All God’s Creatures

Introduction

Last year I presented a series on the trees of the Bible which ran all through the season of Trinity or Ordinary Time. This year we will engage with the members of the animal kingdom that appear in the Bible.

In this occasional series I may suggest that you to do some additional reading and investigation for yourself and I may not use the most obvious texts.

The list of animals in the account of Creation in Genesis chapter 1 is very familiar but there are other descriptions of creation in different books of the Bible and many more animals appear throughout the text. I will take a very broad approach including living creatures from smallest to largest; virus and gnat to elephant and whale; vertebrates and invertebrates; and various borderline cases. Texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, Anglicized Edition, with the Apocrypha and Deutero Canonical Books. The collection of animals included in this series is not exhaustive and the names for some creatures may differ in other translations.

Do take some time to look at our creation window: the great west rose window in St George’s.

Consider the variety and beauty of the creatures depicted there.

In the song of praise sung by the three young men, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, who were thrown into the burning fiery furnace we find:

The three with one voice praised and glorified and blessed God in the furnace:
“Blessed are you, O Lord, God of our ancestors,
and to be praised and highly exalted for ever.
…
Bless the Lord, you whales and all that swim in the waters;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him for ever.
Bless the Lord, all birds of the air;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him for ever.
Bless the Lord, all wild animals and cattle;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him for ever.
…
All who worship the Lord, bless the God of gods,
Sing praise to him and give thanks to him,
For his mercy endures for ever.

                                           [Prayer of Azariah. 28, 29, 57 – 59, 68 (Apocrypha)]

Serpents, snakes and other reptiles

We are all familiar with the serpent of Genesis chapter 3: one of the two animals in the Bible who speak. The serpent is one of the disguises of Satan, the Accuser. He reappears in Revelation: ‘the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world’ [Rev 12. 9; 20. 2].

In many ancient cultures the snake or serpent was a symbol of evil or chaos. Whether this human behaviour is natural or learned, most people find snake-like creatures unattractive and something to be feared: they are ‘scared by … the hissing of snakes’ [Wis 17. 9].  In a word of warning, Proverbs cautions with regard to wine, ‘when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. At the last it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder’ [Prov 23. 31 – 32].

In the retelling of the experiences of the people of Israel under the Egyptians and in the journey through the wilderness, one of the disasters that befell them was ‘being destroyed by the bites of writhing serpents’ [Wis 16. 5] but God delivered the children from the ‘fangs of venomous serpents’ [Wis 16. 10]. If anyone was bitten they could look at the bronze serpent that Moses had put on a pole and they would live [Num 21. 6 – 9].

One of the signs that God gave Moses and Aaron to use to demonstrate the power of God was to turn Aaron’s staff into a snake [Ex 4. 1 – 5] in front of Pharaoh and his magicians. In the power struggle the magicians then turned their staffs into snakes but these snakes were eaten up by Aaron’s snake [Ex 7. 8 – 12].

Isaiah speaks of an aspect of the trouble that will affect the disobedient people: the presence of the ‘viper and flying serpent’ [Is 30. 6]. Mischief makers are described as hatching ‘adders’ eggs: whoever eats their eggs dies and the crushed egg hatches out a viper’ [Is 59. 5]. Similarly, as ‘no one pities a snake-charmer when he is bitten,  … so no one pities a person who associates with a sinner’ [Sir 12. 13 – 14]. That person will be tainted by association because it is best to ‘flee from sin as from a snake’ [Sir 21. 2] and there is ‘no venom worse than a snake’s venom’ [Sir 25. 15] (Read on in this book for a point of discussion). However, Isaiah prophesies that, in the last days ‘the nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den’ [Is 11. 8 – 9].

Other reptiles are only specifically mentioned in the prohibitions of Leviticus: chameleon, gecko, sand lizard, monitor lizard [Lev 11. 30]. The crocodile we met in the second reflection when we considered strange animals. Creeping things are generally described as repugnant. In Ezekiel’s vision he is told of the abominations being committed by the people as they worship idols and behave in appalling ways. This is shown to him in murals on the walls of Jerusalem: ‘there, portrayed on the wall all around, were all kinds of creeping things, and loathsome animals and all the idols of the house of Israel’ [Ezek 8. 10].

Blessed are you, O Lord our God,
Maker of all living creatures:
fish in the sea, birds in the air,
and animals on the land.
May we always praise you
for all your beauty in creation.
Blessed are you, O Lord our God,
in all your creatures.
Amen