It's one of my pet theories that the story of Noah and the Flood is the ancient Israelite answer to the question about why an omnipotent God tolerates evil in the world.
I can imagine the story of the Flood being framed by an ancient story teller being asked by a precocious pupil, "Why doesn't God just kill all the evil people in the world so the rest of us can live in peace?" The story teller pauses for a moment and then launches into a story where God did just that, and found the experience to be so unpleasant that He swore never to do it again.
that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed
by the waters of a flood;
there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.
This is also a big change from the version found in Gilgamesh, where the gods send the flood to destroy humanity simply because they've gotten too annoying with their loud parties.
It seems to me that people who get upset with the idea of God's judgment often fail to see how unpleasant an ordeal it has to be for God, but I think the story of the flood points towards this issue in an anagogical sense. Sure, the person who damns himself goes through horrible torment and suffering...but how painful must it be for a loving God to witness it happen?
God knows us better than we know ourselves. God knows us on levels of intimacy beyond anything we can ever imagine. He understands better than we do what it means for us to be damned. Indeed, while the suffering of Hell is separation with God, God knows the full extent of that separation, whereas the damned soul can't possibly fully know what has been lost.
I'm almost inclined to say that, in a way, God suffers our damnation more than we do...although this would seem something of a paradox given that God is complete in His happiness.
God can lose nothing of His happiness because God is complete in Himself. He doesn't need us to be happy.
Nevertheless, God clearly desires to love us and desires to be with us. Therefore, the frustration of that desire by a refusal on our part to be with Him must be a displeasure to God to some extent.
Thus, when God utters His final judgment against a soul, one might imagine it is not with the glee of some sadistic judge...nor quite the stoic countenance of blind justice.
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