Parashat Noach, the second parasha in Sefer Bereishit, begins with Hashem telling Noach that there will be a flood which will destroy all the inhabitants of the Earth except for him, his family and some select animals that will be used to repopulate the earth, who will sit out the flood on an ark. There are several questions just on this opening dialogue. Why does Noach merit being saved when the rest of humanity is being destroyed? Second, if Noach needed a reason to be saved from the flood, what merit did the rescued animals have to be saved?
The reason why Noach is saved is very simple. The Torah describes him as “tzaddik” (Bereishit 6:9), which alone should allow him to be saved from the upcoming flood. The animal question, however, is a little more difficult. It seems as if they did absolutely nothing to deserve to be on the ark. The obvious answer is that they were on the ark solely for the purpose of repopulating the earth. But there is a deeper and more significant meaning to the animals being saved. This is teshuva. If Hashem were to destroy the earth in its entirety, Noach and all, and restart the world from scratch, it would seem as if Hashem and the people, had done something fatally wrong. However, by keeping Noach and the animals alive through the flood, Hashem shows that we always have another chance. We are not going to be destroyed because of something we did, and we will always have a chance to make up for the wrong.
