Any appeal to Scripture in service of an argument for honoring
animals is fraught with risk. Those who advocate on behalf of animals
may well ground their arguments in the Hebrew Bible, for that collection
of ancient witnesses celebrates God as the Creator of all: sea creatures
and wild animals, cattle and birds and the tiniest creeping things.
Scripture teaches us that to rejoice in the Creator is the right of
every living being. Yet there is risk, too, in any appeal to Scripture
on behalf of animals. The evidence for ancient Israelite attentiveness
to animal welfare is slim. Vegetarians may argue that animals were not
designated as food in the Garden of Eden and thus that carnivorous life
was a post-Fall phenomenon, not God�s will but a consequence of human
sin. Animal welfare advocates may ground their hopes for inter-species
compassion in Isaiah�s glorious vision of the Peaceable Kingdom (Isaiah
11). Nevertheless, the Hebrew Bible�s objectification of animals as
things to be controlled remains insistent. God has created a
breathtakingly beautiful world brimming with life, but humans are to
rule and master it (Gen 1:26, 28). We are to have dominion over
creation, subduing the living things that run and wrestle and hide and
play. There is no honest way to avoid the Hebrew there: the verb radah,
�to have dominion,� is used in other Hebrew Bible contexts to denote
brute subjugation. It signals the use of force to oppress and enslave
other living beings.
Reading further, we see that across the pages of the Bible streams
the blood of countless animals whose bodies were broken on Israelite
altars. For many centuries, Israelite ritual required the regular
slaughter of animals: innumerable living creatures had their throats
slit or their bodies torn in half. One might respond that Israelite
slaughtering practices were generally more humane than those of
surrounding ancient Near Eastern cultures. One might suggest that manual
slaughter guaranteed a more intimate acknowledgement of the cost to the
creature. One might insist that the sacredness of ritual slaughter
stands as a rebuke to the callousness with which our own post-industrial
technology commodifies the bodies of animals in factories and processing
plants. And yes, humane slaughter is preferable to more horrific
methods. Yes, the Israelite priest would have placed his hand on the
body of every bird or animal he slaughtered, would have felt it tremble,
and through that touch he might have understood better the terrible
price that was being paid. Yes, the God of Israel�s Scriptures commanded
sacrifice not out of caprice but out of mercy, so that Israel could dare
to lift its hands to the Holy One at all. One might say all this about
ancient Israelite dominion over living creatures, and it is true. But it
is not enough.
Is Scripture unusable, then, for those who decline to exploit
animals? No. Scripture offers a dynamic word of life to all who hear
God�s voice, and every living creature hears God�s voice. Virtually the
last word in the Book of Psalms, central to ancient Israelite worship
millennia ago and still powerful for contemporary expressions of faith,
is this: �Let everything that breathes praise the LORD!� (Ps 150:6). It
is the calling of every living creature to praise God, and it is the
right of every living creature to be loved by those who love God.
Scripture testifies, in many voices and in many ways, to the God Who
created all life. Animal-rights advocates in church and synagogue ought
not give up our Holy Scriptures; but neither should we engage in
simplistic prooftexting, exploiting a few favorite Bible verses to make
our points. What the animal advocacy movement needs now is a fully
developed new hermeneutic � a new way of reading � that brings
life-giving Scripture texts into relationship with those texts that we
find disturbing. We need to move away from the polemical wielding of
isolated verses for the purposes of debate, and see the truth of
Scripture as revealed through the lively struggles of diverse texts
bearing witness in harmony and cacophony, affirming and contesting each
other.
The model for such a hermeneutic has been suggested by Old Testament
theologian Walter Brueggemann. Brueggemann speaks of Biblical dynamics
of �testimony� and �countertestimony� as characteristic of the way in
which Scripture tells what is true. Brueggemann points us toward a way
of reading that is attentive to the interactions among multiple Biblical
claims and counterclaims, finding truth through processes of faithful
engagement and resistance. Consider the truth that emerges when we
invite the �dominion� of Genesis 1 into engagement with the parable of
the ewe lamb told by the prophet Nathan against King David (2 Samuel
12).
A desperately poor man had a ewe lamb that he adored, raising her
with his own children. The lamb shared the scant food of the family,
drank from the man�s own cup, slept tucked in the man�s arms. �It was
like a daughter to him,� Nathan whispers. But a rich man in the same
village needed to prepare a meal for a traveler, and rather than take an
animal from his own abundant flocks and herds, he seized the poor man�s
lamb and butchered her. The rich man�s heartlessness is held up by
Nathan as a means of shaming David for his ruthless appropriation of the
woman Bathsheba and his subsequent murderous betrayal of Bathsheba�s
husband Uriah in battle. The story offers a searing indictment of King
David�s exploitation of those who were most vulnerable under his
dominion.
This parable offers a deeply moving portrayal of the poor man�s love
for the little lamb. An impoverished father shares all that he has with
a lamb � an animal he could easily slaughter for much-needed food but
with which, instead, he chooses to share his meager stores. He had
bought this lamb, and she is everything to him: the New Testament
similitude regarding the pearl of great price comes to mind here
(Matthew 13). Not only is this little lamb cherished by the poor man,
she comes to be cherished by all who encounter this remarkable story.
But more: the love of the poor man for his lamb sets before us an
ancient paradigm for relational justice. The prophet Nathan may be
decrying David�s adultery with Bathsheba, but the power of his metaphor
clearly points beyond that particular case to a larger truth: even the
smallest creature is worthy of respect and compassion. This is prophecy
indeed.
Hebrew Bible scholar Ehud Ben Zvi has suggested that Biblical texts
were written for attentive rereaders who mined their sacred traditions,
delighted in them and struggled with them again and again. Today as
then, our practices of rereading create a web of testimonies and
countertestimonies. The hermeneutical task for animal advocates, then,
is to bring life-giving Scriptural voices into uncompromising engagement
with those texts that are death-dealing. Equipped for the struggle, we
may reread Genesis 1 now in light of the truth so powerfully proclaimed
by the prophet Nathan.
* * *
In the beginning, language and image and form constitute a sacred
unity expressing the creative power of God. God speaks life into being:
�Let there be!� The divine Word speaks the identity of the cosmos and of
the self, of one and of incalculable others. God speaks, and
multiplicity teems forth over the mountains and through the valleys,
bounding into seas and splashing into rivers, swarming up tree trunks
and scurrying into dark earthy holes, wriggling into crevices and
soaring through the clouds. Myriad creaturely and botanical species
spring up and branch out and learn how to breathe and move, each
according to its furry or gelatinous or leafy or prickly or iridescent
or feathery or spongy kind. Now divine language sings the manifold
possibilities of the human into existence: �Made in God�s image! Be
fruitful and multiply!� We are made in the image of the Life-Giver, and
we are to speak God into majestic canyons and wildflower meadows and
misty cypress swamps, into quiet village squares and bustling city
streets, into human history and on into a wondrous God-breathed future
that we can barely imagine.
But then � God rests. On the seventh day, God finishes the work of
creation. Perhaps God is finished with us. Wait! How can God just leave
us here? How is it that we are in the image of God? We can�t remember.
We don�t know how to speak. Over time, we forget Who made us. Bitter
consequences unfold: pain and fruitless toil and misuse of power. So
much was left unsaid when God finished speaking the world into life.
Aeons have passed. We were fruitful; we did multiply. See what we
have wrought! Beauty, yes: luminous art and music and literature,
transcendent worship, brilliant means of healing, passionate work for
justice. But we have also wrought unremitting coercion and slaughter �
of each other and of the creatures in whose marvelous company we had
sprung into being. Difference has become alienation, care has been
supplanted by control, and power has mutated into brutal violence. So
many living creatures have suffered and died at our hands! Is this what
God commanded us to do? We can�t remember. The ground becomes flinty
under us as we sink down, confused and defeated. The ancient seer Amos
warned that we would thirst for knowledge of our Creator, and he was
right. We are so desperately thirsty! Our hands have blood on them, and
we can�t even remember where it came from. There is no water � how will
we wash it off?
But even as we despair, we hear the clatter of small hooves, faint at
first, then growing more audible. Our vision is blurred, but we can make
out a diminutive white form gamboling toward us. Instinctively, we reach
down and pick up a sharp-edged rock to use as a weapon. As the form
draws near, the clattering hooves quiet, the steps become tentative,
inquisitive. We recognize the little ewe lamb so beloved by the poor
man. The lamb trips over to us and plants her front hooves firmly. Her
large liquid eyes search ours. Her nostrils widen as she breathes in who
we are, who we might become. And her soft white muzzle glistens with
luminous drops of water. She has just had a drink, somewhere out of
sight of this flint-hard landscape we have made for ourselves. She knows
where the spring of water is. Dare we listen to her? Our hand
unclenches; the rock falls to the ground. Haltingly, we rise. Her
invitation accepted, the little woolly lamb bleats softly and kicks up
her hooves. She frisks away toward newness, toward life, looking back to
make sure we are following.
Bibliography
Ben Zvi, Ehud. Micah. Forms of the Old Testament Literature, Vol.
XXIB. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
Brueggemann, Walter. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony,
Dispute, Advocacy. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997.
Kaufman, Stephen R. and Nathan Braun. Good News for All Creation:
Vegetarianism as Christian Stewardship. Cleveland: Vegetarian Advocates
Press, 2004.
Linzey, Andrew. Animal Gospel. Louisville: Westminster John Knox,
1999.