Genesis 1.24-25.
When I’ve taught on Genesis 1 before, it created major problems with my listeners—who were raised to be young-earth creationists. There’s a lot of baggage which comes with that worldview. I grew up in it, so I know where they’re coming from.
Young-earthers are taught the earth is only 60 centuries old, give or take a few years. This, despite the evidence of our eyes and ears which tell us the earth and our universe is way older than that. Our telescopes detect light from galaxies 280 million light-years away, which means God created ’em at least 280 million years ago. That, or he deceptively made it appear the universe is more than 280 million years old when it’s not—and why would he do so? God is not a deceiver. Suggesting he is,
But young-earthers are told the earth has to only be 60 centuries old; it’s the most accurate, most
Threatening skeptics with hell is mighty
If that’s you, please believe I don’t mean for you to be miserable. I’m actually hoping you’ll be thrilled to know it’s not just okay to believe in both Jesus and science; you should believe in both Jesus and science. Too many Evangelicals think it’s simply impossible. So much so, some of ’em think they have to choose one or the other, and either choose to fight science, or
Okay, enough housekeeping. Back to Genesis 1.
I’ll say it again: Genesis wasn’t written to teach science. It supports neither evolution nor young-earth creationism. That’s a debate which started in the mid-1700s. (It actually predates Charles Darwin and On the Origin of Species. Darwin simply gave an explanation for why evolution might work, i.e. natural selection.) So if you see verses which appear to support evolution from a common ancestor, like
He created the fish and birds on day five; he created the land animals, including humans, on day six. I’ll get to the humans next time. Today, the animals.
Genesis 1.24-25 KWL 24 God said, “Land: Bring forth living soul by its species.- Beast and creeper and life in the land, by their¹ species.”
- It was so.
25 God created the life in the land by its species,- the beast by its species,
- and every creeper in the ground by its species.
- God saw how good it was.
Three types of living souls.
Our English word “animal” comes from the Latin word anima, “soul.”
BEAST (Hebrew
בְּהֵמָ֥ה /behemáh). Its plural is behemót, which is where we get our English word “behemoth.” For some reason theKJV left it untranslated in Job 40.15:
Job 40.15 KJV - Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
The L
ORD briefly describes this particular beast,Jb 40.15-23 though he never states which beast he means, but because of its description some young-earthers—no foolin’—actually claim it was a dinosaur. Some of ’em will also claim Job took place in caveman days, beforeNoah and the flood, back when humans and dinosaurs were still frolicking together, Flintstones-style. Nevermind that Job and his friends and where they live all have Edomite names, and the book is written in a form of Hebrew centuries later than the Hebrew we see in Genesis; these young-earthers really want Job to have hung out with dinosaurs.Anyway, a behemáh generally refers to either a domestic animal, or a large animal like an elephant, lion, or bear. Most of the time behemáh referred to the ones we humans domesticated‚either to work, like camels, horses, or oxen; or to eat, like goats and sheep. A behemáh wouldn’t necessarily
ritually clean —the Hebrews weren’t permitted to eat lions or camels, fr’instance—but they’d be familiar large animals.CREEPER (
רֶמֶשׂ /reméš). This’d be any low-to-the-ground animal. The word literally meant “creeping thing.” Sometimes it gets translated “reptiles,” but it can describe small mammals too. Hebrews would’ve included pigs and dogs among them, since they domesticated neither of these animals.LIFE IN THE LAND (
חַֽיְתוֹ אֶ֖רֶץ /khaytó erets, “living in earth”). Some folks figure this means burrowers, like moles, ground squirrels, gophers, and rabbits. Others figure it’s any animals which live close to the ground, like rodents and reptiles. Others figure it’s worms and insects.I figure “vermin” is a pretty good catch-all phrase. There are a lot of critters we’re not so fond of, and this would be them.
Now you notice verse 25 combines “creeper” and “life in the land” into “creeper in the ground.” So it’s not that tight of a differentation between reméš and khaytó erets.
Naturally, some Christians are gonna over-analyze these categories, same as everything in Genesis. I’ve heard the claim behemáh means the animals God means for us to eat, reméš means the ones he doesn’t, and khaytó erets the ones we’d never even think to eat… although plenty of humans do eat insects like crickets, locusts, and grasshoppers, y’know. (I have.) God says they’re ritually clean,
In the context of other ancient religions, a behemáh was a creature you could ritually sacrifice to their gods, and a reméš was usually an animal you wouldn’t. But unless they had their own rules for which animals you could and couldn’t eat, like the Egyptians, those categories didn’t apply to food.
As for khaytó erets, they were usually seen as pests—and the other ancients didn’t see “vermin” as a creation of their ruling gods, but of the bad gods, the trickster gods, the enemy gods. In some of their myths, rats, mice, reptiles, and bugs were a plague against those ruling gods, or against us humans. Farmers, after all, didn’t care for these animals; they’re competition. So in their myths, these animals aren’t “good” like God identified them.
And lots of us tend to think the very same way as the ancient pagans. I’ve heard young-earthers speculate about the mosquito, “Well, when God created all the animals, he called them good… but maybe, after Adam and Eve fell, he changed some of them and made them bad.” Oh, so they evolved into bad animals? No; they’d never say “evolved”—but what they’ll claim is the mosquito’s blood-sucking nature was originally intended to be beneficial somehow. (I have no idea how.) Then after humanity fell, it lost that benefit and became harmful. Funny; adapting one’s original use for a new use sure sounds to me like part of the natural selection process… but I’ll get off that tangent now.
But the message of Genesis is there are no evil gods to create evil creatures. There’s only the one good God. He made everything, and he called ’em good. Not evil.
We don’t like vermin. We treat them as disposable animals, to destroy whenever inconvenient. Sometimes to hunt or kill for fun. “Whack-a-mole” isn’t just an arcade game; plenty of people like to use moles for target practice. They’re pests to us. But they weren’t pests by design. They’re pests because we choose to look at ’em that way.
We can deduce some of the reason God created them. Ants, for example: They clean up after other creatures. Now, we certainly don’t appreciate where and when they clean up after us; when we find ants in the pantry, we object, and start spraying toxic things at ’em. We’d rather we clean the kitchen, and the ants stay out. But perhaps we really do need to clean up after ourselves better. (And maybe stop killing all their predators, so they’d take care of the vermin problem for us.)
