Noah BarBecues The Animals he has saved

One of my favorite Bible stories is Genesis 8, in which Noah lands the Ark boat after 150 days floating around. The very first thing he does is have a big ole animal barbecue to thank El for helping save the animals.

The text is not ambiguous.

“And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more everything living, as I have done.” 

The sacrifice of “every” animal and bird carries with it all kinds of uncomfortable implications, not the least of which is: Why did Noah save the poor beasts if he was just going to kill and grill them? The confusion between the “two by two” and “seven by seven” versions becomes much more important in this context, as does God’s clear indication that an important part of the mission is to save the animals. If Noah brought along only pairs, then the sacrifice of every clean animal or even one of each pair would finish the job the Flood started. 

It also brings up an awkward question: where did modern clean animals come from? Literalists have answers for all these questions, but they are rhetorically unsound.* By rhetorically unsound, I mean idiotic. One theory is that the animals all got pregnant on the Ark and had baby animals. What a mess! 

Consider that giraffes have a gestation period of fifteen months. So the fact that we have giraffes in the modern world is another biblical miracle.

This is the first sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible. 

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* By rhetorically unsound, I mean idiotic