The story of Noah is one that has fascinated people through the centuries. It’s not that the story of the flood is unique, as it is far from that. Many, if not most, religions have a story of a flood, even a worldwide flood, lending credibility to the story in the Bible as well as the universal recognition that there was a worldwide catastrophe sometime in the distant past. But while there are many stories of catastrophic floods and even of small groups surviving those floods in a boat, the story of Noah is unique in that they took so many animals with them, saving the animals as well.
The amount of planning and preparation that had to go into Noah’s escape on the ark is incredible. Theologians tell us that it probably took 120 years for Noah to build the ark, based on Genesis 6:3. However, that doesn’t line up with some other things in the Biblical timeline. According to Genesis 5:32, Noah was 500 years old when he begat his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. We also know that he was 600 years old when the flood happened.
Noah was six hundred years old when the flood waters were on the earth… 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. – Genesis 7:6, 11
The ark itself was an imposing structure roughly 510 feet long in today’s measurements. To put that into perspective, that’s roughly one-and-two-third football fields long, while being 50 feet high, the height of a five-story building. At those dimensions, it likely dwarfed any other building of its time.
Make yourself an ark of gopherwood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and outside with pitch. 15 And this is how you shall make it: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. – Genesis 6:14-15
The reason why Noah needed such a big boat for his family was that he was instructed by God to rescue the animal kingdom as well as his own family. He was instructed to take two of every type of animal on the ark with him, one male and one female. But when it came to the animals referred to in the Old Testament Law as “clean animals,” he was to take seven. Some try to take this as the Bible contradicting itself, but it was merely God expanding on His original instructions to take two of each.
God’s instructing Noah to take all those animals is one of the best arguments for a worldwide flood, rather than just a regional flood. If there had only been a regional flood, as some have proposed and as seen in the flood account in some other religions, then there would have been no need to rescue the animal kingdom along with Noah’s family.
The logistics of taking all those animals must have been massive. They needed food for a little over a year. While we all know that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, the waters that covered the land lasted much longer. According to Genesis 7:24, “the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days” before God remembered Noah and the animals in the boat” (Genesis 7:24). At that time, God started the process of drying up the water, so that Noah, his family and all the animals could come out of the ark. It was several more months before they could actually come out. We don’t know the exact number of days, but theologians have come up with various numbers in the 372 to 378 range.
Then God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. – Genesis 8:1
The first thing that Noah did, upon leaving the ark, was to build an altar and make a burnt offering to God, of the clean animals that he had taken with him. As those were both the animals that they ate and the animals used for sacrifices, perhaps that’s why God told him to take seven of each, rather than two. It also accounts for why there were an odd number of these animals, as one of each became a sacrifice to God.
So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him… 20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. – Genesis 8:18, 20
Why Animal Sacrifices?
This raises the question of why Noah chose to offer these animals as a sacrifice or how he knew to do so. We must remember that these events took place long before God gave the Law to Moses, wherein He established the system of animal sacrifices. Even so, Noah knew somehow this was the way to make an offering to God.
If we look back earlier in Genesis, we see that the very first animal sacrifice was made by God Himself. This happened when Adam and Eve fell into sin, by eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 3:6). As part of this, they recognized their nakedness and were ashamed of it. God’s response was to make clothing for them out of skins, requiring that He kill animals to do so (Genesis 3:21).
Allow me to take a bunny trail for a moment here. The fact that they were naked was not evil, in and of itself. God tells us, in Genesis 1:25, that “they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” What had changed between then and chapter 3, when they felt a need to cover their nakedness with fig leaves (Genesis 3:7)? The only thing that had changed, was their understanding of good and evil. While that can easily be interpreted to mean that nakedness is evil, if it had been evil, God would have clothed them from the very beginning. Rather, it seems that what was laid naked wasn’t so much the physical, as the evilness in their hearts.
Going back to the first animal sacrifice, we must realize that God had established a covenant with Adam, where God gave him dominion and authority over the earth, with the Garden of Eden as his habitation. In exchange, God only required that he not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” – Genesis 15-17
While we tend to look at Adam and Eve’s sin as eating of that fruit, there’s something else that happened at that time; they broke the covenant with God. God’s response, in killing animals to make them clothing, was the shedding of blood, to reestablish the covenant. While it doesn’t say so there, elsewhere in the Bible, including at the Cross of Calvary, we see the shedding of blood as a necessity for the establishment or reestablishment of covenant.
We have no idea how much of this God explained to Adam, as the Bible doesn’t record the conversations that they had, when they walked together in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:6). But it is perfectly reasonable for us to assume that God either instructed Adam about animal sacrifices during that time, or instructed him enough, that he was able to draw that conclusion from God killing animals to make clothing for he and his wife. In either case, Adam passed this knowledge on to his sons, as evidenced by Abel bringing an animal sacrifice to God.
And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. 4 Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, 5 but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. – Genesis 4:3-5
The wording here makes it extremely clear that God expected animal sacrifices. Not only that, but God expected the best. Abel brough “of the firstborn and of their fat.” That could almost have been taken right out of the Law that God gave to Moses, roughly 2,500 years later. There’s no way that Adam and his sons could have gotten this understanding from other cultures, as there weren’t any other cultures to get it from. Rather, other cultures and religions got the idea of animal sacrifices from them, copying God’s ways of doing things, as Satan often does.
What’s So Special About Blood?
God has clearly established in His Word that blood is important. It is blood, and blood only, which can be given in atonement for sin. We see that throughout the Old Testament Law and in the New Testament as well. The big difference is, in the Old Testament the blood of animals was offered as a sacrifice for sins, while in the New Testament, it is the blood of Jesus which cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? – Hebrews 9:13-14
How is this so? To start with, we are all living under a sentence of death, due to our own personal sin (Romans 6:23). That price must be paid, or we have to pay it ourselves. Fortunately for us, Jesus paid that price; but how?
Rather than pay the price ourselves, God has created another means for us, the idea of substitutionary sacrifice. This is based on the Bible declaring that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). The entire sacrificial system in the Old Testament is based on this idea, allowing the death of animals to take our place as the payment for our sins. In doing so, it also reestablished their covenant with God.
Even so, this was never God’s best. The Law was never intended to save anyone, merely to act as a teacher. If we could truly buy our salvation with animal sacrifices, Jesus would not have needed to go to the cross. Yet He did.
Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. – Romans 3:20
All of this goes back to the foundation of the covenant. All sin breaks our covenant with God, making it necessary for the covenant to be reestablished. For that to happen, atonement must be made for the breaking of that covenant. That’s what the blood of the sacrifices did and what the blood of Jesus does for us today. The big difference is that Jesus died once, for all, eliminating the need for ongoing animal sacrifices.
God was not concerned about Noah taking the life out of the flesh by eating the blood, as it was necessary to kill the flesh to eat it anyway. We don’t typically eat raw, living animal flesh. Rather, God was concerned about Noah dishonoring the covenant by eating of that blood. His commandment about eating blood had more to do with honoring the covenant, than anything else.
Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life; you may not eat the life with the meat. – Deuteronomy 12:23
God didn’t stop with telling this to Noah, He also codified it in the Law, when He told it to Moses. We still honor this commandment today, although most people don’t know where it came from.