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.

Their free will does not exempt the Númenóreans from responsibility for their atrocities.

It is illogical to argue the supreme deity; that is omnipresent and omniscient, is capable of hubris. The very nature of His existence and being prevents that.

I’d say the very nature of his being ensures that. When somebody believes that they are better than everybody else, they are going to grow arrogant.

There are basically two possibilities here. One is that the rebellion was part of Eru’s design from the beginning. Eru punished the humans for something that he created them to do, in which case he is being unfair.

The other possibility is that humans used the freewill that Eru granted them to go against his will. In this case, it was hubris on Eru’s part to imagine that humans would simply be grateful to the Valar for the “gift” of mortality and that they would continue to follow the will of the Valar after going several generations with no direct contact. Eru may have created mortals, but as an immortal being he can never truly understand them. He has never felt the fear of death. He doesn’t need to be reminded of the reasons for instructions given thousands of years ago.

To anyone who really understands people, the Numenoreans actions were inevitable. Eru was either taken by surprise, or he chose not to step in until he felt that the humans went to far.