Genesis 7, after a long absence.

I'm not giving up on a critical reading of the bible. I've just been very busy with life. Here we go:

Then the Lord said to Noah, ‘Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation. ²Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate; ³and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth. ⁴For in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.’ ⁵And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

When I first heard this story I was actually 11 years old. At that age I was still an avid lover of animals. I had been since I was at least 5. I had a set of collector's cards, printed on each of these cards were the facts of some animal (things like their location and habitat on earth, what they ate, whether they were diurnal or nocturnal, etc). I had about 600 of these cards and I didn't even have the complete set. So when I was told this story my first thought was NO WAY! You can't fit all these animals on a boat, there's too many! And they wouldn't get along, most would be pray but many would be predators. They need room to survive!

I brought that up in my chatechism class (where I remember first hearing this story) and I was given two possible answers. The first was definitely NOT part of canon "Noah didn't take all the animals. he left some behind and they either survived by swimming or God re-created them later." The second answer was the answer that people who believe in the literal interpretation continue to use: "It was a miracle."

I certainly couldn't argue with that. So then came my second question: "what's an unclean animal?" I assume there must be one true answer to this question, but it seems that different religions have different answers to these questions. But what did God mean when he used this terminology? Will we ever know? Why do they get a slimmer chance to survive? Does unclean mean bad?

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth. ⁷And Noah with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. ⁸Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, ⁹two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. ¹⁰And after seven days the waters of the flood came on the earth.

11 In the six-hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. ¹²The rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights. ¹³On the very same day Noah with his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons, entered the ark, ¹⁴they and every wild animal of every kind, and all domestic animals of every kind, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every bird of every kind—every bird, every winged creature. ¹⁵They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. ¹⁶And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and the Lord shut him in.

17 The flood continued for forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. ¹⁸The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. ¹⁹The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; ²⁰the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. ²¹And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings; ²²everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. ²³He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. ²⁴And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred and fifty days.

God could have snapped his fingers and made all evil things dissappear. God can do anything. God, decided that the horrifying method of death by drowning would be more fitting. It wasn't until I got to High School that I realized how horrifying this was. God loves all of his children, so I've been told. Tough love doesn't even begin to describe Genesis 7.