Didn’t God allow us in Gen 9:3 to eat any animal flesh?
Question: Didn’t God allow us in Gen 9:3 to eat any animal flesh, as we desire?
Answer: After the Flood, the Creator blessed Noach and said, “Be fruitful and increase, and fill the earth” (Gen 9:1). Then, He allowed the supremacy of man over the animals. This subjection of the animals to man was expressed in the manner of force, namely, by being hunted for food. Thus, the animals lost the voluntary subjection to man and were placed under his will (Gen 9:2). We read,
Every moving thing that lives is food for you; as the green herb have I given you all. But do not eat flesh with its life, which is its blood. (Gen 9:3-4)
We should not err and conclude from the words “Every moving thing that lives is food for you” that man is allowed to eat every flesh by his will. But we should read it that the Creator for the first time allowed man to eat animal flesh.
Therefore, we should understand these words thus: The Creator told the first man Adam to eat only plants. But for Noach and all generations after him, just as the green vegetation which He permitted for the first man, He has given man everything to eat.
Evidently, this “everything” rises the controversy that the Creator allowed man to eat any animal flesh by his will and thus to decide which animal is “clean” and “unclean” instead of the Creator who created the animals.
Had the Torah only written the word כֹּל kol, “every, all”, i.e., “all moving creatures that lives shall be for food for you”, we would have concluded that all kinds of animals are permissible for human consumption. But the inclusion of the conditional phrase “as the green plants” limits the type of food permitted for consumption.
Therefore, our verse means, “Just as I have not given you all plants for food, so are not all animals food for you”. In other words, just as poisonous plants (such as marijuana and poison ivy) are not fit for human consumption, swine and shrimps are not either. Refer to the articles Is Really Marijuana in the Bible? and Is God Really Cool with Cannabis? of Time of Reckoning Ministry for more understanding.
These words of the Creator: “Every moving thing that lives is food for you”, have been grossly misinterpreted by the Christian theologians to the degree of distortion. As a result, verses taken out of the overall context, such as Act 10:12-15; 1Ti 4:3-5; Rom 14:3, Rom 14:14, Rom 14:20; 1Co 10:23, 1Co 10:25-26, 1Co 10:31; Col 2:16, Col 2:21-22; 1Ti 4:3-4, have been understood to mean that Paul allowed Christians to eat whatever they desire. So, it is not that the Christian religion does not have its own kosher list; it does. The problem is that the Christian “kosher” list is not the Creator’s kosher list (refer to Leviticus 11 to see the Creator’s kosher list).
And the second part of the statement, “But do not eat flesh with its life”, which simply means flesh that is still alive, i.e., in which there is still blood, explicitly forbids eating live animals. The prohibition comes from fact that, because the soul of the animal is in the blood, eating animal flesh with its blood is like eating its soul. This too has been distorted. The followers of that religion like rare roast animal flesh with a lot of “juice”.