Bible Strands
Genesis 7:9
came to Noah to enter the ark, two by two, male and female, as God had commanded Noah.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The clean and unclean animals, birds, and creeping creatures arrive at the ark immediately before the floodwaters descend. Noah stands as the appointed recipient of the divine directive to gather them.
The words — שְׁנַיִם (she·na·yim) translates literally to "two," and בָּאוּ (bā·’û) means "they came." These Hebrew terms describe the paired arrival of the creatures at the vessel.
The thread — The paired entry repeats in Genesis 7:16, while Genesis 2:19 records God bringing animals to Adam, and Isaiah 11:6 projects a future cohabitation among the same species.
Why it lands — The text establishes that preservation follows exact obedience to divine instruction and requires deliberate, ordered preparation. It demands a reader acknowledge that survival depends on precise compliance rather than human initiative.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
Cross-references
- Genesis 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and He brought them to the man to see what he would name each one. And whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
- Genesis 7:16 And they entered, the male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.
- Isaiah 11:6 The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the goat; the calf and young lion and fatling will be together, and a little child will lead them.
- Isaiah 65:25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but the food of the serpent will be dust. They will neither harm nor destroy on all My holy mountain,” says the LORD.
- Jeremiah 8:7 Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons. The turtledove, the swift, and the thrush keep their time of migration, but My people do not know the requirements of the LORD.
- Acts 10:11 He saw heaven open and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners.
- Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
- Colossians 3:11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, but Christ is all and is in all.