God’s Animals
God’s Relationship with the Animals
Genesis 9:8-17 [God made a covenant with “every living creature.”]
Job 12:10 In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.
Animals Honor and Obey God
Isaiah 43:20-21 The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.
Jonah 1:17 And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah 2:20 And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
Mankind’s Relationship with the Animals
Job 12:7-8 But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. [Regarding the ways of God. Job speaking.]
God Cares for Animals
Genesis 1:21-22 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
Genesis 1:28-30 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
Genesis 8:15-17 Then God said to Noah, “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—that they may swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” [God wants people and animals to be fruitful.]
Jonah 4:10-11 And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”
Joel 2:21-22 “Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! Fear not, you beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit; the fig tree and vine give their full yield.
We Are to Care for Animals
Proverbs 12:10 The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.
Hosea 2:18-20 And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.
Do animals have spirits?
Ecclesiastes 3:19-21 For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?
“But while humans in the primeval history typically use their power autonomously and thus violently, Noah is a righteous man (6:9) and so exercises power in a different manner. It is significant, I believe, that the one righteous person in the antediluvian period exercises rule over the animals by taking them on the ark and thus preserving their life in a time of threat. Noah in the flood story is an example of someone imitating the paradigmatic life-enhacing use of power that God is depicted as exercising in Genesis 1.” –– J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. (page 296)