Noah, a just and perfect man

Rosenberg, in Essays on the Torah: Bereshit (2007: 68-69), explains why Noah is considered to be a just and perfect man, and connects Noah’s Flood to the Tower of Babel. According to the Bereshit (Genesis):

This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time (...). [Genesis 6:9].

Rosenberg cites a comment by Rabi Iussef Caro in which he explains these two adjectives to Noah. Noah would have lived in both generations: the Deluge and the Tower of Babel. Just or righteous (tsadic)

is the term that relates to the generation of the Flood, since it refers to the spiritual level of him who excels in the relation (...) between man and his fellow, and that does not succumb to the temptations of the spiritual dimension.

On the other hand, perfect, integer or blameless (tamim)

refers to the resistence and man’s effort not to fall into the sins of the Tower’s generation: the total disrespect, manifested in the form of intellectual blasphemy, to the precepts of the relation between Man and God.

Therefore, the divine punishments of the Deluge during Noah's life and the confusion of tongues in the episode of Babel are of distinct nature: the former was a punishment motivated by the corruption in the relation of men with men (the disrespect to the precepts of social mores dictated by God); the later was caused by the corruption of the relation between men and God (the intellectual disrespect of men to the Creator of All Things).