Genesis 9:3 “And every moving thing that is living will be yours for food; like grassy vegetables, I give you all things.”
That sounds self-explanatory. Where’s the controversy?
There are no contradictions or errors in the Torah. If there were, then God made a mistake, and He is not perfect. If our understanding of some Scripture causes contradictions with other Scripture, Scripture is not the problem; our comprehension is.
The Torah provides a list of animals for food and animals we are not to eat, otherwise known as clean and unclean animals. Genesis 9:3 makes it sound like all animals are for food. And therein lies the controversy. Is it a contradiction, or can it be reconciled?
There is a viewpoint that says that everyone was a vegetarian before the flood. Genesis 9:3 permitted Noah to eat any animal. The Torah later limited the Israelites on what they could eat. We’ll halt the progression there for now.
The first thing to notice is that the Torah lists clean animals as food and says not to eat unclean animals. Long before the Torah, there was an understanding of clean and unclean animals. Did Noah already know which animals were for food? And why would there be a distinction if they weren’t already for food?
There is no reason to believe that no one ate meat before the flood. Even Abel offered an animal sacrifice by fire, and we all know the smell that meat on the grill makes. Surely someone in the 2,000 years before the flood came up with the idea to eat meat.
So, Genesis 9:3 isn’t telling Noah that meat was a new menu item. And Noah already knew the distinction between the clean and unclean. There’s only one possibility left. God is telling Noah that he can resume eating meat.
Genesis 6:21 says, “You will take for yourself of all the food that you will consume, and you will gather it together to yourself, and it will be for you and for [the animals] to eat.” The animals were on the ark to be rescued from the flood, not to be food. Noah brought fruits, vegetables, and grains, etc., to feed his family and the animals. This cruise ship didn’t come with any meat entreés. The animals were passengers on this trip. After the journey was complete, Noah could eat meat again.
But that’s not all. There’s one more thing to know about this verse. When God created the animals on day six of creation, He made three categories of land animals. They are the wild beasts (or creatures), cattle or livestock, and the creeping things. The Hebrew words are nep̄eš, bᵊhēmâ, and remeś. The Hebrew word used in Genesis 9:3 is remeś. It means creeping things. Strong’s definition is: a reptile or any other rapidly moving animal:—that creepeth, creeping (moving) thing. Is God saying that Noah can now eat lizards and things? That’s a problem.
Leviticus 11 says that anything that creeps on the ground is an abomination to eat as food. What is Genesis 9:3 trying to say? It looks like it’s a contradiction to a lot of other verses in the Bible.
The answer is in the conditional statement in the sentence. Everyone wants to focus on WHAT God is telling Noah he can eat and not on what Noah is allowed to eat. What does verse four say? “But you shall not eat meat with the blood of life.” Why does this verse follow verse three?
The Torah instructs that we are not to eat an animal that has died. Animals that are for food are supposed to be properly slaughtered and have their blood drained. The focus of verse three should be on the condition that the animal is living. The word remeś does mean moving things, and the word kōl before it does mean every. If you want to argue that Genesis 9:3 is talking about every moving thing, you are mostly correct. But the verse says, “every moving thing THAT IS LIVING will be yours for food.” Then verse four instructs to drain the blood.
The emphasis isn’t that all animals are food because Noah already knows what is clean and unclean. The point is that the animal is to be alive to be considered food. There is no contradiction from the Torah. Genesis 9:3 and Leviticus 11 agree. The only controversy now is that people will still use Genesis 9:3 to justify breaking God’s commandments.