G-d said to Noach, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with robbery.”[2]
The immediately preceding pasuk mentioned two factors that necessitated the Mabul: corruption and robbery. This leaves us confused about the roles each one played. How much weight did each one bear? We are also unaware what sort of corruption was taking place. Rashi there tells us that the corruption was sexual impropriety, which had spread even to the animal kingdom, with animals mating outside their own species.
In our pasuk, Rashi adds two elements, but they don’t easily resolve the issue. First, he tells us that it is in the nature of sexual corruption that it is punished with mass catastrophe that affects everyone, not distinguishing between the righteous and the guilty. Next he tells us that it was robbery that sealed their fate.
Rav Eliyahu Mizrachi notes the difficulty. If the corruption was sufficient to unleash massive Divine punishment, what need was there for robbery as well? He explains that the two had different functions. One explains the kind of punishment, while the other determines the fact of its occurrence. It wasn’t until things got so bad that robbery was added to their list of transgressions that punishment was ordained. It was the inclusion of sexual impropriety to that list that spelled out the form of the punishment – a mass event that would swallow up all and everything.
I could suggest a different explanation. Chazal teach us that when Hashem finds the need to punish people, He does not begin by taking their lives or afflicting their bodies, but starts with things peripheral to them, like property. There are two reasons for this. First, Hashem’s punishment is instructive, never vindictive. You can compel a person to act through strong enough force and pain, but the behavior usually ceases when the physical compulsion ends. Wake-up calls to amend a person’s ways are much more effective.
Second, punishment must be consistent with a person’s tzelem Elokim. Animals are coerced/compelled by physical means like cattle prods. People are not animals. They deserve not to be treated as such, even when they are guilty and need to be punished. Even the guilty should be spared the humiliation of being treated like a beast of the field. Hashem therefore punishes primarily through their property and acquisitions, because those are known only to human beings. The very idea of owned property is a reflection of the intelligence that Hashem gifted to Man alone.
In order for a person to be dealt with in this manner, he cannot have changed himself into just another animal, albeit walking erect. Some people descend to a level where they recognize no law, respect no code of morality, get by through their strength alone. They live by the law of the jungle, whereby the strong survive, and the weak perish. They rob and plunder where they can.
This is what happened to the generation of the Flood. They introduced all sorts of corruption into human affairs. They richly and fully deserved punishment. But Hashem initially limits His punishment to property, rather than life and limb. What sealed the fate of the world as mass annihilation? It was the robbery. Not the monetary crime per se, but what it represented. It was the reversion of the world to a survival-of-the-fittest environment, where a person could take what he wished, so long as he could defend himself through physical strength.
Corruption meant that people had long rap sheets, and the Judge was going to throw the book at them. Robbery meant that they would not be punished in a manner that respected their tzelem Elokim, because they had abandoned it.