Adam Clarke's Bible Commentary Verse 3. Every moving thing-shall be meat] There is no positive evidence that animal food was ever used before the flood. Noah had the first grant of this kind, and it has been continued to all his posterity ever since. It is not likely that this grant would have been now made if some extraordinary alteration had not taken place in the vegetable world, so as to render its productions less nutritive than they were before; and probably such a change in the constitution of man as to render a grosser and higher diet necessary. We may therefore safely infer that the earth was less productive after the flood than it was before, and that the human constitution was greatly impaired by the alterations which had taken place through the whole economy of nature. Morbid debility, induced by an often unfriendly state of the atmosphere, with sore and long-continued labour, would necessarily require a higher nutriment than vegetables could supply. That this was the case appears sufficiently clear from the grant of animal food, which, had it not been indispensably necessary, had not been made. That the constitution of man was then much altered appears in the greatly contracted lives of the postdiluvians; yet from the deluge to the day of Abraham the lives of several of the patriarchs amounted to some hundreds of years; but this was the effect of a peculiar providence, that the new world might be the more speedily repeopled.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 1-3 - The blessing of God is the cause of our doing well. On him we depend to him we should be thankful. Let us not forget the advantage an pleasure we have from the labour of beasts, and which their fles affords. Nor ought we to be less thankful for the security we enjo from the savage and hurtful beasts, through the fear of man which God has fixed deep in them. We see the fulfilment of this promise ever day, and on every side. This grant of the animals for food full warrants the use of them, but not the abuse of them by gluttony, stil less by cruelty. We ought not to pain them needlessly whilst they live nor when we take away their lives.
Original Hebrew כל3605 רמשׂ7431 אשׁר834 הוא1931 חי2416 לכם יהיה1961 לאכלה402 כירק3418 עשׂב6212 נתתי5414 לכם את853 כל׃3605
