01/25/2026 - Genesis 7:1-17

The Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark with your whole household, because among this generation I’ve seen that you are a moral man.  From every clean animal, take seven pairs, a male and his mate; and from every unclean animal, take one pair, a male and his mate; and from the birds in the sky as well, take seven pairs, male and female, so that their offspring will survive throughout the earth. In seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. I will wipe off from the fertile land every living thing that I have made.”

Noah did everything the Lord commanded him.

Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaters arrived on earth. Noah, his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him entered the ark to escape the floodwaters. From the clean and unclean animals, from the birds and everything crawling on the ground, two of each, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, just as God commanded Noah. After seven days, the floodwaters arrived on the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day—on that day all the springs of the deep sea erupted, and the windows in the skies opened. It rained on the earth forty days and forty nights. That same day Noah, with his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Noah’s wife, and his sons’ three wives, went into the ark. They and every kind of animal—every kind of livestock, every kind that crawls on the ground, every kind of bird— they came to Noah and entered the ark, two of every creature that breathes. Male and female of every creature went in, just as God had commanded him. Then the Lord closed the door behind them.

The flood remained on the earth for forty days. The waters rose, lifted the ark, and it rode high above the earth.

~

In the church I grew up in, the children’s area was painted with big murals of different scenes from the Bible. And one of those scenes was an ark, bobbing peacefully on some curly little waves. Noah and his wife waved out of one of the windows, a lion waved out of another, and a giraffe had its head sticking out with a grin. It was really cute, painted in bright primary colors, almost cartoon-like. It was a piece clearly meant for a children’s space to brighten up the room.

But Noah’s Ark is kind of a weird choice to paint a cute scene with when you realize that the cute little creatures and people waving at you are depicting the only creatures on earth still alive.

Unless there are fish and aquatic creatures having the time of their lives beneath the waves and being very confused by trees.

But still, this is one of the stranger Sunday School lessons to get turned into cute murals on walls or toys for kids to play with. I think we gravitate towards it because of the animals, because what little kid doesn’t like animals?

Speaking of which, I think we all were taught that God commanded Noah to bring pairs of animals into the ark. So, as the story goes, two by two, a pair of animals from each species strode onto the ark, walked right into their assigned stalls, and sat down peacefully for 40 days and 40 nights while the ark bobbed along. But that in itself is an oversimplification that we often do to make this story easier for our kids to understand. Because including all of the details - that there were seven pairs of some animals and only one pair of others - would require talking about Jewish law, and that’s a tangent that can easily lose kids who just want to moo like cows or roar like lions.

But we’re going to talk about it! Because this is the first time that animals are called “clean” or “unclean” by God. And given that there’s no explanation of what animals are clean or unclean, we as the readers are clearly supposed to know what the God is talking about. But it’s not explained in the chapters before this either. The idea of “clean” and “unclean” animals won’t be clearly defined until the books of Exodus and Leviticus. These are defined in laws concerning what animals are acceptable for sacrifices, and later on for eating. Jewish people reading this passage around the time of Jesus would’ve had an idea of what animals would’ve been brought onto the ark in seven pairs instead of two.

So this statement is anachronistic. How did Noah know which animals were clean and unclean if the purity laws wouldn’t be put in place until generations afterwards? The easy answer to this is that this story was written after those laws were put in place, and the author used it as a way to convey a point they thought was important. It’s possible that the point was God was already taking care of God’s people by making sure that there would be enough of the animals that they would need to survive and practice their faith.

But if that’s the case, then why go back on the seven pairs of clean animals and birds just a few verses later? Because while verse 2 has God commanding Noah to find seven pairs of some animals, verses 15 and 16 say that the animals “came to Noah and entered the ark, two of every creature that breathes. Male and female of every creature went in, just as God had commanded him. Then the LORD closed the door behind them.”

…but God didn’t command Noah to get two of every animal. God commanded Noah to get seven pairs of certain animals, and a single pair of others. So, what’s going on? Is this just a translation error? Or is there something more going on here?

I invite you to scroll back up and re-read our passage for today and see for yourself how much repetition is in just seventeen verses. Noah’s age is mentioned twice in two different ways in quick succession, the forty days and forty nights of flooding and rain are mentioned three times, and Noah, his family, and the animals enter the ark twice in the span of a few verses.

This is one of the only stories in Scripture that is written this way, with so much repetition with a just few details different between each section. One of the theories that scholars have come up with to explain it is that the author of this section put together two different versions of the story of Noah to be included in the book of Genesis.

Because before these stories were written down, they were passed down as oral tradition, with parents and grandparents telling these stories to their children and grandchildren. And when stories are saved in memories instead of in writings, certain things can get emphasized over others by different storytellers, and details can easily be changed.

So it’s understandable that different versions of Noah’s Ark spread in different areas of Israel and Judah, which were the kingdoms where the Hebrew people lived. But instead of choosing one version of those details over another, the author decided to interweave the two versions of the story together, essentially stacking the details one on top of the other into this combined story.

In one version, God asks Noah to get seven pairs of some animals. In another, God asks for a single pair from each species.

In one version, the floodwaters rise up and remain for forty days. In another, rain falls for forty days and forty nights.

In one version, Noah is the only one who is named. In another, his sons are also named - Shem, Ham, and Japheth - while in both their wives remain nameless.

Putting together the different details and nuances into this one story gives us more facets to look at Noah’s Ark through and can give us hints as to what the storytellers valued. Seven pairs of certain animals, specifically ones meant for food or worship, could have been emphasized or added to the story by storytellers from the priestly class, showing us that the purity laws around animals and food was something they valued. On the other hand, the version with only one pair from every species could’ve been told by people who believed that God valued all of creation equally.

And maybe the author wanted to honor it all, so they included it all in their writing of the Noah’s Ark story. But what’s important to note is that none of these discrepancies change the foundation of the story.

The ark is still built.

The earth still gets flooded.

And Noah’s family and the animals come through safe.

And that’s why this method of writing, of storytelling, works. The different details honor the different values of the sources that contributed to this story, while showing how much different people agreed.

And maybe we can learn from that. Because as long as we are telling the same story - one of love and grace and compassion and justice - then there’s plenty of room for the details to differ.

For example, I have been a part of many a debate on the best way to help people who are experiencing homelessness. And for the most part, all of us approached it telling the same story - we cared for the people who didn’t have a place to call home, and we wanted to figure out the best way to get everyone a place to live. But what we disagreed on was what the most important piece to focus on. Some of us thought that the priority was making sure there was enough accessible housing by advocating for the building of more affordable housing. Others saw the interconnectedness of the failure of our mental health care system, arguing that we needed to help people get access to care they needed first. And still others saw other top priorities related to affordability and stability. And then we’d argue in circles, because all of these, to some extent, contribute to people not being able to have stable housing.

So what if in our debates instead of trying to pick the one way solve the housing crisis, we’d tried envisioning what all of these approaches would look like together?

Or, what if instead of limiting ourselves to just one way of being Christian, one way of praying, one way of practicing, we let different prayers and practices exist side-by-side, even if they sometimes clash? I come from a faith tradition that didn’t really value liturgy, or prayers that you memorized and recited. Even writing prayers down before you prayed them out loud wasn’t really seen as praying. Instead, prayers had to come from your heart and the top of your head in order to be considered valid. But they also had to be understandable, you had to know what you were saying, and the people around you had to understand what you were saying. That was different from my Pentecostal friends who prayed in tongues. Their prayers were also spontaneous, but they didn’t understand what they were saying. But they trusted that God could, especially when they didn’t know how to put words to what they were feeling. Which was something that my friends who prayed liturgies and memorized prayers agreed with. Sometimes when they couldn’t give voice to their own hearts, someone else had already written the words down and they just had to reach for them.

So was my way of praying better than my friends because I understood what I was praying, and because it was coming directly from my heart instead of from a piece of paper?

I hope you’re thinking that the answer is no, because it’s not. They’re all just different ways of prayer that resonate with different people for different reasons. And while somebody praying out loud in the same room as someone breathing quietly during centering prayer is probably not going to mesh together well, especially for the person trying to pray quietly, what would it look like if we did try to hold both of those prayer practices in the same space?

Could something new come out of it?

The story of Noah shows that we can hold different, sometimes conflicting, details of our life, our faith, and our community together in the hopes of honoring all of it.

And we have to. We live in a world that is full of conflict, violence, and hatred, that has been building and growing for generations. And we need every piece of creativity, every new idea, and every reclaimed piece of ancient knowledge to push back against it and build the world of love and peace that we want to see.

So where can we find the room to work together towards a deeper faith and a stronger, more loving community? Because it may be messy, but it also holds the beautiful potential of a world that is full of love for everyone, no matter who they are.