Seven Pairs of Birds (Gen 7:3)
The Flood
Today’s verse, for better or worse, will push us once again into a situation where we’ve got to decide whether the text is correct to begin with. Text Criticism is a semester-long course in Bible grad school; today, we’ll see how much we can cram into a little mini-course.
3 Also of Sky-birds, seven pairs
גַּ֣ם מֵע֧וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֛יִם שִׁבְעָ֥ה שִׁבְעָ֖ה
Wait a minute. We just saw the land animals — the larger mammals, really — categorized as kosher and not kosher, ritually pure or the opposite. Noah was told to take seven pairs of the kosher ones and just one pair of the non-kosher ones. Are you telling me that (1) all birds are kosher, and (2) Noah is going to be sacrificing some of them when he gets off the boat?
The answer, or an answer, to question #1 is here, in the apparatus to Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, where aמֵע֧וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֛יִם has a little superscript telling us to look to the bottom of the page:
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