Humanity among the Creatures: Genesis 1.26-31, Part II

As the Genesis 1 story nears its end, God creates humanity in the image and likeness of God. The other day, we saw that on internal and comparative grounds, this ‘image’ likely entailed an inherent dignity and honour stemming from a family resemblance with God and a vocation to act as God’s representatives here on earth (Sarna (1989) 12, Harper, Carr).* This vocation is described in the blessing to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” (1.26, cf. 1.28).

But ‘dominion’ is a pretty vague concept to our ears. Does it envision a kind of iron-fisted rule? Gentle care? Or something in between? In light of our present ecological crisis, this is no small question. And so it will be the focus of today’s post.

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The Scope of Humanity’s Blessing

First, let’s get a better sense of the scope of what we’re talking about. We often think about this as humanity’s relationship to the environment, but what God actually says is far narrower than those advocating a “conquer, rape and pillage” approach to nature assume. A comparison table might be helpful here:

CREATURES	BLESSING	RULE OVER	RULED BY	FOOD FOR
Sun, Moon, and Stars		the day and night (1.16-18)
Vegetation & Trees				All living creatures (1.29-30)
Sea & Air Creatures	“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth” (1.22)		Humanity (1.26, 28)
Land Animals			Humanity (1.26, 28)
Humans	“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (1.28)	“the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth”” (1.26, 28)

First of all, the land and its resources are not the focus here, aside from a brief reference in the blessing to humanity. Second, while humanity is given vegetation as food, it is not given dominion over it. (Interestingly, humanity’s relationship to vegetation is a prime concern on the second creation story, in Genesis 2-3). The vocation of dominion is limited to the other “living creatures,” of sea, air, and land. And a good part of humanity’s blessing — to be fruitful and multiply and fill the environment built for us — is shared by sea and air creatures. There are three things about this blessing that are notable: First, the land animals are not so blessed, possibly because the Genesis writers thought of them as being in competition for land with humans (Carr). Second, there’s also a difference in the two blessings in that God addresses the blessing directly to the humans (”and said to them…”), something God does not do for the air and sea creatures (Carr). And third, humans are told not just to “fill” the earth but also to “subdue it.” It seems likely, particularly in view of Genesis 2-3 and Babylonian creation myths in which irrigation canal-digging was one of humanity’s main jobs, that this evoked agriculture in the minds of its intended audience. But it remains that part of the human vocation — in this story, uniquely among the living creatures — involves transforming the land.

Not only is humanity not the only part of creation to be blessed, but it also is not the only part to be given rulership. For humanity’s dominion over the living creatures is mirrored in the soon and moon’s function to rule over the day night (Barton & Muddiman 43, Bauckham 179). So there’s an interesting interplay here between similarity and difference. There’s no question that humanity is given a special place in God’s creation, but there’s little about it that is unique. And as great as this vocation is, it’s also narrow. This is far from a “the who Earth is yours; do with it what you like” sort of attitude!

The Question of Dominion

The Hebrew root for the word translated as ‘dominion’, rdh, implies dominance. But biblical scholars have put forward a wide range of understandings about what exactly that entails. These include anything from coercive power (Sarna (1989) 12, Carr), to utopian shalom-keeping (Harper, Woodley, Baukham 184), to regency (Carr), to middle management (Barton & Muddiman 43). But the two most popular ranges of meaning, and I’d agree the two most likely, are pastoral and royal.

Dominion as Pastoral Imagery

There are two main things that suggest dominion is intended be a pastoral image. The first is that the blessing to have dominion is given only in reference to land animals (Brueggemann). And the most obvious relationship between humans and animals was animal husbandry, especially goat- and sheep-herding. (This is especially true in light of the fact that animals were not in this story given to the humans as food.) And second, agriculture and pastoralism are clearly the two ways of life at the heart of the culture that created the Old Testament. So, it would make sense for dominion over the animals to be a pastoral corollary of the ‘subduing’ of the earth from 1.28, to say nothing of the importance of agriculture in Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) mythology including the Enuma Elish, the Genesis 2-3 story, and the Pentateuch more generally (Baukham 180, Harper).

Dominion as Royal Imagery

As Carr and Sarna (1989) point out, however, the clearest meaning of the Hebrew root rdh is the exercise of power over an enemy. This puts us in the world of royal imagery. This would helpfully connect dominion to how, as we saw last time, the concepts of the “image” and “likeness” were used across the ANE to express a representative authority. As the king in ANE thought is the image of the god as he rules over his subjects on the god’s behalf, so too is humanity to be the image of God as it rules over the other living creatures. But again, the Israelite model of kingship was not one of “unrestrained power and authority;” it was rather a limited rule, “carefully defined and circumscribed by divine law” (Sarna (1989) 12-13). Within a canonical perspective, the messianic oracles in Isaiah must also come into play, where royal imagery is never that of an iron-fisted dictator, but of a ruler who governs with wisdom and understanding, and whose concern is for the well-being of the poor and justice for the oppressed (e.g., Isaiah 11.1-5). Isaiah 11 also brings to mind utopian visions in which dangerous animals are no threat, which could also be relevant for our text (see 11.6-9).

Dominion as Royal-Pastoral Imagery

Of course, those familiar with the rest of the Bible will already know that the royal and pastoral images are not as distinct as they may at first seem. For, one of the primary images of biblical kingship (and to a lesser degree, ANE kingship more broadly) is that of the king as the shepherd of the people (Brueggemann, Baukham 182). The Prophet Ezekiel, for example, rails against kings who are false shepherds, ruling “with force and harshness” instead of caring for the flock (Ezekiel 34.4). Good shepherds are strong leaders, but we know they are strong leaders because the flock will follow their call. And if a heavier hand is required, this is always about ensuring the safety and well-being of the flock, not the assertion of power for power’s sake. It’s a poor shepherd who beats his flock; and it’s a poor king who oppresses his subjects. It’s also instructive to remember that in the imagery at play in the creation of humanity in the image and likeness of God, this is a representative sort of dominion: We may govern the animals, but only as vice-regents; we have the authority of the crown, so to speak, but not the crown itself (Barton & Muddiman 43, Walton (2010) 84, Sarna (1989), 12).

Challenge

At its heart, the ‘challenge’ section of my Integral hermeneutic is about listening to those whose perspectives are left out the story or its dominant interpretations. And there can be no doubt that the reading provided above, even if it mitigates against the most extreme and violent readings of the text, remains an anthropocentric reading of what is, or at least seems to be, an anthropocentric text. This anthropocentrism has in recent decades come under fire (see Carr for a summary). So now I’d like to spend some time with this challenge: Is our reading unduly anthropocentric? Are there other ways of reading the text? And how do we ensure our readings of the text are responsible?

With humanity’s place as the final, ‘crowning achievement’ of creation, and special status as made in the image and likeness of God, there is good reason to read Genesis 1 as an anthropocentric text. One could easily read the story as God, step-by-step, building up a world suitable for human life and flourishing (Barton & Muddiman 42, Carr). But, humanity’s unique vocation is at least as much about responsibilities as it is about rights. There is a ‘burden of care’ involved in our dominion over the animals. As they say, ‘heavy is the head that wears the crown’’.

But there are other ways of reading the text. For example, as we’ll see in the next post, it’s possible to see God’s rest on the seventh day, rather than humanity’s creation on the sixth, as the climax of creation. Jewish midrash, likely dating to the fourth or fifth centuries, also point out that there are a lot of creatures made that are either ambivalent to human flourishing or even detrimental to it:

Even those things which you may regard as completely superfluous to the creation of the world, such as fleas, gnats and flies, even they too are included in the creation of the world, and the Holy Blessed One carries out the divine purpose through every [living] thing, even through a snake, a scorpion, a gnat, or a frog. (Genesis Rabbah)

As Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson comments about this, “The world does not exist merely to please us.  While human beings do form the pinnacle of God’s creation, the world and the cosmos remain God’s creation, not our own” (Artson).

I think this is right. The text may be anthropocentric, but if we read between the lines, it’s far from anthropo-normative. Genesis paints a picture in which every part of creation, from sea to sky to land, and everything in them, has a God-given purpose and destiny. If we keep this in mind, then our human purpose and destiny of ‘dominion’ ties our success or faithfulness to the thriving of the creatures under our governance (Brueggemann). It would go without saying, then, that human activities that lead to what is shaping up to be the sixth mass extinction event on Earth, are far, far from consistent with the proper exercise of our dominion (Harper, Brueggemann, Arston).

But, all this said, I think it’s important to remember that Genesis was written in a very different time from our own, with very different concerns. It spoke to a world that was very much still untamed and dangerous, in which ‘subduing’ the earth in order to grow food could be a matter of life and death, and in which controlling wild animals would be a helpful, even utopian, alternative to their present state where attacks from lions and bears were a very real threat (Carr.) (See Amos 5.19, 1 Kings 13.23-30, Exodus 23.29, Leviticus 26.6, and Ezekiel 34.25 for some examples of such stories in the Bible).

Different circumstances require different stories, or at least that we pull on different threads from those stories. And while Genesis 1 may not directly teach an ecological vision of human restraint, it’s certainly compatible with one (Baukham 185). It may have been perfectly reasonable and faithful to imagine humanity’s subduing the earth and dominion over the animals in a heavy-handed way for much of human history, but this is still an imbalanced reading of the text, and the data before us is clearly telling us that it’s time — long passed time — for a different approach. But what might this look like?

What comes to mind as a more balanced reading that highlights the responsibilities that come with authority and not just the power, is reminiscent of what we find in many creation myths among Indigenous peoples in North America. One common idea is that when we were created, humanity received “our original instructions,” which were to maintain the harmony in relationships with the world around us (Simpson (2017) 23; cf. Kimmerer 2003, Woodley 2022, Wagamese 2019).** This is often coupled with a story in which humanity forgot those instructions and failed to live up to its responsibilities, whether by over-hunting or failing to tend to crops and berry patches, leading to what today we might call environmental degradation. Hungry and humbled, humanity had to remember the original instructions and restore balance and heal a world of broken relationships. This isn’t a silly, unrealistic vision of humanity holding hands and singing “Kum-ba-ya” with the animals. There’s still hunting and fishing, cultivating crops, and using the forests to create a built environment. In other words, this still entails plenty of “subduing the earth” and “dominion over the animals.” It just envisions it in a more balanced way that stresses our responsibilities as the ‘first among equals’ of the creatures, and the need to live in reciprocal relationships with all of God’s creation. (As it happens, living into those responsibilities looks a lot like the Biblical vision of ‘faith.’)

Genesis 1 isn’t quite this story (for example, Genesis 1 does not consider the plants and trees to be ‘living creatures’), but it is compatible with it and I think we would do well as Christians to allow our understanding of Genesis 1’s claims about our relationships with the earth and animals to be informed by it. In such a reading, humanity may have a unique and important role in creation, but is not separate from it and not above it (Baukahm 177f).

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In this post, we’ve looked at some of the different ways biblical scholars have interpreted the human vocations to ‘subdue’ the earth and have ‘dominion’ over the animals. We’ve seen that, while these images do carry an adversarial connotation, this does not in turn justify an exploitative or abusive approach to our fellow creatures. Even if we are to rule over the Earth, we do so as regents or representatives of the true king, its Creator, and biblical ideals of kingship were always heavily constrained and oriented towards the just thriving of everyone and everything in the kingdom.

The very real challenge of the ecological crisis heightens that sense of responsibility towards other living creatures implied in these images, rather than the ‘power over them’ that has tended to guide historical interpretations in the West.

And so we are finally able to offer an informed theory about what Genesis 1 intends by saying we are created in the image and likeness as God: It means, in Nahum Sarna’s words, “Human beings are to enjoy a unique relationship to God, who communicates with them alone and who shares with them the custody and administration of the world” (Sarna (1989) 11).

 

* See the series bibliography for full information on sources.

** For the works cited in this paragraph on Indigenous traditions, see the series bibliography for my 2022 series, Standing for Shalom.