Before Sinai: Noah Already Knew Clean and Unclean

Introduction

Usually, when people read this Torah portion of Noach the concentration is on the mechanics of the flood and the building of the ark on which Noah loaded the animals.

One truth that comes out of this text that most Christians sadly miss, is that long before Moses and the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, Noah already knew which animals are clean and are for food, and which are not clean and ought not to be used for human consumption.

Here is the text right out of God’s word:

I am not bringing this text to condemn anyone who has a BLT sandwich. I am not teaching this to convince my non-Jewish brothers and sisters that they ought not to eat a wonderful Maine lobster, or a New England King Crab.

As a Jew, long before I believed in God and in Yeshua (Jesus), I ate everything and enjoyed every bite of the scallops, shrimp, and lobster. And in my home in Jerusalem, long before I believed in God or in Yeshua, pork and beans was a staple.

When my father was home there was not a day that we didn’t eat bean soup, and there was no bean soup in my house that didn’t have a good white cube of pork fat.

Before The Flood, Noah Knew Clean And Unclean

I am sharing these texts from Parashat Noach to establish a biblical fact, and the fact is that long before the giving of the Torah, Noah already knew which was a clean animal and which was not a clean animal.

The Lord commanded Noah to take seven pairs of the clean animals and only two pairs of the unclean animals. As a Jewish disciple of Yeshua (Jesus), this fact that God had commanded Noah to have seven pairs of the clean animals, is a little unsettling.

Add to this narrative of Noah, that the book of Genesis says that Abraham not only believed in God and his faith was counted to him as righteousness, but that Abraham also kept the commandments of God and God’s statues, and even kept God’s Torah. We learn about this in God's encounter with Isaac where God repeats the promises that He gave to Abraham and there is a clear causality in this text:

This is some 400 years or more before the Torah was given to Moses and to Israel on Mount Sinai after the Exodus from Egypt. But, it is a biblical fact nonetheless!