Pure Animals (Gen 7:2)

The Flood

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² From all the ritually pure animals, get yourself seven husband-and-wife pairs of each;

מִכֹּ֣ל ׀ הַבְּהֵמָ֣ה הַטְּהוֹרָ֗ה תִּֽקַּח־לְךָ֛ שִׁבְעָ֥ה שִׁבְעָ֖ה אִ֣ישׁ וְאִשְׁתּ֑וֹ

Okay! I’d say there are some things to talk about here. I’m going to start at the end and work backwards.

אִ֣ישׁ וְאִשְׁתּ֑וֹ ish v’ishto ‘a man and his woman’ — yes, these animals are being called “man” and “woman.” It doesn’t sound anywhere near as strange in Biblical Hebrew as it does in English, because איש ish, which can mean “a man” or “a person” (of either or any sex), can also be used to say “each other,” even when you’re referring to inanimate objects. Here’s how NJPS translates one of the instructions for making the Tabernacle:

^{Exod 26:3} Five of the cloths shall be joined to one another, and the other five cloths shall be joined to one another.

Both occurrences of “one another” in this verse are actually translating the Hebrew phrase ‏אִשָּׁ֖ה אֶל־אֲחֹתָֽהּ isha el-aḥotah ‘a woman to her sister’. The “cloths” are yeriot, a feminine noun, so each of them is “a woman” if you have to refer to it in that way.

You remember, of course, that in 6:19, the pairs of “all flesh” that were to be kept alive were supposed to be זָכָ֥ר וּנְקֵבָ֖ה zakhar u-n’keva ‘male and female’, matching the creation of humanity in 1:27. In keeping with the homier, less scientific flavor of J as opposed to P, our verse refers to the pairs as consisting of “man and woman” / “husband and wife.” It’s another example of a language difference between the two versions that does not seem to express any difference of religious ideas.

The Hebrew repeats the word שבעה shiv’a ‘seven’ to indicate what Jouön-Muraoka §142p calls “the distributive idea,” that is, seven “of each” species — or, rather, as the continuation makes clear, seven “husband and wife” pairs of each. This is a new idea. In 6:19–20 Noah was told to take just one pair of each species. The standard explanation for this is as follows:

• In 8:20, Noah will sacrifice (some of) every ritually pure animal and bird to YHWH.

• If there were only one male-female pair of each and you kill one of them … oops!

• P does not accept the idea of animal sacrifices before there are priests to offer them, and so does not need more than one pair of each.

All plausible, and I too do accept this explanation (though it remains to ask why 7 and not 3, 5, 10, or 12 of each). There’s one slight bump in the road, however: What is a “ritually pure” animal?

Before I go on to discuss that English translation of the word טהורה t’hora, let’s see have a look at where in the Torah these animals are discussed: