7 And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
We find in the Old Testament that Hebrews placed a great emphasis in DOING God’s commands. In what is usually called “works” and “legalism” by the modern day church, there is the reasoning, for the Hebrews, an obsession with DOING. What is their motivation? It is far less a matter of gaining something from it, rather it is, obedience due to the overwhelming gratefulness of being one of God’s chosen people.
2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
Clean means ritually pure and obviously unclean means NOT ritually pure. In the case of animal sacrifices to God, only “clean” animals may be used. But, the question comes, were these animals….or at least some of them…..being loaded onto the Ark for the purpose of being part of the food supply during their confinement in the Ark…..food for human consumption?
In the case of Genesis and Noah, prior to the flood, food was ONLY green plants. Animals weren’t any more a candidate to be food than a rock or a handful of dirt. Noah and his children weren’t hungry for a nice juicy steak……because meat wasn’t food; food was edible plants.
Since God called Noah a righteous man, I also have NO doubt that Noah and his family remained vegetarians. So, prior to the Flood, to Noah, clean and unclean simply meant animals that God had told him were suitable for sacrifice or those that weren’t……food wasn’t part of the equation until after the flood.
3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
If Noah was going to sacrifice from every single species of clean animal (which he did), had there been only a single pair of each clean species brought on board, this first sacrifice would have signaled the extinction of that species. Right?
4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
5 And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him.
Are we, the people today, of the modern church, the called out ones, DOING all that God commands us?
Berean Breadcrumbs 
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