The Genesis accounts of creation have evoked a wide range of critical responses on the part of modern thinkers who have sought to distance themselves from the dogmatism of pre-modern religious ideology and embrace the enlightenment of science. While their overall purpose may be praiseworthy, in some instances the force of their anti-Bible polemic is mitigated by their superficial reading of the Biblical texts and the traditional interpretations that accompany them.
So, for example, the noted medievalist, Lynn White, has argued: "Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asia’s religions, not only established a dualism of man and nature, but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends." (Science, 155, 1967.) And the great historian, Arnold Toynbee, wrote: "…when the Greco-Roman world was converted to Christianity, the divinity was drained out of nature and concentrated in a single, transcendent God. Man’s greedy impulse to exploit nature used to be held in check by his awe, his pious worship of nature. Now monotheism, as enunciated in Genesis, has removed the age-old restraint." (International Journal of Environmental Studies, 3, 1972.)
Arguments such as these have been invoked by environmentalists who seek to understand why modern Western society has allowed the Earth to become so abused and polluted. Unfortunately, accepting these flawed interpretations of Torah does a disservice to the cause of ecological consciousness, because in doing so the real intent of the Bible is distorted. In fact, the Bible should be read as a source that promotes environmental responsibility and can teach this message to those faith communities that accept its sacred message.
In response to challenges such as these, Norman Lamm has responded: "The starting point for a serious consideration of the religious view of man’s relations with his natural environment is the divine blessing to man in Genesis 1:28 – ‘be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth.’ For years the Bible had been identified as the major impediment to the progress of science. Now that science and technology are ecological villains, the blame for them is placed – on the Bible. ‘And subdue it’ has now been proclaimed by theologians at the Claremont symposium as the source of man’s insensitivity and brutality. ‘Dominion…over the fowl of the air’ has been equated to the right to foul the air. What has moral masochism wrought?!
"The Bible’s respect for non-human nature is evident in the restraints and restrictions that follow immediately upon the ‘subdue’ commandment: Man is permitted only to eat herbs and greens, not to abuse the resources of nature. Meat-eating was likewise prohibited until the generation of Noah, the first carnivores. Man’s commanding role in the world brings with it responsibility for the natural order. He may rule over it, but not ruin it. Adam is punished for his sin by the diminution of nature’s potencies, surely a bad thing. Cain is cursed to become a wanderer to whom the earth will refuse its bounty; again, the alienation of man from nature is considered an evil, a punishment. The destruction wrought by the flood is an evil laid at the feet of man. And in the eschatological vision of Isaiah, the restoration of man to harmony in and with nature is the prophet’s most powerful metaphor for the felicity of the Messianic redemption. The Talmudic tradition continues this implicit assumption of man’s obligation to and responsibility for nature’s integrity: Nothing that the Lord created in the world was superfluous or in vain; hence all must be sustained. God created the world by looking into the Torah as an architect into a blueprint. Creation, the Rabbis were saying, is contingent upon Torah, or, the survival of the world depends upon human acceptance of moral responsibility." ("Ecology, the Work of Creation," Sh’ma, Trial Issue #1, May 22, 1970.)
I would like to explore selections from the Genesis Creation accounts and Flood traditions and from the passage in Isaiah to which Rabbi Lamm alludes. I hope that this exploration will reinforce Lamm’s suggestion and indicate that, indeed, the Bible views ecological harmony and balance as the norm and as the overriding principle that shapes human interaction with nature.
In Genesis 1 God concludes each phase of creation by observing that what He had created was tov. Tov, "good," in this context does not simply mean the opposite of "bad," but it means that it conformed to the grand design of the universe that God was unfolding over the course of the six days of creation. That piece of creation was operating in harmony with what had already come into being. And, after God creates the human beings and gives them the mandate to have dominion over the other creatures, God considers what He had accomplished to be tov me’ od, "very good." This presumes that serving as God’s lieutenants, the humans were not to subvert the order of things that the Creator had established, but rather maintain it. In this conceptualization of the world, no creature kills another for meat, as all are herbivores. The animals have grass to eat, and the humans, who have the capacity to farm, are provided with grains and fruit from trees (Gen. 1:28-30). There is an order to the world, and God’s assumption is that it will be maintained.
This vision of the world is amplified in the second creation account, in Genesis 2. There we read that the human was to work the garden and to guard it (Gen. 2:15). The human’s role was the antithesis of exploitation. The Garden was not unconditionally given over to the human; rather, it was a trust that was placed in his hands. If he violated that trust the consequences would be expulsion from the garden and death. He could not selfishly exploit the Garden as he saw fit, but his use of it was defined by God’s will. As noted in the Etz Hayim Humash (p.15, note to 2:15), by having to work the Garden, the human would come to appreciate it more and assume responsibility for it. The human was not set off against nature; he was intended to live in harmony with it.
And, in Gen. 2:18, the animals were created with the intention that they would be the human’s helper, ezer. As it turns out that experiment failed, and ultimately the woman was created for that purpose. While the helper can be defined as being in a subordinate position to the one being helped, the notion of exploitation is not implied. The ezer was not an eved, a servant, who was, to a certain degree, chattel. Indeed, the welfare of the eved was guaranteed by Torah law, and he or she could not be wantonly exploited by his/her master. If an eved could not be exploited, surely an ezer could not. Once again, human exploitation of other creatures is hardly the message here.
This idealistic tapestry of the world begins to unravel as human willfulness is unleashed, and God, the longsuffering parent, is forced to enforce "tough love" and punish his rebellious children. This comes in various stages, as Lamm notes, and culminates with the flood. In the lead up to the flood story, however, the two flood traditions lay the blame for the corruption of the world on different parties. The JE source views humankind as being responsible: "The Lord God saw how great was man’s wickedness (ra’at ha-adam) on earth, and how every plan devised by his mind was nothing but evil (ra) all the time (Gen. 6:5)." The P source blames all living beings for the evil: "The earth became corrupt (va-tishahet) before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness. When God saw how corrupt (nishhatah) the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted (hishhit) its ways on earth...(Gen. 6:11-12)." The P tradition, in particular, indicates that something went wrong with the whole system, and God would have to start over.
God could not tolerate the corruption of His world. If the world was corrupted on a grand scale, then the purging of the corruption would take place on a grand scale. So, the primeval water returned and cleansed the Earth, and the chaos generated by the creatures was overmatched by the chaos that preceded creation. By melding together the JE tradition, with its emphasis on human moral evil, and the P source, with its stress on the general corruption of all the creatures, the Redactor wanted to teach the reader of Torah that what happened was an undermining of the very order of being. The Midrash in B’reisheet Rabbah (ad. loc.) teaches us that the animals copulated with members of other species. The problem was greater than moral evil; it was the overturning of the ecosystem in all its manifestations. It was the ultimate rejection of the will of the Creator, and the Creator was forced to respond with the ultimate rejection of His creations.
The first part of Isaiah’s vision of the Messianic era (Is 11:1-9) can be seen as a Midrash on the Genesis Creation accounts and Flood story. As such, it helps us comprehend how people living in the Biblical period (circa 720 BCE) understood the relationship between humankind, as the dominant species, and the rest of the creatures: "1. And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a twig shall grow forth out of his roots. 2. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. 3. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord; and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither decide after the hearing of his ears. 4. But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the land; and he shall smite the land with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 5. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 6. And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. 7. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the basilisk’s den. 9. They shall not do evil nor corrupt in all My Holy Mountain (the Land of Israel); for the land shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."
It can be suggested that the Genesis accounts lay behind this Isaianic prophecy because it is comprised of two major elements that have their parallels in Genesis: 1) A Davidic king will rule and judge the land justly; 2) herbivorous earthly creatures will live in harmony. These two elements are found juxtaposed explicitly in Gen. 1:28-30 (humans rule the Earth, and all animals, including humans, are herbivores) and implicitly in Gen. 2:18-20 (the human exercises dominion over the animals by naming them, and they all live together in the Garden). From the association of the Isaiah text with the passages in Genesis we learn that in Biblical times there were Israelites who understood that the dominion that humans were to exercise over the other species was to be a rule of justice, in which all creatures would live in harmony, not a license selfishly to abuse God’s creation.
This prophecy concludes with the statement: Lo yarei’u v’lo yashhitu…(Is. 11: 9); "They shall not do evil nor corrupt...." These are the same terms that are used in Gen. 6 to describe how the humans and the animals corrupted the world and brought about the destruction wrought by the Flood, as noted above. With these terms in mind, Isaiah creates a contrast between the primeval past and the Messianic future, when God’s creatures will not act in this fashion, ki mal’ah ha-aretz dei’ah et adonai, "for the land shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord…." Here, too, the prophet contrasts his vision of "that day" (see multiple references in chapters 10 and 11) with the Genesis 6 flood tradition. In Gen. 6:13 God says: "I have decided to put an end to all flesh – ki mal’ah ha-aretz hamas mipneihem – for the Earth is filled with lawlessness because of them." In his prophecy Isaiah uses the same terminology as Genesis, but "the knowledge of the Lord" replaces "lawlessness." God and His creatures will not be alienated from each other, but they all live in an intimate relationship of mutual understanding, ka-mayim la-yam m’khasim, "as the waters cover the sea," harmoniously in their designated place, not in discord as was the case during the Flood when the waters covered the land and the Earth fell back into primordial chaos. In Messianic times the world will revert back to its condition at the completion of the Creation: The water was in the sea, and the land was dry and filled creatures who were close with each other and with God.
Isaiah teaches us that the proper understanding of the Genesis traditions must, perforce, lead us not to the exploitation of the world, but to the responsible working with the world and its creations, which have been placed in our hands as a trust for us to guard and care for justly, compassionately and humanely. We may be God’s lieutenants, but we are still God’s creations, who share the same ecosystem with all the other species that fill the Earth.