Birds (Gen 7:3)
The Flood
New to the column? We’re doing a close reading of Genesis, which started in September 2022. Read about Day One of Creation here, then visit the Archive and plunge in, or look here or here to get oriented.
Get your free Biblical Hebrew Starter Kit here!
We examined most of v. 3 of Genesis 7 in some detail in the previous and double previous posts. As you remember, in v. 2 YHWH tells Noah to take seven pairs of kosher animals on board and just one pair of all the animals that aren’t kosher — altering or supplementing the “one pair of each” instructions in 6:19–20. Now the bird quotient is upped from one to seven, as if all birds are kosher. Per Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, they aren’t.
Up through v. 2, the P and J voices telling the story were quite distinct, matching (respectively) Version 1 and Version 2 of the creation story. (See here and here for more details on this.) V. 3 throws that into confusion, with language from both voices or neither. Now we’ll fill in the ellipsis in “to keep … alive” and add the rest of v. 3, giving us more information for our discussion of the interplay of different biblical voices in this verse.
3 to keep seed alive לְחַיּ֥וֹת זֶ֖רַע
Because this Hebrew verb is a two-word expression in English, I filled in the place where the direct object of the phrase would be with an ellipsis (…). Now we can plug that gap with זֶ֖רַע zéra ‘seed’. Just like the English word, when you are “carrying the seed-bag” (Ps 126:6), zéra is what’s inside the bag, and what you put in the ground so that a plant will grow:
Gen 1:12 The earth brought forth greenery, plants producing seed [זֶ֙רַע֙] of their own species, fruit trees making fruit of their own species with their own seeds [זַרְעוֹ] in them. And God saw that it was good.
(Newer subscribers can connect to all our discussion about Day Three of Creation, when the plants appeared, in the new series of bonus posts. Eventually such posts will be exclusive to premium subscribers.
But human beings produce “seed” too (see Lev 12:1), and this same word is used for “offspring,” both of humans and of animals. When David is told in 2 Sam 7:12 that one of his sons will succeed him as king, that’s expressed as “your seed.” When God promises Noah there will never again be a Flood, Gen 9:9 uses the same expression to extend the promise to זַרְעֲכֶ֖ם zar’akhem ‘your seed’.
What exactly is Noah being told to “keep alive”? Actual seeds (to plant after the Flood is over), plant life, animal life, human life? How will stocking the floating box with seven pairs of each species of birds achieve this?
3 all over the Earth. עַל־פְּנֵ֥י כָל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
Finally, our verse ends with the expression “on the face of the whole earth.” We’ve seen that expression already too:
Gen 1:29 God said, “Now, I have given you all the plants seeding seed [זֹרֵ֣עַ זֶ֗רַע] all over the earth [עַל־פְּנֵ֣י כָל־הָאָ֔רֶץ] and every tree that has in it tree-fruit sowing seed [זֹרֵ֣עַ זָ֑רַע]: they are yours to eat.
That’s from Version 1, the P version of creation. Yet we will see the exact phrase “all over the earth” again, twice, in the story of the tower in Genesis 11, an obvious J story.
Let’s look at v. 3 again — the whole thing, not just 3b as Westermann asked us to do — and make a list of the linguistic details and where they point.
3 Also of Sky-birds, seven pairs, male and female, to keep seed alive all over the Earth.
And here’s that list:
Sky-birds (a P expression)
seven pairs (a J expression)
“kosher” designation missing (a mistake?)
“male and female” (P)
“to keep [something/someone] alive” in J’s Piel (not P’s [later?] Hiphil)
“seed” (used for plants in P but here ambiguously)
“all over the earth” (used with P’s creation and J’s tower)
All right, then. Does this tell us anything about who added those birds, and why?
We know from Genesis 8 that there are birds on the boat, and from v. 12 there specifically that one of them is going to be free as a bird and depart for nests unknown. Two birds might not be enough. (We’re not going to be told about the mate of the bird who flies off, but we’ll deal with that question when we get there.)
And … what about plants? Is that what 3b, with its “seed,” is really about? Should I have translated זרע simply as “plants”?
With regard to the zéra, I’m going to invoke Greenstein’s Law and say that our author is indeed interested in keeping “seed” alive on the earth, and he doesn’t much care whether you think that refers to animals or plants. Our story basically assumes that plants are going to bounce back after the flood without any advance preparation to make sure that happens; that doesn’t mean a bit of literary help isn’t welcome.
The aftermath of the Flood is very clear about the birds:
Gen 8:20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking of every clean animal and of every clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. [NJPS]
Does that mean, as Westermann and Hendel think, that the clean “animals” of v. 2 originally included birds as well, and some later writer didn’t get the memo? Or is 3a shorthand, implicitly adding seven pairs of kosher birds to the single pair of all other birds already mentioned in 6:20, as Rashi and Nahmanides think?
I prefer to think that the final author of Genesis was a writer, not a mathematician or a lawyer. In these first few verses of chapter 7, he was sewing up a few loose ends — to get enough birds on the boat for the rest of the story, and to nod at the existence / persistence of plants after the Flood as well, and not randomly. Instead, that was part of the plan to begin with. Moreover, with “seed” and then “all over the earth” we once again move outward, pointing to the world’s once more being filled with life — after the Flood.
You don’t have to get under cover quite yet, but next time — literarily, if not meteorologically — we’ll encounter the first drops of rain.