We find that Creation and the Flood are intimately linked in the plan of God. In response to man’s sin, God undoes his miraculous creation—miraculously—and then returns it to its original state, despite the presence of sin. He shows his mercy more spectacularly than he did by creating humans to begin with. And he can do this, obviously, because he was capable of creating the cosmos in the first place.

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As Moses continues his narrative of beginnings, he comes quickly to an account of the Flood, God’s global judgment on human sin. Perhaps you’ve never noticed how thoroughly the flood account is imbued with Creation language.

The account begins with the observation that “man began to multiply on the face of the earth” (Gen 6.1)—which is a direct response to God’s command to multiply in Genesis 1.28. A few verses later (Gen 6.6), Moses states that God “repented” that he had made man on the earth. Thus Moses introduces the Flood as, in effect, God’s reversal of the Creation event: his Uncreation, if you will.

And so begins the account. God describes all the life he created in Genesis 1, using the same language: “man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air” (Gen 6.7)—”all flesh, wherein is the breath of life” (Gen 6.17). God orders Noah to preserve two of each of these life forms (Gen 6.20), specifying “male and female” (Gen 6.19).

As he continues his instructions, he specifies not just two, but fourteen–seven pairs–of the clean animals, again including both male and female (Gen 7.2), and specifying both beasts and fowl (Gen 7.2-3).

Sidebar: Some question why God specified 7 pairs of each clean beast—and some are completely unaware that this specification was even made. Why this command? Well, for starters, we’re told that upon exiting the ark, Noah made a large sacrifice (Gen 8.20), and after going to all that trouble to preserve breeding pairs, you don’t want to kill them. I also note that that dove eventually didn’t return to the ark (Gen 8.12). Further, I speculate that Noah and his family might have eaten some meat on the ark, and further, they may have wanted some breeding insurance for clean animals as the repopulation proceeded.

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