The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.
Every time I read this, and I’ve lost count how many times I have read this in my life, I’d often wondered how he fed the animals, not so much those that relied on grains, that was a given, but those that relied on meat to survive. Animals like the big cats or the wild dogs.
It just occurred to me that in Gen 7:23, it mentioned every living thing ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH was wiped out. EVERYTHING THAT WALKED ON DRY LAND! But what about those in the water?
Every time I thought about what went into the Ark, I’d wonder about the fish, whales and sharks, and all other living creatures in the ocean. And for some reason, I didn’t make the connection between this thought and the thought of “how are they going to feed the meat eaters without tapping into the other pairs of animals. It’s not like they had a meat storage area, and considering the appetite of many carnivores, that’s a lot of meat to get through in one day alone. If they had to tap into the mates of other species, the Ark would be pretty much empty by the time it found land again.
And that’s when it clicked! Of course! The creatures of the oceans were needed as sustenance to feed those that needed meat on the ark. Bears, big cats, wild dogs… I won’t go into what species of big cats, bears, etc were on the ark, that’s another story for another time, only that it’s believed that “One pair (or 7 pairs depending on clean/unclean) of every species of animal” meant bears, big cats, etc. Domesticated dogs and cats came from their wild ancestors. All types of bears are believed again to have come from one common ancestor. Same goes with horses, chicken, etc, the list goes on.
There needed to be space to store the grains, not just for nourishment for the people, but also as precious seeds to be planted once the Ark found land again.
But there didn’t need to be any meat supply because they were supplied with abundance all around them! Part of Genesis (6:16) mentions: “Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around.”
I always believed that to be for ventilation since no lower part of the Ark could risk having any windows, but if it was just ventilation, why make that opening ALL THE WAY AROUND, which meant the roof of the Ark was only being supported by corner posts. That spacing must have also had to be used to access the ocean where they could throw a line or perhaps a net, which was more commonly used back then, to gather enough fish to sustain the diet of all the carnivores.
The bible tends to mention only highlights which is also noticeable earlier in Genesis when it mentions that Adam and Eve had sons, and later those sons got married, but it never mentions where the wives came from for those sons.
So we can only assume then that how Noah and his family sustained themselves and the animals during their time on the Ark would have to be through fishing.
Granted, there wouldn’t have been as many varieties of fish as we have today, if you go by a question answered on the “Answers in Genesis” website, majority of marine life would not have survived the flood, but the ones that did would have been hardier, and it’s the descendants of those that we see in our oceans today.
I would love to hear the thoughts of others on this.
TigerSpirit's Corner 