I remember the question she asked – “They won't come in here, will they?” – and our driver's assuring “No, no, no...” I also remember that not a second passed before I heard the thud above my head, and scarcely sooner had I looked up to it than it jumped into the van, contradicting our guide's false prophecy. And so, with it balanced now on the arms of the seats in front of me, as those in front of me shrieked in fright and were put to flight, that was how I found myself cornered in close quarters by a wild baboon. Hey, I was just relieved it wasn't one of the lions from earlier. This was ten years ago, and I was on safari at Lake Nakuru in Kenya. Close encounters of the baboon kind aside, it was a delightful excursion with the utmost respect for God's creation.
And so much of what I saw, that's what Genesis tells us about now, in these words. “God said: Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds” (Genesis 1:24). They're of the earth, of the dry land – that is where these call home, where they come from, where they belong. God calls for them, and like St. Ambrose put it, “the word of God permeates every creature in the constitution of the world.”1 In particular, God here calls for three broad categories of land-based creature: “livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth” (Genesis 1:24). And so “God made beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind” (Genesis 1:25). Genesis talks about them in terms of their relationship to people. The 'creeping things' are pests, little things you don't usually want around much but probably can't easily stop. The 'beasts of the earth' are the undomesticated animals that don't belong in your house or on your farm, and if they're there, it could be a problem. And the 'livestock' are those domesticated animals you might welcome into your house or onto your farmland.2 These aren't natural categories, they're social categories – Genesis is describing the animal world, not as it is in itself (like today's biologists might), but as it was experienced by the Israelites, projecting that back into the moment of creation.
Start with those 'creeping things,' vermin, pests, creepy-crawlies. God empowers the earth to be host to the annelids, the worms, including the six to seven thousand different species of earthworm, which breathe directly through their skin, regenerate lost body segments, and bless the soil by processing organic matter and aerating the dirt. God empowers the earth to have arachnids, too – 2,500 species of scorpions, with their vicious tails and pinching claws; over 50,000 species of spider, which spin webs and other structures out of a protein fiber called silk; 900 species of ticks, and all the other mites, including one microscopic Demodex mite that lives in the hair follicles and oil glands of me and you and everybody.
Then God made more than twelve thousand species of millipedes, and over three thousand species of venomous centipede. And God made the insects – there are at least six million, maybe ten million, species of insect. It might be true, in the end, that if you pick ten random species alive today, nine of the ten will be insects! There are hundreds of species of firebrat and silverfish, two thousand species of earwig, over twenty thousand species of orthopterans – those are things like katydids, crickets, grasshoppers, and even the mountain stone weta of New Zealand, which can survive being frozen almost fully through the winter. God made over four thousand species of cockroach, three thousand species of their termite close cousins, and over twenty-four hundred species of mantises, like the orchid mantis which can blend in amazingly on a flower to wait for flies and bees.
And it's no wonder one biologist quipped that if there is a God, he must have an inordinate fondness for beetles – after all, we know of four hundred thousand kinds and suspect up to two million. There are dung beetles, which can push up to two hundred times their body weight – that's like if you saw me pushing a fully loaded schoolbus down the road – and there are fireflies like our familiar lightning bug, with underside organs where enzymes react to give off light, and bombadier beetles who can spray noxious chemicals at temperatures just below boiling. God made butterflies and moths, whose gossamer wings are products of a great transformation from caterpillar to adult, in which nearly the whole body breaks down and rebuilds itself. Early Christians told each other to “recall the metamorphoses of this creature and conceive a clear idea of the resurrection.”3
And there's another order of insect, the hymenopterans, that includes bees and wasps and ants. There are about twenty-two thousand species of ant, but in terms of individuals, we're talking more like twenty quadrillion – two and a half million for each human. Some are bullet ants, whose sting feels like getting shot and hurts intensely a whole day. Thankfully, we're more likely to face pavement ants. In absolute terms they might be “a people not strong” (Proverbs 30:25), but relative to their body size ants are among the strongest, able to carry ten, twenty, maybe fifty times their body weight. And when they work together, St. Augustine said “the cooperative labors of tiny ants strike us as far more wonderful than the colossal loads that can be carried by camels.”4
They live in colonies founded by queens, dividing labor according to roles for which each is born and raised. The Bible holds out their society as an example for its decentralized industry: “Go to the ant, you sluggard, consider her ways and be wise! Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest” (Proverbs 6:6-8). Ants organize themselves in foraging through trails of pheromones, and some species even farm aphids like livestock, milking and tending and defending them. They do police each other's behavior, recruit as needed, and work with great determination. Even though there are a lot of unemployed ants standing around the nest, if the active ants are taken away, these labor-reserve ants step up to the plate and take over. So one Christian teacher said: “When you observe [the ant] treasuring up food for herself in good season, imitate her and treasure up for yourself the fruits of good works for the world to come.”5
Besides arthropods, Israel counted as 'creeping things' the reptiles, like snakes with their slithering bodies and their fangs, like geckos and their incredible adhesive toe pads, like chameleons with their camouflaging color changes, and like iguanas such as the horned lizards, which God taught how to deliberately rupture blood vessels near their eyelids and squirt it as a rather colorful and confusing defense mechanism called ocular autohemorrhaging. Israel also counted amphibians like frogs. There's the hairy horror frog, which, when it gets scared, can break its own toes and shove sharp bones through its skin like claws; there's the pumpkin toadlet, to which God didn't give the gift of balance, so their jumps are hilariously uncoordinated flop through the air, never sticking their landing. Then there's the golden poison dart frog, the world's most toxic animal, whose skin contains batrachotoxins enough to kill you ten or twenty times over. They make pretty good pets, I'm told – don't worry, if bred in captivity, without their full natural diet, they lose their toxicity. God made them all!
Then there are mammals, animals with vertebrae that usually have some kind of fur and which produce milk. Israel also counted some smaller mammals among “swarming things that swarm on the ground” (Leviticus 11:29) – moles, hedgehogs, rabbits, and then there are the rodents, with sciurids like chipmunks and prairie dogs and squirrels, castorids like beavers who build so well and have iron in their tooth enamel to make them tougher, and murids like mice and rats. The grasshopper mouse preys on scorpions, so God adjusted one of its proteins so that, in addition to the usual sodium channel whereby scorpion venom causes pain, there's another sodium channel with the opposite effect, turning venom into a natural painkiller – what a gift of God for them!
The larger mammals are what Israelites counted as “beasts of the earth” or as “livestock,” depending on their domestication status. Barely any are monotremes, which are mammals that lay eggs, like the platypus. There are marsupials, which bear live young earlier in development and then usually finish embryonic development in a pouch called a marsupium. This includes our familiar opossums, and also Tasmanian devils and koalas and kangaroos (which God gave the leg strength to kick powerfully and jump twenty-seven feet in a single bound).
But most mammals are placental mammals, which bear their live young later in development. Biologists divide God's placental mammal creations into four superorders. There's Euarchontoglires, which covers rodents and baboons and me. There's Xenarthra, named for the extra articulations of their spine joints, which includes thirty-one species of armadillos and anteaters and sloths (which have very low metabolism and save their top speed of fifteen feet per minute only for the gravest emergencies). There's the superorder Afrotheria, which covers aardvarks and elephants. The African elephant, who sleep just two hours a day and whose pregnancy lasts nearly two years, are one of the most intelligent and social animals on earth, with as many neurons in their big brains as we have in our smaller brains. With skin over an inch thick, they've got an upper lip and nose merged into a trunk controlled by tens of thousands of muscles, letting them move it so flexibly and precisely.
The last placental superorder, Laurasiatheria, includes seventeen perissodactyls, hoofed animals that bear their weight on an odd number of toes. The rhinoceros is one, and so are the equine animals like the zebra whose stripey herds I saw roaming free on the savannah, and the more familiar horse. There are a lot more artiodactyl species, hoofed mammals that bear their weight on an even number of toes. One family is the giraffes, which grow up to nineteen feet tall for grazing high in the trees. Then there's the family of camels, some of which drink two gallons of water per minute. There's the pig family, and the family of cervids like elk and moose and deer, and the family of bovids like antelopes (such as the mountain gazelle that can sprint fifty miles an hour [cf. 2 Samuel 2:18]), and also cattle and goats and sheep – all key to Israel's life of sacrifice (Leviticus 1:3-13).
Then God made non-hoofed mammals, too. There's the mustelid family that covers otters and weasels and badgers and wolverines and even those fierce honey badgers that can eat venomous snakes and will proudly fight off much larger beasts. There's the ursid family of so many bears, even the polar bear, its 1,800-pound bulk sustained by eating seals and beluga whales and walruses, and whose unpigmented fur and transparent guard hairs both camouflage it and trap heat. There's the canid family of foxes and coyotes and wolves and our dog, which has an astonishing sense of smell thanks to hundreds of millions of smell receptors (you've got just six million). And who doesn't love a friendly domesticated dog and its good attitude and touchingly loyal heart? One early Christian teacher asked, “Doesn't the gratitude of the dog put to shame... those who not only fail to love the Lord... but even treat as friends people who use offensive language against God?”6 So, like the dog, “learn to use your voice,” they said, “for the sake of Christ when ravening wolves attack his sheepfold.”7
Personally, I'm more a fan of the felids, like the couple cats lazing about my house right now. Their flexible backbones help them land on their feet when they fall, while free-floating clavicles let them squeeze into tight spaces. And they know how tight because of special stiff hairs called whiskers, with which they sense touch and vibration. They have retractable claws, eyes that can see using just a sixth of the light we need, and they can hear a wider range of sounds than dogs can, but they've got fewer taste buds by far and can't recognize sweetness. They purr because their hyoid bone keeps the larynx against the base of their skull, plus they have shorter vocal folds. God wanted them to purr, which promotes healing and is just so soothing to listen to.
But then there are larger felids, like the leopard and the tiger, and the jaguar with jaws so strong it bites through skulls to bring a quick end to its prey, and who could ignore the lion? They're low-stamina but fast, sly, and so strong. Proverbs says “the lion is the mightiest among beasts and does not turn back before any” (Proverbs 30:30). They're socially complex, living in clans known as 'prides.' Israel knew lions as ferocious predators, a genuine danger to their lives and livelihoods, which is why Peter uses them to picture the devil as “a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). But they aren't evil: “The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God” (Psalm 104:21). When I fell in with a lion pride while on safari, I saw for myself God had answered their prayers. And, thanks be to God, “the righteous are as bold as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1).
All these God made, in the words of one old bishop, that “we might see the overflowing abundance of his creatures and be overwhelmed at the Creator's power, and be in a position to know that all these things were produced by a certain wisdom and ineffable love out of regard for the human being that was destined to come into being.”8 Each one, in all its intricacy and ability, is an incredible gesture of God's creative generosity.
Now, with some, like the creepy-crawlies and the blood-drenched predators, early Christians struggled as much as you or I might with seeing our way to agreeing with the God who “saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:25). So first, they had to be taught that “as a work of God, they are good and commendable, even if the precise reason for their existence is hidden from us,”9 trusting that “all these things are beautiful to their Maker and Craftsman, who has a use for them all in his management of the whole universe.”10 Second, Christians took all animals as examples of good and bad character and conduct, with “even the smallest one offering correction” somebody needs.11 Third, they suggested that God might have made some disturbing creatures “to frighten us, draw us to himself, and cause us to invoke his assistance.”12 Fourth, they observed that not only does each play a role in a food chain, but plenty of pests are sources of chemicals that, even thousands of years ago, doctors could “employ as medications capable of promoting the health of our bodies” – so how much more now?13 All of them call us to faith, trusting beyond our temporary concerns that God's vision of goodness is good indeed.
God made them all, and he knows them all, boasting to Job that he's the one who hears a mountain goat giving birth when nobody's around (Job 39:1-4), that he's served by the wild ox who submits to no human hand (Job 39:9-12), that he's the one who set the wild donkey to run free (Job 39:5-8), that he's the source of every horse's strength and courage (Job 39:19-20). And whatever each animal eats, God provides for their work, for “the eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season; you open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing. The LORD is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works” (Psalm 145:15-16).
So, in the words of Job: “Ask the beasts, and they will tell you” (Job 12:7). When Israel approached the land of promise, they knew they'd share it with many animals, and were exhorted that part of righteousness would be advancing the well-being of the domestic animals under their care (Proverbs 12:10). Righteousness would let them dwell in harmony with “their livestock and their herds and all their animals” (Numbers 35:3), but they were warned that if they were unrighteous, they'd face “the teeth of beasts” and “the venom of things that crawl in the dust” (Deuteronomy 32:24). Yet in their psalms, they called for praise to God from “beasts and all livestock and creeping things” (Psalm 148:10). They ask cats and dogs to praise the Lord, giraffes and gazelles to praise the Lord, worms and millipedes and rats and frogs to praise the Lord – go on, praise him!
When Jesus arrives, the Word becoming flesh with as many mites living on his skin as on yours and mine, he ventured into the desert to face temptation, “and he was with the wild animals” (Mark 1:13), establishing with them a “peaceable and friendly companionship.”14 In the psalm he prayed from on the cross, the sufferer asks God to “deliver my precious life from the power of the dog, save me from the mouth of the lion” (Psalm 22:20-21). But amidst their jaws of violence, Christ died for us: “Behold, the Lamb of God” (John 1:36)! Yet, rising in glory, he's hailed as the True Lion of Judah (Revelation 5:5), nobler and mightier than any, roaring good news of the victory of life. Yet he leads us gently as his flock of sheep, watching out for hungry wolves (Acts 20:29).
At judgment day, we're told that all creatures, even “the beasts of the field and all creeping things that creep on the ground,” will join humans in trembling before the face of the LORD (Ezekiel 38:20). And those of us who cling to our sins will find what Peter meant in comparing sinners to “irrational animals, having been born by nature for capture and destruction” (2 Peter 2:12). But in advance of judgment, God offers a covenant of grace “with the beasts of the field... and the creeping things of the ground” to lie down in safety with us (Hosea 2:18). “Man and beast you save, O LORD!”, exclaimed the psalmist in amazement (Psalm 36:6). For, as James puts it, God “brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures” (James 1:18) – meaning that all creatures, great and small, from mosquito to mammoth, from platypus to polar bear, are bound for a holy harvest “when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat” (Isaiah 11:6), when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD” (Isaiah 11:9). Amen!
1 Ambrose of Milan, Hexaemeron 6.3 §9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 42:232.
2 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 64; Michael LeFebvre, The Liturgy of Creation: Understanding Calendars in Old Testament Context (IVP Academic, 2019), 172; but see Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 230-231, who suggests that 'creeping things' encompasses all wild herbivores and that 'beasts of the earth' encompasses all wild carnivores.
3 Basil of Caesarea, Hexaemeron 8.8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 46:132.
4 Augustine of Hippo, Literal Meaning of Genesis 3.14 §22, in Works of St. Augustine I/13:229.
5 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 9.13, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 61:192.
6 Basil of Caesarea, Hexaemeron 9.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 46:143.
7 Ambrose of Milan, Hexaemeron 6.4 §17, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 42:236.
8 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 7.13, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 74:99.
9 Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:58.
10 Augustine of Hippo, On Genesis Against the Manichees 1.16 §25, in Works of St. Augustine I/13:55.
11 Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:59.
12 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 18.1, in Library of Early Christianity 1:39-41.
13 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 7.15, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 74:100.
14 Richard Bauckham, Living with Other Creatures: Green Exegesis and Theology (Baylor University Press, 2011), 131.
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