verse]. The Lords “passing,” when Moses was in the cleft of the rock, is attributed in the same work to His Presence (Schechinah). Exodus 34:6-8 similarly the plea of Moses that the “Divine Face” accompany the people in their wondering is here interpreted as referring to the same Presence (Schechinah) Exodus 32:14-15.  “The Cloud of the Lord,” was supposed to rest on the sanctuary in the wilderness, is rendered in the Targum as if the verse read “The cloud of the Glory of the Lord.” Exodus 40:38  AGUS 40-1

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GEN569 See [[GEN475]] Genesis 4:7 master SACKS xxi-xxiii

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GEN571 Theology is the art of seeing the world from God’s point of view.  We humans, however, see the world from our point of view, especially since the Enlightenment. … Theology [] works with traditions and experiences which see God as the determining actor in nature and history, or at least as an active partner in these realms.  Human awareness of God through personal experience becomes central in the theological perspective.  We sense God in nature, in our personal lives, and in the our life as a society and we acknowledge God’s influencing presence.  Human awareness of God through the voices of others embodied in traditional texts is also central to the theological perspective.  We read these texts and they echo in our heart.  We listen to these other voices and they resonate in our minds and souls.  This point of view is theocentric.  Theologians try to give expression and coherence to it.  In this view, humans are formed in the image of God.  [citations].  How does the human record of doing evil and good look from God’s point of view? In the beginning, there was only God.  And God was personhood personified—capable of joy, anger, love, appreciation of beauty, humor, frustration, contentedness, relief, and many other affections.  But there was no being outside God’s self with whom God could relate.  So God created the universe, first the forces of nature and afterwards humanity, for the forces of nature do not have personhood while humanity has been given that special divine gift.  Initially, God set humanity fully within nature, unaware and incapable of good and evil but, in this state, humanity was not fully person.  So God offered humanity knowledge of good and evil, which made them wholly person.  When human kind turned to evil, “God regretted that He had made humanity in the universe and He was deeply sad in His heart. God said ‘I will obliterate humanity with which I made from upon the face of the universe, humanity together with the animals the creeping things, and the birds of the sky, for I regret that I made them.’” When humanity was restored, God established a general covenant with them but chose one man to be a loyal servant.  When that man’s family grew large, God gave them a Torah with laws, instructions, warning, and promises, intending that these should guide them toward good and away from evil.  Again and again, God’s people sinned and God punished them but still humanity did not avoid evil and do good.  And God was deeply pained and knew grief. … [Jeremiah 31:10 and midrashic citations; Zohar 3:74b]  From God’s point of view, then, God gave humanity commandments but we ignored them, or denied them, or reduced even the ethical commandments to ritual, making instruction into magic and guidance into superstition.  From God’s point of view, God gave us reason and the power to legislate for ourselves but we distorted that reason and abused that power, “fattening our hearts, stopping our ears, and averting our eyes lest we really see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and understand in our hearts.” Isaiah 6:10 From God’s point of view, God gave us freedom and responsibility, especially after the Enlightenment, but we betrayed that responsibility and turned against that freedom replacing liberty with tyranny and tolerance with bigotry.  From God’s point of view, God gave us all the technology we could possibly want but, even though we used it to create good, we also used it to do evil, rating concentration camps as well as antibiotics, and nuclear bombs as well as computers.  To put it simply, from God’s point of view, humanity has been repeatedly sinful.  Even though God has been gracious and forgiven us, we have turned again and again to sin.  This is God’s distress, God’s anguish. This is God’s sorrow, God’s grief. One might say, this is God’s despair. Isaiah 1:2-3.  BANAL 106-8

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GEN570 Some are still shocked by the assertion that certain things are impossible even for God. Yet it can be shown that such an acknowledgment does not constitute a limitation or an imperfection. For even as God is bound by the laws of logic Maimonides, Guide 3:15 (Friedlander trans., p. 279) – He cannot make a square circle – so, too, the process of soul-making, with its possibility for personal fellowship with God, necessarily involves freedom for man with a large degree of noninterference by God, which inevitable spells suffering and pain. Thus, the Torah in Genesis seems to suggest not only that mans’ disobedience results in direct punishment to himself but that it brings about a deterioration in man’s entire environment, making for general hardship as a “given” condition for all men. In this connection, let us examine the expression, “And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth and it grieved Him at His heart.”  [this verse; Genesis Rabbah 27:4]  Surely even a rudimentary notion of God’s omniscience would find such surprise, regret, and grief on the part of God rather anomalous, to say the least! But perhaps this should be seen as the Torah’s way of saying that in spite of God’s omnipotence and omniscience, there was no other way for God to have proceeded to give man freedom except as He did. If it should then be asked why God is so surprised when man chooses badly, the answer is that God’s goodness nevertheless cannot make peace with the idea! God “regrets” and God “grieves” because the reality of man’s corruption and suffering, while in a sense inevitable and expected, cannot go unnoticed by God. The Torah assumes all the risks of anthropomorphism in order to teach that God’s goodness and mercy, however you understand them, are in disharmony with the evil on earth. SPERO 114-5

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