What Does Genesis 8:20 Mean?

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. The first action Noah performed after leaving the ark was not to build a house, plant a field, or explore the landscape. He built an altar. The immediate priority of his new life in the new world was worship, an acknowledgment that the survival of the past year had nothing to do with his own merit and everything to do with the God who had initiated the rescue, sustained it, and concluded it on the schedule he had set from the beginning.

The selection of "some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird" for the burnt offering explains the reason for the extra pairs loaded in Genesis 7:2. God had commanded seven pairs of clean animals, enough to sacrifice some while preserving sufficient breeding pairs to sustain the species. The foresight built into the seven-pair command was now evident: Noah could worship without depleting the preserved populations. Every detail of the preparation for the rescue had a purpose visible only in retrospect.

The burnt offering is the most complete form of sacrifice in the later Levitical system, the entire animal consumed, nothing retained for human consumption, everything given to God. This is the appropriate response of someone who recognizes that everything he has, including his own life, is something he has received rather than earned. Noah did not sacrifice a portion as if claiming ownership of the rest; he gave fully, matching the comprehensiveness of the rescue with the comprehensiveness of the acknowledgment. The altar built before a house is a statement about what sustains a civilization.