In describing by these words the gravity of the punishment by which God punished the sins of men, Moses at the same time indicated the greatness of God’s offense and indignation, and likewise showed the bitterness and savagery of the crimes which drove God to so great an atrocity of punishment. This passage, the Hebrew reading expressed into Latin word for word, has thus: “And the Lord said, I will blot out the men whom I have created from the surface of the earth, from man…”²

“…even to the beast, even to the creeping thing, and even to the fowl of the air, because it repenteth me that I have made them.” That phrase “God said” signifies that God spoke these words either to the angels or to Noah himself — unless perhaps “he said,” by a Hebrew idiom, means the same as “he thought, deliberated, decreed within himself,” so that the effective will of God, his immutable counsel and purpose of destroying men, may be signified. “I will blot out”: the Hebrew word machah properly means “to scrape out and wipe away,” so that in the thing wiped away no trace remains. God decreed, then, so to wash the surface of the earth with the Flood that no trace of men or animals should remain on it. That phrase “whom I have created” has great emphasis, as Chrysostom rightly weighed, as if God were to say: “What belonged to my office, I have all displayed. I produced man from nothing, that he might be; I implanted in his nature the knowledge of the things to be done or not done; I gave free will; I used unspeakable long-suffering; and after that long time, and after the indignation and the threats which I uttered, I yet appointed beforehand a span of a hundred and twenty years, wishing that, man perceiving his sins, my indignation might be called back. But because I gain nothing and make no progress, necessity compels me to fulfill my threats in deed, and to blot out man in every way — like some evil leaven, to abolish the whole human race, lest in later ages they become authors and teachers of sinning.” Thus Chrysostom.³

That phrase, “from man even to beasts, from the creeping thing even to the fowls of the air,” the Latin translator said following the Septuagint (for in Hebrew it is thus: “even to the creeping thing, and even to the fowl of the air”). And that it announces also the destruction of all animals — Augustine says, in book 15 of The City of God, ch. 25 — declares the greatness of the coming calamity; it does not threaten destruction to the animals devoid of reason as though they too had sinned. The Lord here speaks (says Cajetan) after the likeness of an angry man, who is wont to threaten vengeance not only against the man by whom he was injured, but against all who dwell with him too. Whence David, vehemently angered at Nabal, threatened that he would slay even him that pisseth against the wall. In such a manner, indeed, God threatens that he will destroy man together with all the animals dwelling with man. And for this reason no mention is made of fish, because they do not share in dwelling with man; for fish dwell beneath the waters, but man and the rest of the animals dwell upon the earth in the air.⁴

There follows: “For it repenteth me that I made them.” He did not say “that I made these things [the animals],” because the cause of God’s repentance was sins, which were none in the animals; but on account of the sins of men, the animals too were destroyed together with men. For that “it repenteth me,” the Septuagint has “because I thought”; for in Greek it is enethymēthē, which Theodoret interprets, “I have resolved to destroy the race of men”; but in some Greek codices it is metemelēthē. The blessed Augustine, however, in book 15 of The City of God, ch. 24, has for this “because I am angry with them,” and Ambrose seems to have followed the same reading in the book On Noah and the Ark, ch. 4. Chrysostom, weighing these words of the Lord: “And in my mind,” he says, “I have reconsidered that I made th-…”⁵

“…them,” he speaks thus: “By this word, how greatly does he accommodate himself to our lowliness! Did I wish,” he says, “to punish them with so great a penalty? They themselves, by the savagery of their sins, drove me into so great an indignation.”⁶

But a doubt arises: since man alone had sinned, and there had been no crime of the animals, why are the animals destroyed together with man, which, as they had not sinned, so had deserved no punishment? Four causes of this may be adduced. First, God had made the animals for the service and use of men; man being removed, then, their preservation seemed superfluous. Next, for the punishment and affliction of man, in whose power and possession the animals were — just as good sons too are slain on account of sinful fathers, that by the death of the sons the fathers may be racked with a more bitter grief. Besides, for the detestation of man’s impiety and malice; wherefore God had ordered the beast with which someone had coupled to be killed, for the detestation of that crime, as is plain in Leviticus 20. So too the Jews, about to fight against the Canaanite king Arad, and against the city of Jericho, and against the king of Amalek, and finally against the Gibeonites, were ordered to destroy and blot out all that was theirs — not only the men, but even the cities and all their beasts — as is plain in Numbers 21, Joshua 6, 1 Kings 15, Judges 20. Finally, this was done (as some have set forth) because the men of that time were wont to abuse even the animals lustfully, or wickedly for the perpetrating of other crimes; indeed, they had even trained animals of different species to couple with one another contrary to nature.⁷

But these things must be seasoned and adorned with the most brilliant words and sentences of Chrysostom and Ambrose. And Chrysostom, explaining those aforesaid words of Moses, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth, from man even to beasts,” writes in this manner: “Someone will perhaps say: Why, when man declined to evil, do the brutes too undergo the same punishment? Were the brutes produced for their own use? They were made for man’s sake; when, then, he is taken from the midst, what use would there be of them? Therefore they bear this punishment in common, that from this too you may learn the gravity of the punishment. And just as in the beginning, when Adam had sinned, the earth received a curse, so now too, when man was to be abolished, the brutes also share. As, when man is pleasing to God, the creature too is a partaker of human felicity (as Paul says: ‘And this creature shall be delivered from the servitude of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God’), similarly now, when man is to be punished for the multitude of his sins, the creature too is delivered together to a universal destruction. And as in a household, when he who presides falls into the indignation of the master, it is likely that his fellow workers grieve with him, so here too, the men perishing as it were in a household, all that is in the household and under their dominion must necessarily incur the same punishment.” Thus Chrysostom.⁸

Ambrose, in the book On the Ark and Noah, ch. 10, explaining this same passage of Moses more fully both in words and sentences: “What,” he says, “had the dumb animals done amiss? For what cause are those subjected to punishment who have no sense of sinning? But just as in war, when the general is slain by the enemy, his army dies with him and all military strength is broken, so it seemed not to differ from justice that, when man perished — to whom the Lord God gave a certain royal power over every kind of animal, that he might preside with imperial authority over all the fowls, wild beasts, and beasts — the cattle too and whatever animals were irrational should die with him. Finally, whenever there is a pestilence, the region of the sky being corrupted, the dire plague first contaminates the irrational creatures, and chiefly dogs, horses, oxen, and infects those which are seen to consort with men, [and] so the force of the disease involves the human race. This, then, is the first cause, as I think, of the just assertion. The second is this: that no one accuses nature because the rest of the members of our body die when the head alone is removed, although we see many survive with hands and feet cut off. But the rest of the members do not have the same prerogative as the head; and therefore, when that is cut off from which our senses go forth into the rest of the body, all the members also die; nor in this is the Maker’s providence deserted, nor the human substance refuted. So, similarly, let no one now object that, because man is the head and a certain principal part of the rest of the animals, when he dies it ought not to seem strange if the rest of the animals die. The third is this: that the irrational creatures were generated not for their own sake but for man’s; for they were ordained for man’s sake, that by their subjection the human condition might be furnished. Finally, the Prophet attributes them to man’s favor, saying: ‘Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, moreover the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea’; because for his sake are all those things — some for use, some for the sake of delight, some of pleasure. It was consequent, then, that, when man was blotted out from the face of the earth, for whose sake they were made, they too should be blotted out by a like fall.” Thus Ambrose.⁹