Shabbat Parashat Noach - 5785

Shabbat Parashat Noach - 5785

Rabbi Hal Miller

  And from all that lives of all flesh, two of each shall you bring into the ark to keep

  alive with you, they shall be male and female. [Bereishit 6:19]

  Of every pure animal take unto you seven by seven, a male with its mate, and of

  the animal that is not pure, two, a male with its mate. [Bereishit 7:2]

  Two by two they came to Noach into the ark, male and female, as God had

  commanded Noach. [Bereishit 7:9]

At first glance, and as widely interpreted, these verses are exact counts of each

animal species that Noach brought in the Ark. But is that so?

Rashi accepts that approach, or seems to, when he writes, "Two of each. From

each and every species of them there were no less than two, one male and one

female." But his comment seems to leave open the idea of there being more than

one male and one female, which could be attributed to the seven pairs of pure

animals. His position is also unclear from his comment to 7:9 that they came on

their own, two by two, "from the least of them there were at least two".

Ramban and others interpret these verses that the first pair of each species will

be led to the Ark by God, and that the remaining six pairs of pure animals Noach

will have to go find for himself. But he leaves us with another question as to how

many pure animals are involved here. If God brought the first pair, did Noach need

to go out and find six or seven more pairs? Many commentators understand that

the additional pairs were so that Noach would have pure animals to eat and to

sacrifice without impacting the one pair meant for perpetuation of the species,

thus the Torah says that Noach should "take for yourself seven". Ramban and

most others seem to say that Noach had to obtain six extra pairs, but the verse

clearly says he is to take seven for himself. We would have to understand that

the first pair would also be for Noach's direct benefit if we accept the six idea.

Onkelos specifically addresses this that the counts in verses on two and seven

are mutually exclusive, that Noach would take two of each species of non-pure

animals, but would have to go out and get seven of each pure species, but this

seems to disagree with the accepted idea that God brought the first two, unless

there were a total of eight pairs of the pure ones.

Torah Temimah throws in another curve. He interprets Sanhedrin [108b] that the

definition of pure animal here is not related to the type of species, rather that

the individual animals involved had not themselves been subject to bestiality. If

so, then the door is open as to how many animals were taken, since it seems to

imply that Noach took one pair of affected animals, and six or seven of animals

that had not been so used by mankind.

Radak on 7:9 says that the phrase "two two" (shnayim shnayim) means four

animals, reading each word as a pair consisting of a male and a female, and thus

the phrase "seven seven" (sheva sheva) means fourteen animals in the second

group, seven males and seven females. Ramban notes this idea, but rejects it.

Rav Hirsch understands our portion as a selection process, that God would guide

to the Ark many of each type of animal, and Noach would go through the effort to

determine which animals had not been subjected to bestiality and were thus pure.

But he does not directly address the numbers issues, just seems to assume that

each pair means one male and one female, and that there were a total of seven

such pairs for the animals meant for Noach's benefit.

Abarbanel notes that most animals do not remain paired with whichever they mate

with, rather go their separate ways. God's hand was involved here that each animal

that came forward to Noach came with a mate. He concurs that "two two" means

two pairs, thus four animals, and "seven seven" has the corresponding connotation.

He explains that God brought all the animals to Noach to select from, species by

species, some two pairs, some seven pairs, and that what Noach had to go out to

obtain on his own was provisions for the animals, not six or seven more pairs of

animals.