Commentaire sur La Genèse 6:19

ומכל החי AND OF EVERY LIVING THING — Even of demons (Genesis Rabbah 31:13).

OF ALL FLESH. It is known that there are a great many beasts, and some of them — such as elephants, rams and others — are very large; likewise, the creeping things upon the earth are very many. Of the fowl of the heaven there are also innumerably many kinds, just as our Rabbis have said:⁵⁶Chullin 63b. However, instead of 120 kinds, the figure mentioned there is 100. “There are one hundred and twenty kinds of unclean birds in the east, and all of them belong to the species of ayah (kite).”⁵⁷See Leviticus 11:14. Clean fowl are innumerable. Noah was thus obligated to bring all of them into the ark in order that they may beget their like. If you would gather a full year’s supply of food for all of them, [you would find] that this ark and ten others like it could not hold it! But this was a miracle of a small space containing a great quantity. And in case you suppose that he should have made it [the ark] very small and rely on this miracle, the answer is that the Holy One, blessed be He, saw fit to make it large so that the people of his generation should see it, wonder at it, converse about it, and speak of the subject of the flood and the gathering of the cattle, beast, and fowl into it so that perhaps they would repent. Furthermore, he made it large in order to reduce the miracle for such is the way with all miracles in the Torah or in the Prophets: whatever is humanly possible is done, with the balance left to Heaven. Now be not persuaded to say as Ibn Ezra that the three hundred cubits [of the length of the ark were measured] in cubits of a man like Noah, who was unusually tall. If so, the other people were also tall, and the beasts and fowl of those generations were also tall until the world was struck by the flood! Moreover, the cubits here are the standard cubits of the Torah.⁵⁸See Erubin 3b.

ומכל החי מכל בשר, a reference to the living creatures on the dry land only.