ANIMALS IN THE BIBLE
“Oh I can’t get a long little doggy. I can’t even get one that’s small.” – Yosemite Sam
My dog just got back from the vet. The bill for checkup, antibiotics, dental work, and minor surgery will be over $600, bringing my total investment into this little doggy to around $1,200. That’s about $300 per pound. But, he is a member of the family. He’s pretty lucky that he’s my family’s dog, and not God’s dog. You see, God doesn’t take very good care of his animals, and he certainly would never go to these lengths to see to their well being.
Let’s consider the Bible’s record when it comes to animal husbandry.
Animals get off to a really bad start. Right off the bat, a snake is possessed by Satan in the Garden of Eden, then cursed by God. Now, this doesn’t seem right. The snake in Eden was just an innocent rube, used by Satan to trick Eve. Yet, Satan continued to live in heaven for thousands of years, with no seeming punishment. The snake, who really had no idea what was going on, was cursed – made to eat dust, and could no longer walk. Well, no sooner did the snakes get cursed, when they looked around and discovered that the cattle were already there. For some reason, cows had already been cursed. They must have pissed off God right after being created. I suspect that they looked down at their clumsy body right after rolling off the creative assembly line and exclaimed, “Yeah….good one.” Then blamo! – cursed.
Well, the human race is just getting into gear, when Cain and Abel decide to give a gift to God. One son offers up some grain. This seems like a pretty good gift, since he had worked hard to get it. The other son, Hanibal Lechter, slices up a sheep and burns the fat pieces, likely laughing maniacally the whole time. For some reason, God decides that the butcher is the better son, thereby sentencing animals to a long future of being killed for no good reason other than to appease God for something that someone else has done. And, of course, some joker will always take things to an extreme. Solomon, for example, killed 142,000 during a one week sacrificing spree (see the chapter The Numbers of the Book). He must have been one hell of a sinner to require that much carnage to compensate for it.
Now, I’ve already talked about the bad start of the animal kingdom, but I actually missed something prior. It appears that animals were screwed, even before the snake incident. You see, animals were created directly by God, and everything he does is perfect. They have no original sin, yet they age, get sick, and die, just like humans. But humans deserve to age and die, because they ate some fruit. Animals don’t have an original sin, so their problems must have been intentionally created by God. Animals must have been created defective. And, worst of all, they have no Messiah, so they have no hope of ever escaping their mortal fate.
Now let’s fastforward a couple thousand years. Some horny angels have come to earth and botched things up for everyone. So, God decides to clean house. The troublemaking angels dematerialize and go back to heaven, while God floods the earth, killing almost all of the humans and animals. Once again, the animals find themselves caught up and punished for something that they were not involved in. And, if that’s not bad enough, as soon as Noah gets out of the ark, what does he do with these precious and rare animals? I mean, think about this. The entire world population of animals has dwindled to two of each type, and seven of some special ones. Noah has just spent the last century carefully preparing and caring for them. So, he finally gets out into the squeaky clean earth, and what does he do? That’s right. He butchers a few of them.
Moving forward to the exodus, we find that Pharaoh and God are involved in a bit of a spitting match. God decides to teach Pharaoh a lesson, so he sends him a bunch of problems. Have you ever stopped to think how many of the plagues affected the animals? Obviously, plague five was devastating to them, because it killed all of the Egyptians livestock. And, of course, plague ten was bad because it killed all firstborn, including the already-dead livestock. But plague two (frogs), three (lice), four (flies), and eight (locusts) made use of members of the animal kingdom to make humans uncomfortable. I don’t expect the lice or the locusts to garner much sympathy, but think of the wee frogs. Even the first plague, turning all water to blood, would have affected animals at least as much as humans. The fish, particularly, would have suffered.
And, while we’re on the subject of using animal overpopulation to get back at humans, what about the billions of quail that were heaped upon the camp of Israel? Not only were the birds crushingly overpopulated, but they soon died, raising a hell of a stink.
After the flood, God gave all animals to Noah to use as food. He also allowed humans to use animals as slaves, beasts of burden. And, to top it all off, a bunch of animals got insulted as “unclean”. Of course, being considered unclean exempted them from sacrifice duty, and prevented them from being used as food, so I don’t imagine they minded.
Finally, my mind turns back to my dog, and his good fortune for not being God’s dog. There is probably no animal that gets treated by the Bible as poorly as dogs. They are mentioned 25 times in the scriptures, and invariably, they get insulted. They are associated with sinners, they lick up the blood of sinners, they hang out with bad people, they symbolize greed and lack of restraint, and they are used as a euphemism for vicious men and men who mutilate flesh.
So, there you have it. If you thought that you have it rough as a human, just be thankful you’re not a dog.