Just about everyone who knows about Noah seems to know he took two of each animal. This is so connected to the ark that a fun trick for children to play on each other (and adults) at times is to ask, “How many of each animal did Moses take on the ark?" they know that the brain thinks “ark” and the mouth says “two” before one has a chance to think, “Wait… he said Moses, Moses wasn't on the ark.”
That story isn’t
just to give evidence that we Christians love to have fun, too – although it
will likely cause at least some readers to try to pull that joke on others. It
is not just to show how we often don’t listen to others, but how we often don’t
read our Bibles. Because, in these verses we see a class of animal that Noah took
by sevens.
Why? Well, by
the “male and female” in verse 2 we see that it is seven pairs of two. First of
all, we see they are to be brought “by sevens,” meaning a pair of seven,
whereas the unclean beasts were only “by two,” meaning that there was only one
pair of two.
That would have
been enough, of course, to continue the species considering that there wasn’t
the immense degrading of the genome there is today, and one could get lots of
genetic types out of every kind. However, God clearly wanted more than two for
certain animals. Not only is the word “seven” plural, but “the male with his
female” would be too awkward if there was then one left over after 3 pairs were
made.
What does it
mean to have seven couples for the clean animals and fowls? This is moer
evidence that people had been making sacrifices since the Fall when God slew
that lamb to make clothing for Adam and Eve, and then when Abel brought from
his flock while Cain brought a grain offering. The animal sacrifice was already
the one which God preferred, because all those sacrifices, from the very first
one, were pictures of what Jesus Christ would one day do for us on the cross.
Because, all of them merely covered sin, while the perfect blood of Jesus
Christ cleansed our sins completely. He was offered as our sacrifice once for
all time.(Heb.9:26, 2 Cor. 5:21, etc.)
Until that time
came, however, God had blood sacrifices to provide a picture of what Christ
would do, so He could be easily understood as the “Lamb of God, which taketh away
the sins of the world.”(John 1:29) And, since not everyone could afford a lamb,
God established that other animals could be clean, too, including fowls(birds),
as when the offering was made for the poor of turtledoves or pigeons, as seen
for example in Luke 2:24.
These animals may
have been for food for Noah and his family, too, but as before, the meals were
almost certainly vegetarian, as they were for the animals, in order to keep
them alive but also perhaps to signify that the ark was a type of salvation,
where there would be no death on the ark during this time. Because, for the
saved person, while there may be physical death, the second death, the
spiritual death, has no effect on them. If we are born only once, we die twice,
but if we are born again – born twice – we shall die only once.
