Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“But Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes.“
(Genesis 6:8)

Noah didn’t receive what he deserved. Noah wasn’t perfect – no one is (Romans 3:23). But Noah was SEEKING God. Noah was leaning into the Lord. What he found there was GRACE. Noah TRIED, but our efforts do not get us salvation. In spite of his shortcomings, God showed Him grace so that humanity could continue. Noah had learned not to rely on Himself. He was the only one who had learned that lesson and he was working to pass it onto his children.

God had mercifully held off judgment for centuries. God held back as long as He could possibly hold back. But when there was only ONE family following Him and only ONE man seeking to forge a relationship between himself and God, the time had come for judgment. If God had waited any longer, Noah’s family would have been corrupted and fallen away (there is later evidence the seeds for this had already been planted in one of them). So God showed Grace and saved the remnant that had been seeking Him.

The sage Ramban writes: ‘BUT NOAH FOUND GRACE IN THE EYES OF THE ETERNAL. The meaning thereof is that all his deeds were pleasing and sweet before Him. Similarly: For thou hast found grace in My sight, and I know thee by name. This is like the verses: And He gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison; And Esther obtained favor in the sight of all of them that looked upon her. Scripture mentions this in contrast to what it said concerning his [Noah’s] generation, namely, that all their deeds brought grief before Him, blessed be He. But of Noah it says that he found grace in His eyes, and afterwards it tells why he was pleasing before G-d: because he was a perfectly righteous man.’

The sage Sforno writes: ‘But Noach found favor (chen). Chen implies groundless favor. Because Noach did not actively spread knowledge of Hashem he was not worthy that others should be saved on his account. Thus it was an act of groundless favor to him that his sons and daughters-in-law were spared.’

The sage Radak writes: ”ונח מצא חן בעיני ה, he found favour due to good deeds performed by him. The Torah uses the same expression in Exodus 33,17 when G’d tells Moses that he had found favour in His eyes. His deeds had been pleasing to G’d. In Bereshit Rabbah 28,9, Rabbi Acha son of Kahana expresses surprise at the words ונח מצא חן בעיני ה’, saying that the wording implies that Noach, in his own right, could not have claimed the right of survival, except for the circumstance that he “found favour in the eyes of the Lord, i.e. G’d had to search for a reason to let him survive.’