Can’t God count?
There are a number of passages in Scripture that are often used to validate the position that the Bible lacks credibility. It’s quite important to some it seems, to commit themselves to finding arguments against it. I might even suggest that it’s often held to a much different standard than other ancient texts; as I suppose it should be.
One such passage is found in the story of Noah. When preparing for the impending flood, Noah is first told to take animals with his family into the ark in pairs, while later he’s asked to take seven clean and two unclean into this massive boat designed to rescue a remnant from the coming deluge.
And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female.
~ Genesis 6:19 NASB
You shall take with you seven pairs of every clean animal, a male and his female; and two of the animals that are not clean, a male and his female;
~ Genesis 7:2 NASB
So what’s going on here? This certainly seems either a contradiction between verses that are literally just a few sentences apart, or maybe as some have suggested, the story is something of a compilation from different sources where Moses (the compiler) just didn’t seem to notice. Maybe God just isn’t good at math? We can be fairly certain that 2 isn’t equal to 7. Maybe God changed His mind somewhere in the few verses in-between?
The truth is, that often people who seek out such contradictions are really just so committed to devaluing the text, that their excitement over finding these “contradictions” prevents them from actually understanding what it is they’re reading. Not only can God count, but He is the originator of math, and this passage is actually demonstrating God’s precision and His exactness in ensuring the preservation of the animals.
In the first verse, God is defining the word “pair”. He’s being careful not to leave it up to Noah’s interpretation of what this word means. God is telling Noah that when he takes the animals into the ark, he should pair them up as a mating pair – “male and female” to keep them “alive”. If Noah were to misunderstand how to pair them, well… let’s just say their rescue might have been pointless. So in this first verse, God is actually giving Noah an equation to use when counting the animals, it is literally God providing Noah with some math for pairing them. What He’s saying is “When you count the animals, you should count them in pairs, one male and one female”. So later when God tells Noah to take the clean and unclean animals into the ark, we can plug these numbers into the equation and find out how many “kinds” to bring (a x pair or 2 = b). So seven of every clean animal kind, 7 x 2 = 14; Noah is to take 14 of each kind of clean animal, 7 male paired with 7 female. Of the unclean animals, 1 x 2 = 2; Noah is to take 2 of each kind of unclean animal, 1 male (“a male”) paired with 1 female (“his female”). These verses aren’t in contradiction at all, rather they are ensuring that Noah doesn’t get confused about how to pair them, and actually pairs them in such a way as to ensure their ability to reproduce after the flood, to replenish the earth.
Granted the way in which it’s written might be a tad confusing to modern day readers. Of course it’s understandable that 4,500 years ago this dialogue with Noah might be somewhat different from how it’s used today – Languages, much like these animals, change and adapt over time and locality. Yet it doesn’t take much consideration to see what’s happening in the text. This, like many other of the supposed contradictions, are often simple misunderstandings by those who’s objective it is to find problems wherever they can be found. Therefore the passage simply isn’t read carefully or considered with any reasonable amount of effort. What’s humorous is that God Himself said that this would happen, those who seek to pat themselves on the back for their cunning – finding ways to challenge His Word – are often confused themselves.
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