I set aside a good portion of 2024 to the study of Genesis. It has been a wonderful study. A while back (late August), I was in chapter 9, and came across a text we’re probably all familiar with but probably haven’t paid much attention to. The Flood has just ended. Noah and his family have just exited the ark. God has given them commands similar to those heard in the beginning: “Be fruitful and multiply, and have dominion over the animals.” The Lord goes on to say…
And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.
(Genesis 9:2)
What exactly does that mean? What is our “dominion” over the animals? What is the fear and dread that animals have toward men? I fear lions and they don’t fear me, so at first glance, it seems like God has it backward. No. A lion might not fear my pasty white self traipsing through the jungle, but if the hunter I’m with puts three rounds in its gut, the other lions will back off.
Our “dominion” over the animals doesn’t mean a lion can’t eat you, or that a snake’s bite can’t poison you, but animals operate on instinct; humans plan complicated tasks, and regard the world and the creatures of it as expendable commodities in whatever we set out to do. In short, while a lion might eat me if I put myself in its path, there will never be a pride of lions gathering together to discuss how best to control the human population in order to create a prosperous lion strip mall in the suburbs of the Sahara.
This is the authority God has given man in the world. We possess it, not the animals. Again, it was given to us. We did not slowly evolve to possess it, nor should we ever fear that some animal might one day evolve and supplant our place at the top of the proverbial food chain. We are who we are because that’s how God designed it to be.
~Matthew