Parshat Noach: Another fine mess

(Here's the first fine mess.)

Might as well start with DovBear's post. I'm linking to his Parshat Noach post through mine just because I'm too lazy to set up that link explaining the word Parsha again.

Okay, here are the problems that I see.

• B'reishit/Genesis, chapter 6: Noach/Noah doesn't protest when HaShem, er, Elokim, says He's going to destroy all living creatures. HaShem, Elokim, oh, man, do I have to scrounge up that link to the Documentary Hypothesis again to explain the different names of G-d? Sigh. Here it is.
  
• Why doesn't HaShem, er, Elokim choose some species-specific plague to wipe out the human race only? What did the animals do to deserve to be wiped out? For the record, I think I swiped this thought from GoldaLeah's B'reishit Noach post, which you should definitely read.
  
• B'reishit/Genesis, chapter 7, verse 2: HaShem--yes, HaShem, not Elokim--tells Noach to take seven of every clean beast (male and female), and two, male and female, of every unclean beast. Nu, exactly how is Noach supposed to know which animals are "clean" and which are "unclean" when that list isn't mentioned in the Torah for at least another book and a half?
• Poor explanation: "Therefore was the name of that place called Babel (Bavel), because there HaShem confounded--balal--the language of all the earth . . . (B'reishet, Genesis chapter 11, verse 9.) Bavel comes from balal?? Wrong consonant, sorry--not even in the transition from Ashkenazi to S'fardi, or from S'fardi to B'nei Edot HaMizrach (Children of the Communities of the East, e.g., Syrian, Iraqi, Yemenite) pronunciation, where they've been known to say "tob" rather than "tov"and "panav" for "fanav," can one substitute the letter bet for the letter lamed. Close, but no cigar.

On the plus side, at least the "begats" specify "sons and daughters."