Genesis 6:19 Commentary and Bible Study

The earth is going to be replenished by the animals that are taken it. Contradiction! cry some of the scholars, because later on, we will be told that there is more than just two of every living thing. There is a contradiction between the account here and the account that is given in Genesis 7:2-3. There must be two authors here, they say, or more than two authors. These ideas are so easily refuted, these ideas of cynical scholars. There is no contradiction. Later, yes, there is shown to be more than this basic number of two animals of every kind, but the narrative is only concerned in these verses with the survival of living things, and so it just mentions the basic two of each kind and the food that must go in.The creatures to be preserved on the ark are named according to the same categories by which they were created in the six days of creation, to remind us that these creatures were all the same ones which God had originally made, so that no kind (which may be a larger category than species) will be lost by the flood. He has not made them only to destroy them, because his purposes cannot fail. The apostle Paul tells us that ‘the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God’ (Romans 8:20-21). The judgment not only of mankind but ‘of every living thing of all flesh’, and the preservation on the ark of all the kinds that God had previously created, is a remarkable divine foretelling of what Paul writes here. The creature was subject to vanity along with mankind. The animal world and even the plant world had to experience death as a consequence, not of its own evil – only man is capable of sin – but for man’s sake. It too had to be under the curse, and subject to pain, sickness, aging, and death. Why, when it was not itself guilty? Because the creatures were ultimately made for man. Earth was fully prepared and populated before God created Adam. Therefore, as part of man’s punishment, the creation itself was put under the curse. Man must look around him as well as within him and see the effects of his sin. The creation was subject to vanity, not willingly, not because it deserved this itself, but because of what man, the head of creation, had done. But it was subject to the curse in hope of ultimately being delivered from it. This too is pictured by the ark, and the means of deliverance is also explained here. Paul indicates that the creature is not to be discarded as a failed project by the Lord, even though he has chosen to put it under the joint sentence of death with man. The creation is going to be set free from vanity. (Exactly what this means in the world to come is not clear, but we ponder these things.) But how is the creature to be liberated? Through the children of God. ‘For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made [us] free from the law of sin and death’ (Romans 8:2), and the creature will be brought into the same liberty. Corresponding to this wonderful truth is the fact that the kinds that God had originally created were preserved on the ark, and male and female of each kind were to be used to populate the post-flood earth.