Why isn’t Sodom Destroyed with Water? Or Noah’s Generation with Salt & Fire? Vayera and the Moral Fabric of Society (Chesed & Gevurah)
Man says, “It was just a few beans!” and Gd says, “It was just a few drops of water.”
Sodom is destroyed with fire and salt, and Noah’s generation receives a flood. Why do these punishments fit each society’s crime? And how are they “measure for measure”, the classic standard for Gd’s punishments?
Sodom’s crimes can be seen as crimes of gevurah. Gevurah includes behaviors of self-preservation and self-focus, in contradistinction to chesed behaviors, which are giving and other-focused. In line with this, the people of Sodom are condemned to death for many despicable crimes, including violent and outlandish attempts to banish commerce and charity from their wealthy city-state [1]. Without commerce, they won’t have to give up money or goods to outsiders. They also engage in intimate acts that were not mutually connective; rather, they were focused on only on person’s pleasure (hence the concept of sodomy.)
Salt and fire are appropriate mediums to carry out Sodom’s capital punishment. Salt is not a foodstuff on its own, but it helps other foods to be preserved. This parallels gevurah, which is a middah that works well to preserve and safeguard, but only when it has something to safeguard. This is true, due to the fact that gevurah includes the concepts of laws and rules, and of guarding an entity. Rules are best when they are made to preserve society, not choke it with extreme stricture. To guard another person or oneself is important-no boundaries or self-discipline is bad. However, one cannot exclude the needs of others altogether, which is what Sodom tries to do.
Salt, as a preserving entity, then, is an appropriate medium. Fire is also fitting, because fire has no substance in and of itself, but is used as a medium to cook or produce warmth and combustion. It is noteworthy that the angel that has the word gevurah in his name, Gavriel (Gabriel), is often depicted as wielding or dealing with fire.
Fire and salt would will not be appropriate for Noah’s generation, because Noah’s generation is guilty of chesed crimes, not gevurah ones. Our sages infer from the text that Noah’s generation’s punishment was ultimately due to their flagrant thievery (chamas), though they seem
to be guilty of other crimes, as well.
A famous Midrash depicts a man walking down the street with a large basket of beans. Each person takes a bean because their worth is less than a peruta amount, and a court doesn’t prosecute for such a small amount. They’re off the hook, and by the time the poor guy reached home his beans are gone!
Because Midrashim were written to highlight concepts and not to lay down historical fact, I think this Midrash is explaining this generation’s crime on a deeper level, rather than telling us a sneaky way they avoided being arrested. The point of the Midrash is that people at this time rationalized thievery. Though each bean is not technically a civil crime, as each one can pull out his or her Talmudic thumb and permit it, overall rationalizing thievery and the catastrophic cataclysm that ensues from wide-scale thievery is a huge problem.
This indeed reflects the attitude of virtually all people who steal, which, throughout rabbinic literature, is rationalized “moreh heter” “instructing oneself a permissibility”. People who did manual labor thousands of years ago and ate too much food or stole tools steal the 
same way people steal in an office because, “the company can afford it.” People take from family members because they feel the “family owns it.” People rob others and explain that they’re a victim of circumstance. In our digital age, people commit embezzlement because the way in which value and money is stored is extremely complex and a great opportunity…but they also rationalize that the company owes them for all the hard work they did! (Think Enron, etc.).
The crime of Noah’s generation is a crime of chesed. Chesed is often depicted as water in Midrashic literature because chesed is life-giving
and has no boundaries-it needs gevurah to give it definition, in line with what we said earlier. Pandemic stealing is heinous because it corrodes the basic fabric of structure in society. Each theft seems inconsequential, but, when aggregated, destroys society quite ready.
Water is the best medium for this crime. Water has no boundaries. One water drop is innocuous, and several even give life. However, when many water drops are aggregated together, they cause massive destruction[2]. This is why a flood was most appropriate in the times of Noah. Man says, “It was just a few beans!” and Gd says, “It was just a few drops of water.”
–Ian
[1] Sanhedrin 109a-b.
[2] Higyonei Halacha Vol II, essay on stealing, Yom Kippur, and Yonah.
