על אברהם ח׳On Abraham 8
א׳
1[41] Naturally this roused the wrath of God, to think that man, who seemed the best of all living creatures, who had been judged worthy of kinship with Him because he shared the gift of reason, had, instead of practising virtue as he should, shewn zeal for vice and for every particular form of it. Accordingly, He appointed the penalty which fitted their wickedness. He determined to destroy all those who were then alive by a deluge, not only those who dwelt in the plains and lower lands, but also the inhabitants of the highest mountains.
ב׳
2[42] For the great deep rose on high as it had never risen before, and gathering its force rushed through its outlets into the seas of our parts, and the rising tides of these flooded the islands and continents, while in quick succession the streams from the perennial fountains and from the rivers spring-fed or winter-torrents pressed on to join each other and mounted upwards to a vast height.
ג׳
3[43] Nor was the air still, for a deep unbroken cloud covered the heaven, and there were monstrous blasts of wind and crashings of thunder and flashings of lightning and downfall of thunderbolts, while the rainstorms dashed down ceaselessly, so that one might think that the different parts of the universe were hurrying to be resolved into the single element of water, until, as in one form it rushed down from above and in another rose up from below, the streams were lifted on high, and thus not only the plains and lowlands were submerged and lost to sight, but even the peaks of the highest mountains.
ד׳
4[44] For all parts of the earth sank below the water, so that it was entirely carried away as though by violence, and the world seemed mutilated by the loss of a great section, its completeness and perfection destroyed and defaced, a thing too terrible for words or even for thoughts. Indeed even the air, except a small portion belonging to the moon, had been completely made away with, vanquished by the rush and violence of the water which perforce occupied its place.
ה׳
5[45] Then indeed at once all crops and trees perished, for excessive quantity of water is as destructive as the lack of it, and the numberless herds of animals died, tame and wild alike; for it was to be expected that if the highest kind, the human, was annihilated none of the inferior kinds would be left, since they were made for man’s needs, as slaves in a sense meant to obey their masters’ orders.
ו׳
6[46] When all these evils, so many and so vast, had burst upon the world in the downpour which that occasion brought, and the unnatural convulsion had shaken all its parts save the heavenly as with a grievous and deadly plague, one house alone, that of the man called just and dear to God, was preserved. Thus, he received two gifts of the highest kind—one that, as I have said, he did not perish with the rest, the other that he should be in his turn the founder of a new race of men. For God deemed him worthy to be both the last and the first of our kind—last of those who lived before the flood and first of those who lived after it.