The Flood - Two By Two?

DAY 3  GENESIS 7 – 9


The first eleven chapters of Genesis are known by many commentators as “primeval history”. In three days we will have read nine of the eleven chapters. A comment was this morning by one of the participants in this study that he had read through the Bible ten times and this time he was rather surprised at how quickly the “flood” account came up. I too was surprised.

I have noted before that I have read through several times and each time I discover things that I had not noticed before. This time I noticed something marvelous in 6:19 “19 From all living creatures, from all living things, you must take two of each kind aboard the ark, to save their lives with yours; they must be a male and a female.” and then in 7:2 “2 Of every clean animal you must take seven pairs, a male and its female; of the unclean animals you must take one pair, a male and its female 3 (and of the birds of heaven, seven pairs, a male and its female), to preserve their species throughout the earth. ” It occurs to me that all of my life I heard about taking the animal aboard the ark “two by two”, now what about the extra six pairs? John MacArthur indicates: “ The extra 6 pairs of clean animals and birds would be used for sacrifice (8:20) and food (9:3) ”. This is another wonderful example of the spiritual “The Lord Will Provide”. God here has provided the sacrifice in the same way that “…he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.