NOTES for Gen 8:4-21
So, after all, what can a righteous person do? The first thing Noah does after leaving the ark is offer sacrifice to the God who saved him. This is unquestionably the act of a righteous person. And God? The sacred writer deliberately makes the image of God archaic here: his God draws in the smoke of the sacrificial fire with His nostrils, as pagan gods do, for example, in Homer. But the outwardly archaic and somewhat primitive image must not deceive us: God says something very serious and important. He says: I will no longer destroy the earth because of man, because all the intentions of the human heart are evil from his youth (the corresponding Hebrew text sounds exactly like this). Put simply, there is no point in cleansing the earth by such radical methods: all the same, as long as people live on it, evil and sin cannot be avoided, and it is not worth even trying.
The definition is certainly absolutely true, though very sad. But what about righteousness? What is its meaning? Does it play any role at all in the destinies of the universe? In the end, yes. After all, God promises to preserve the world from catastrophe while breathing in the sacrificial smoke. And even if this image sometimes makes the reader smile, everything here is entirely serious: the world is upheld by righteousness. By the righteousness of those righteous people of all times and nations whose collective image Noah became. And if the world has not yet collapsed into the abyss, if it still waited for the coming of the Messiah promised by God, that is their merit. Their righteousness on earth becomes a reflection of God's mercy in heaven. And the world stands. With difficulty, but it stands. And it receives a chance for salvation.