Praying for others' repentance

B"H

Bereshit (Genesis) Ch. 6:14 reads:
עשה לך תבת עצי גפר

Loosely translated:
[G-d says to Noah:] Make for yourself an ark, out of gofer trees.

Rashi bring "Make for yourself an ark" and give the following commentary:
הרבה ריוח והצלה לפניו ולמה הטריחו בבנין זה כדי שיראוהו אנשי דור המבול עוסק בה ק"כ שנה ושואלין אותו מה זאת לך והוא אומר להם עתיד הקב"ה להביא מבול לעולם אולי ישובו

Loosely translated:
Question: G-d is a savior so why did he bother Noah with building this ark? Answer: So that the generation of the deluge should see him toiling in building it (=the ark) for 120 years. This will peek their curiosity and they might ask "why do you bother?" To which he shall answer "G-d will ultimately cause a deluge!". Hearing his answer, perhaps (=hopefully) they'll repent.

One criticism that's brought upon Noah is that he did not do enough to help the people of his generation to repent. A comparison is drawn between Noah's apparently passive approach to educating his generation and Avraham's proactive approach of praying for the protection of the people of Sodom (see Bereshit (Genesis) Ch. 18:23-32.)

We also see this is Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) Ch. 5:2
Ten generations exited between Adam and Noah to demonstrate G-d's patience, for they angered Him until he brought upon them the deluge. Ten generations existed between Noach and Avraham to demonstrate G-d's patience, for they angered Him until Avraham came and took all their rewards.

The question then is, why did Noah not pray to save his generation, the way Avraham did? After all, we know that Noah was righteous (6:9) and also we learned from Ramban on 6:8 that all of Noah's actions were beautiful and pleasant to Hashem. There are other pointers to the fact that Noah was a great man. So, in all likeliness he should have prayed for the wellbeing of the generation?!?!

One is forced to conclude that Noah could not pray for the generation. We can work this out backwards: After 120 years of seeing Noah toil in the ark and foretelling the prophecy of the deluge one would expect that at least some people repent. Evidently no one did (since there were no other human passengers on the ark except Noah and family.) Perhaps the actual concept (or attribute) of repentance was foreign to the very make up of the world? People could simply not repent since there was no repentance, so Noah had nothing to pray for?

This raises some additional questions:
1) Why then did he take 120 years to build the ark?
2) What's the justification of Rashi's comment on 6:14, as indicated above?
3) How could Adam and Kain repent (eating of the fruit and killing Hevel, respectively)?


Question 1 can possibly be answered that Noah was given a task that's simply too great to finish single-handedly in a shorted span, considering the gigantic proportions of the ark. This flies in the face of question 2, where Rashi assigns a different reason for the long duration of the project. Reconciling the two is still open in my book...

As for question #3 perhaps the explanation is as follows: Both Adam and Kain were created in Gan Eden (=the Garden of Eden). Since Gan Eden was elevated above the physical world, both Adam and Kain exhibited traits that transcended the limitation of the world. So, despite the world being limited in a sense, for it lacked the attribute and possibility of repentance, Adam and Kain did not lack this attribute, and so they could repent.

After the deluge, on the other hand, the Zohar records that Noah came out of the ark and into עולם חדש (lit. A new wold.) A wold so new, in fact, that Hashem was able to make a covenant with the world that He shell never wholly flood it again. Hold on, what if the world gets to the very same corruption that preceded the deluge? Surely Hashem would want to flood it again and start over.... In fact, this is not so -- this new world, evidently was also new in a sense that it now possesed the attribute of repentance. This is evident in Avraham's prayers for saving Sodom.