Of every clean beast. That the distinction between clean and unclean animals was at this time understood is easier to believe than that the writer would perpetrate the glaring anachronism of introducing in prediluvian times what only took its rise several centuries later (Kalisch).
That this distinction was founded on nature, "every tribe of mankind being able to distinguish between the sheep and the hyena, the dove and the vulture" ('Speaker's Commentary'), or "on an immediate conscious feeling of the human spirit, not yet clouded by any ungodly and unnatural culture, which leads it to see in many beasts pictures of sin and corruption" (Keil), has been supposed; but with greater probability it was of Divine institution, with reference to the necessities of sacrifice (Ainsworth, Bush, Wordsworth; cf.
Genesis 8:20). To this was appended in the Levitical system a distinction between clean and unclean in respect of man's food (Le Genesis 11:3). Shalt thou take—inconsistent with Genesis 6:20, which says the animals were to come to Noah (Colenso); but Genesis 6:19, which says that Noah was to bring them, i.
e. make them go (at least nearly equivalent to take), clearly recognizes Noah's agency (Quarry)—to thee by sevens. Literally, seven, seven; either seven pairs (Vulgate, LXX; Aben Ezra, Clericus, Michaells, De Wette, Knobel, Kalisch, Murphy, Alford, Wordsworth, ' Speaker's Commentary'), or seven individuals; both parties quoting the next clause in support of their particular interpretation.
Davidson, Colenso, and Kalisch challenge both interpretations as "irreconcilable with the preceding narrative" (Genesis 6:19); but the obvious answer is, that while in the first communication, which was given 120 years before, when minute instructions were not required, it is simply stated that the animals should be preserved by pairs; in the second, when the ark was finished and the animals were about to be collected, it is added that, in the case of the few clean beasts used for sacrifice, an exception should be made to the general rule, and not one pair, but either three pairs with one over, or seven pairs, should be preserved.
The male and his female. This seems to be most in favor of the first interpretation, that pairs, and not individuals, are meant. And of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Ish veishto.
Cf. Genesis 2:25, where the phrase denotes the ethical personality of human beings, to which there is here an approximation, as the preserved animals were designed to be the parents of subsequent races.
The usual phrase for male and female, which is employed in Genesis 1:28 (a so-called Elohistic) and Genesis 7:3 (a so-called Jehovistic section), refers to the physical distinction of sex in human beings.