The Way (Gen 6:12)

The Flood

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We are marking time today, to focus in even more closely on the phrase we saw at the end of the previous post:

¹² What he saw was that all flesh had ruined its way on the Earth.

כִּֽי־הִשְׁחִ֧ית כָּל־בָּשָׂ֛ר אֶת־דַּרְכּ֖וֹ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃ ס

Yes — for those who aren’t yet paid subscribers — I have translated כי ki here as “what he saw was that.” It’s all explained in that last post. What I’m going to do today is talk more about שׁחת, the theme root of the intro and outro to the Flood story, and about דרך dérekh ‘way’, which we met briefly last time. It’s a good place to take a bit of a pause precisely because of that ס at the end of the verse, which indicates a semi-paragraph break. This is the end of the introduction to the Flood story.

Wait a minute. Don’t some people think that Gen 6:1–8 is the introduction to the Flood story? And didn’t I myself say that vv. 5–8 were the real introduction to the Flood story? Well … I am large, I contain multitudes. What I’m saying now is that vv. 1–8, which I called “Adam’s Aftermath,” are a transitional section between the beginnings of humanity and the Flood that will require a new beginning. These verses, 9–12, are the introduction within the Flood story itself.

Now שחת and דרך. These are two words, “ruination” and “way,” that one might think would not go together. One would be at least slightly wrong to think that. There are eight verses in the Bible in which both words occur. This one, for example, condemning Jerusalem for following the example of Samaria (to the north) and Sodom (to the south):

^{Ezek 16:47} You not only followed their ways [דַרְכֵיהֶן֙], and acted according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt [וַתַּשְׁחִ֥תִי] than they in all your ways [דְּרָכָֽיִךְ]. [NRSV]

Within the Torah itself we find Moses saying this in his final words to the Israelites:

^{Deut 31:29} For I know that after my death you will surely act corruptly [הַשְׁחֵ֣ת תַּשְׁחִת֔וּן וְסַרְתֶּ֣ם], turning aside from the way [דֶּ֔רֶךְ] that I have commanded you.

For my own amusement, and for your edification (or perhaps it is vice versa?), I’m going to list all the biblical verses where these two words both occur:

• Gen 6:12

• Deut 9:12

• Deut 31:29

• Judg 2:19

• Judg 20:42

• Ezek 16:47

• Ezek 20:44

• Mal 2:8

What I’m going to say now is not a technical analysis. Rather, it’s based on two things: (1) much detailed literary and linguistic work by scholars superior to me; (2) my own impressions about the Bible after years of study. Let’s call it an educated guess. Some of you will want to emphasize the educated part, and others will emphasize the guess. Either way, this is the angle from which I am writing to you. Here we go.

There are two large groupings of biblical writings that seem to fall together:

• Deuteronomy / the Deuteronomistic History / Jeremiah

• P / Chronicles / Ezekiel

Deuteronomy itself is really the first volume of the Deuteronomistic History; I’m using that latter term, as many people do, in a sloppy way to label the books of Joshua through Kings — not including Ruth, which is elsewhere in the Jewish Bible. I’m using P here, in a way that’s vague but not sloppy, to refer to the priestly writings in the Torah other than H, author of the Holiness Code of Leviticus 17–26. I presume H also to be the author whose work we’re reading now.

I think of these two big categories as the Brahms & Dvorak vs. Liszt & Wagner of the Bible. (If the classical music analogy doesn’t work for you, just ignore.) The P (etc.) writers come out of the divine world of the Temple, with its rituals and concern for purity; the D (etc.) writers come out of the human world of scribes and wisdom whose ultimate source is in the workings of the human mind. The D writers use, and I suppose created, Standard Biblical Hebrew; Ezekiel and especially Chronicles move us forward into the world of Late Biblical Hebrew.

There’s a certain dialect of Jewish English today in which people like to use the expression “off the derekh.” I don’t suppose it’s unique to them, since many years ago I read about a new prime minister of Turkey who explained, albeit using different words, that as a young man he too had almost gone “off the derekh.” That’s actually a very Deuteronomic thing to say.

Deuteronomy wants you to keep on the straight path and not turn aside “to the right or to the left” (a warning that occurs four times in the book). Of the verses I’ve listed above, Judg 20:42 might be an accidental combination of our two words, but Judg 2:19 is extremely Deuteronomistic, part of the editorial comment that tells you how to interpret the stories that follow in the rest of the book.

Is Ezekiel a follower or a forerunner of H? I’m not prepared to say. Nonetheless, he is definitely writing at the end and subsequently after the end of the First Temple period; Malachi (“my messenger,” so it’s not his real name, but that’s a story for another time) is writing after the return from exile.

Our text, as I’ve said often, was composed, using earlier sources, by H — a priestly writer focused on incorporating the D perspective on things into the P perspective, broadening it and making it more comprehensive. This is the writer who introduces the Flood story to us by telling us that God saw “that all flesh had ruined its way on the Earth.”

When we go on, we’ll see some of the language from the introduction repeated in what God will tell Noah. See you then.