If God had intended the unclean to have been eaten with the clean, He would have had more than one pair of them entering into the Ark as He did with the clean ones, therefore, the logic is good for the first year, the second year, the tenth year, the fiftieth year, etc.

Wednesday's study changes the focus from The Flood itself to The Lost Generation.

Why was there a lost generation?

There's another possibility.

Was that first sacrifice the only one Noah was supposed to make? It is possible that the rest of the clean animals were to be used for those. If there was a sacrifice every other month, the animals will have difficulty keeping up. If there was one every Sabbath, Noah would have had to limit himself to one animal at a time.

When God told them it was OK to eat meat, I'm not so sure that the unclean animals were in danger of extinction. When people hunt for pigs in the woods today, there's no guarantee that they will catch one, even though there may be hundreds of pigs running around in the bushes. Consider how difficult it would be to catch one of those two pigs from the ark, especially since they can run wherever they want. Even catching one of those 6 chickens would be a feat. So, even though God allowed them to eat meat, man probably wouldn't have tasted any for a long time after the Flood.

Furthermore, Noah's immediate family probably would have found the thought of eating flesh disgusting. Consider how Americans generally feel about eating snails, monkeys, or dogs - delicacies in other parts of the world.

Because though that generation had a way of escape, they did not take it.

Daryl, besides agreeing with asygo, I will add that the contents of this quoted post is not logic, it is the ostrich technique. Ignore it and hope it goes away...
Take rabbits for example. They live for some 10 years, have between 5-8 young at a time and in a good year could breed several times in one year. So lets say every pair of rabbit have ten young every year and these young are ready to mate the year after, also assuming that noone is eating them. In 9 years we pass 20 milion rabbits, in 12 years we have 4.3 bilion rabbits and after 50 years we have up to, hmm, no, earth could not contain that many rabbits. Somewhere in the early 32nd year an uncontrolled growth of rabbits would equal the weight of earth, here using the assumption that each rabbit weighs 1 kg which is a bit in the low. To say that Noah and family could not eat rabbits becourse they might go extinct is, well, unfeasible.

Thomas,

That is also why we take the whole Bible into consideration, rather than a single incident.

Why would Thursday's lesson study be very important as part of this week's study?

Thats a good point about taking the entire bible into consideration Daryl. What does Jesus words in Matthew 15 and Pauls in Romans 14 mean in the light of Genesis 9?

It means that eating without washing your hands several times doesn't make the food you eat unclean, and that if some of the meat in the market was sacrificed to idols, you should follow your conscience as to eating it or not.

Noah had to eat meat until the first crop, not necessarily after that. Ellen White says, additionally, that he also took with him in the ark his stock of cattle.

The key question is: Why were the israelites given instruction as to clean/unclean animals? For reasons of sacrifice or for health reasons?

I believe it was for health reasons.
God Bless & Happy Sabbath,
Will