Series: Animal death before the fall

Part 3

Creation was not a paradise; the garden of Eden was

Continued from part 2, on the provision of plants for food

The prelapsarian world of Genesis is presented as far wilder than we might suppose as we sit in our artificially-lit modern homes and churches, reading English translations of the text. It is wilder, I think, than a 3P reading of Genesis can bear, in at least three ways.

1. Here there be dragons

On the fifth day, “God created the big dragons, and every living lifebreath that crawleth, that the waters teem with” (Genesis 1:21). This is interesting because, while every kind of aquatic creature is included here, only one kind is expressly called out: in Hebrew, what is called a tannin gadol, which I have translated “big dragon” for want of a better term, but in some Bibles is rendered quite agreeably as “great sea-monster.”

It refers primarily to a powerful creature like a serpent, crocodile, or Leviathan itself. In Ezekiel 29:3 Pharaoh is depicted as a Nile crocodile, “that big dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers;” and in Isaiah 27:1 we read of Leviathan, “the twisting serpent…the dragon that is in the sea.” Similarly, in Psalm 74:13 tannin takes on the implication of a primordial chaos demon, drawing on common ANE religious symbolism, in which the sea was an eternal or primordial chaotic abyss; the domain of a great coiled sea monster. In Cana’an, its name was Yam, the adversary of Ba’al. In scripture, it came to represent the gentile nations, ruled by Satan, the great serpent.

This is why Moses chooses the word tannin to describe the serpents in his contest with the priests of Pharaoh, rather than picking any one of the more mundane terms for snakes. Given how he parallels tannin with peten, “asp,” in Deuteronomy 32:23, we may infer that probably this is what these staff-serpents were (i.e., Egyptian cobras). He chooses the term tannin because of its symbolic import in representing the cosmic powers opposing Yahweh, of which Pharaoh and the cobra goddess Wadjet were figureheads.

Reading back to Genesis, we may therefore infer that its focus on the creation of these kinds of creatures is polemical: the point Moses is making is not so much about the natural world, but the supernatural one. In contrast to ANE creation myths, there is no epic battle here where Yahweh must subdue a terrifying monster in the deep. Neither does he create anything divine. There is no chaos deity. Indeed, not only is Leviathan a creature under God’s dominion—and by extension under ours through Genesis 1:28—but there is nothing unique or special about him at all. He is not just one creature; he is one of a great, swarming multitude. In this way scripture confutes pagan creation myths, and reassures Israel that even the seemingly mysterious and untamable sea is entirely under God’s control.

The problem for a 3P view of creation is that Genesis gives no hint whatsoever that these dragons are anything other than powerful predators. The word in context refers to “sea monsters,” which a Hebrew would primarily have thought of in terms of sea serpents, crocodiles, snakes—animals he would know are meat-eaters.

Moreover, as I mentioned in the previous installment, there is no provision of vegetation for the diet of sea creatures, so even if you want to read those provisions as entailing an original vegetarianism—though I think I’ve shown that fails to properly explain them—the sea creatures are exempt.

If the first principle of interpretation is to ask how the original reader would have understood the text, in this case we are forced to conclude that in the absence of qualifying statements or explanations, the original reader would have understood these dragons to be predatory aquatic animals. Since there are no qualifying statements or explanations in the text to suggest otherwise, this is how we should read the text also. Indeed, the force of the theological polemic trades on understanding these creatures to be predatory and dangerous, rather than gentle seaweed eaters.

But if the sea is created wild, why not the land also? If predation was occurring in the depths on day five, why could it not be occuring in the heights also on day six? What principled difference is there between a wild and predatory ocean, and a wild and predatory land?

Which leads to my second point…

2. Beasts of the field

Why, in Genesis 1:25, does Moses draw a distinction between domestic animals and “living things of the land”—i.e., wild animals? These are the same creatures also called “living things of the field” in Genesis 2:19–20, out of which serpents are the most cunning (Gen 3:1, 14).

Presumably the reason is that Moses is organizing his description according to the natural categories his audience already knew. Some animals are suitable for domestication; some are not. He is grouping them in the same way an ancient Hebrew would naturally group them in his mind.

But there is an obvious problem for the 3P view here, because if Moses is relying on the naturally-occurring categories that animals fell into within an Israelite’s post-fall world, then he is presupposing a fundamental continuity between the animals an Israelite knew, and the animals God originally made. He is saying that God created both animals suitable for domestication, like sheep and oxen and camels, and also wild animals, like lions and bears and wolves: the same critters that God tells the Israelites would overrun and eat them if he drove out the people of the land too quickly in Exodus 23:29 and Deuteronomy 7:22. The same term is used: chayat ha-sadeh (cf. Lev 26:22).

Nowhere does the Torah indicate a discontinuity between the nature of the beasts of the field as originally made, and their nature in a fallen world. To the contrary, as with the dragons, their description in Genesis 1 only makes sense if there is a fundamental continuity.

3. The need for dominion

Evangelical Christianity mutes the commission God gives Adam by speaking in terms of “stewardship.” But while it is true that Adam was a steward of creation, that is not the connotation we find in Genesis.

And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and abound and fill the land and subjugate it, and hold sway in the fish of the sea and in the fliers of the heavens and in every living thing that crawleth upon the land.” Genesis 1:28

While most Bibles will say, “subdue” and “rule” (or “have dominion”), this is not consistent with the usage of these words in the rest of scripture.

The first word, kavash, which I have translated “subjugate” for consistency, is elsewhere in scripture used primarily of enslavement and conquering—e.g., 2 Chronicles 28:10; Numbers 32:22, 29. Its sense really is to subjugate or even violate, which makes its use here for the first time very perplexing if the world was created a peaceful prelapsarian paradise.

The second word, radah, which I have translated “hold sway,” is not the standard Hebrew word for rule or dominion (mashal). I borrow “hold sway” from Robert Alter; it is a regrettably inexact idiom, and I would prefer one that gets closer to the meaning of the Hebrew root behind this word: “to tread down.” Nonetheless, “hold sway” is better than “rule” or “have dominion,” because it can be translated thus consistently in every instance the word appears in scripture. It refers especially to kingly authority, often backed up by the might of an army, and often with messianic overtones. Compare the same term used in Numbers 24:19 and Psalm 72:8–9.

I don’t think the use of these terms to describe man’s mandate in Genesis implies a hostile relationship with the world. But they certainly do imply more than mere “stewardship.” They indicate that the world, as originally made, was needful of taming—and not just taming, but what you might call putting down. Eden was a sanctuary, but Moses does not suggest the rest of creation was similar. Quite the opposite, for Adam needed not merely to “serve” the garden, but also to “guard” it (Gen 2:15). The garden does not (yet) extend throughout the world; and the rest of creation is in some sense a threat to it—not gentle, soft, and yielding; but wild, hard, and ready to take over if given the chance.

Adam was made to bring this world into submission. The garden, we may infer, was a model for how things should look once he was finished with this task.

This, in turn, meshes well with what we know of Yahweh in the Old Testament, and Jesus in the new. If Adam is made in God’s image, and that image cashes out in terms of dominion—as it unquestionably does in Genesis 1—then how God exercises dominion—how he “holds sway—should tell us a lot about how he expects us to image him. God is represented as a warrior king. “Yahweh is a man of war” (Ex 15:3). He is not, of course, a tyrannical king, nor a vicious warrior—but he is not ashamed of exercising his power, and he does not apologize for subduing his enemies by force. Revelation presents us with a picture of eschatological peace through superior spiritual firepower.

By way of contrast, there is no hint in the Bible (to my knowledge!) that man’s natural aggression and competitiveness is a result of the fall. Rather, it is a design feature which, though it is easily corrupted by sin into rage and factionism (e.g., James 4:1), is nonetheless how we image God; it helps us fulfill the commission of striving with, overcoming, and harnessing the world he created for us.

Summary

Although there is more I could say, I think this sufficiently sketches three lines of evidence that run firmly against the grain of 3P idealism. Genesis does not distance the original creation from the one its post-fall readers knew; rather, it appropriates vocabulary associated with especially savage, predatory creatures, and seems to presuppose a wild, untamed creation in need of forcible subjugation by man. That is the very purpose for which man was created; a purpose that bends the notion of a perfect prelapsarian paradise to breaking point.

To be continued in part 4, on what we can infer about death and predation from the curse…