How so? Can you explain how our concept of morality is superior to a transcendental, omnipotent being?

I’m not sure if one morality can be objectively considered to be superior to any other morality. To get along, we do need rules that most people agree on, and I think most people agree that it is wrong to kill innocents. Eru might disagree, but I think he would be in the minority.

It is also hard to see what right Eru has to punish anyone for anything when everything that happens is part of his plan. Surely, if he didn’t want the Numenoreans to turn against the Valar then they wouldn’t have.

Oh we most certainly rationalize concepts of morality being superior to others my friend. For much of humanity’s history there was a belief; by right of conquest, commerce, or competency, that the enslavement of others was ok.

In the context of the legendarium however, we are explicitly told that the only member of the Faithful that remained behind was Elendil’s father Amandil; whom sailed West in an effort to beseech the Valar for mercy on behalf of the King’s Men. That means the rest that did not follow the Faithful to the East were of the King’s Men and complicit in the sacrificial rites, enslavement of “lesser” Men, and breaching the Ban of the Valar by force.

Eru was not wont to directly intervene because that would prevent His children from exercising the free will he granted them. Manwë laid down the stewardship of Arda because he understood Eru’s will was not to harm His children despite their hubris driving them to be rid of the “Curse” through force. This is why His punishment was the reshaping of Arda, removal of Aman to a different plane of Eä, and the Drowning of Numenor. Such was depth of crime committed by that faction of the Secondborn; and Eru had every right because they had abused the Gift granted to them in a means that could threaten all of His creation.

There are so many less genocidal ways he could have handled that. He could have reshaped Arda without destroying Numenor. As you said, Numenor was a gift. You can’t call backsies once you give a gift.

You can when they abuse as the expense of other’s lives and teach future generations the same behavior. You must understand, it was not their call, they were warned, and their hubris drove them to militaristic aggression anyway.

Genocide would imply all the Men of Westernesse, and those of the Faithful were aided in their survival to land safely back on Middle-Earth.

That’s not how gifts work. When you give someone a gift, it no longer belongs to you. Eru and the Valar might have called Numenor a gift, but it seems that what they actually did was loan the island to the Numenoreans with conditions.

You misunderstand.

Numenor was a reward for the Edain’s assistance to the Eldar in the First Age, the Gift refers to the mortality intrinsic to the Secondborn. The longevity of the Dùnedain came with it and in their hubris they began to reject the Gift and see it as a Curse.

I would hazard you to not continue in this argumentation, as those that sunk with Numenor were complicit in sacrifice of the Faithful. The transcendent, omnipresent, and omnipotent being of the verse concluded this punishment for the crime of the King’s Men was necessary.

You’re allowed to return gifts if you don’t like them. Eru and the Valar just made humanity mortal, left them with nothing more than a promise that things will be great after death, and expected humanity to be grateful. That’s hubris.

The Valar were stewards and shaped the world of Arda for the Children in accordance with Eru’s will. The Gift of Men was granted by Eru when He made Men, so that they are not bound to the woes of the world in the same manner of the Firstborn and the Adopted.

Also, it is impossible for Eru to be guilty of hubris as it is through Him Eä and everything within it exists. The only Vala guilty of hubris was Melkor, the one that practically unmade himself in his prideful ambition to show he knew better than his Father.

Any intelligent being is capable of hubris. Especially a being that believes that it can never be wrong.