Abbreviated Introduction to the Series
Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a lion) or the effects of an army (stripping the land bare like locusts). And it would be a mistake to think that these metaphors are “just metaphors.” The fact that we live in a world where everything we see was brought into being by divine speech means that linguistic metaphor is actually a very serious thing that speaks to the ontological status and is not “just” a literary device.1 God is more leonine than any lion that ever lived. Similarly, an army could even outstrip the destruction of a swarm of locusts, killing man and beast as well as crops. It is this very metaphorical appropriateness of animals that make them fit replacements for man in the sacrificial system. And in point of fact, animal involvement in salvation is explicitly not just metaphorical, for the main element of liturgical faithfulness before God in the time before Christ was the shedding of animal blood in place of human blood. I don’t anticipate that anything I’ve said so far will be too controversial. However, I believe that the centrality of these themes is not currently something that receives enough attention. I will therefore attempt to show that:
- Animals Have Spirits, Just Like Men. This adds a gravity to the system of animal sacrifice that is missed by many moderns.
- Sin is a Dehumanizing Impulse Exemplified in Extermus as Bestiality. We become conformed to that which we worship. Proper worship causes us to “become like God,” as was always intended. Idol worship represents a perverse worship of the beast, which is symbolically bestiality (for false worship is always referred to as adultery).
- Mankind’s Proper End: Marriage to the Lamb of God. Just as Paul interprets Deuteronomy 25:4, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out grain,” as having greater application to humans than to oxen, so Scripture’s prohibitions on bestiality (in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy) have application for man’s spiritual state.
Sin is a Dehumanizing Impulse Exemplified in Extermus as Bestiality
James Jordan speculates that in the primordial garden, the Serpent may have been assigned a catechetical role to the infant couple. In this view that old dragon, the Serpent Satan, was meant to instruct the first couple in proper order and disposition of the garden. If this was indeed the case, it was always going to be a temporary arrangement—man, who was but for a little while lower than the animals, was always intended to rule over angels. But despite the early discontinuance of this formal tutelary role, the Bible is still full of animals acting as silent instructors (both negatively and positively) simply by remaining in their created order: “go to the ant, you sluggard”; “as a dog returns to its vomit”; “ask the beasts and they will teach you” (Prov. 6:6; Prov. 26:11; Job 12:7). We are encouraged to be easily led, like a sheep and not like a stubborn goat, both in the Psalms and in Jesus’ teaching. And even sometimes, in cases of extreme stupidity and obstinacy, the direct tutelary role of the animal is reinstated. Balaam’s ass is given the power of speech to teach him things he does not know on his own. The delicious contours of Balaam’s humiliation can only be understood when you realize that he is a man who claims to speak with the tongues of angels (prophecy) who nevertheless must go in for remedial lessons from a dumb beast.2 As bad as Balaam’s humiliation is, it pales in comparison to God’s humbling of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel and Herod in Acts. In both cases, the men arrogate to themselves the status of a god, resulting in immediate demotion down the chain of creaturely being. Nebuchadnezzar allows himself to think for a moment that he was responsible for the glory and splendor of his domain, and immediately the Lord deprived him even of a seat at the common table of humanity: “The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field” (Dan. 4:31–32). Herod’s humiliation is even worse because his is a fatal ignominy from whence there is no return. The people flatter him after his oration in Acts 12, saying that he has the voice of a god and not a man, and “Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last” (Acts 12:23). His slide down the chain of being does not stop at animal; he becomes literal worm food, the lapped up dust of the lowest of the animals.
These three examples, Balaam, Nebuchadnezzar, and Herod are all dramatic examples of what sin does to every man. Sin defiles man and causes him to lose his humanity. The antichrist rises in the heart of every man every time he sins. We climb the parapets of our fleshly Babel and besiege the Gates of Heaven like the perverse men of Sodom at Lot’s door. We all, like Abimelech, risk having our heads crushed by a millstone dropped from heaven by a “certain woman,” driving us down beyond the habitation of humanity into the uttermost depths of the sea where the fire is never quenched and though we die daily, the devouring worm never does. Each of us could share the fate of Nebuchadnezzar, Herod, or Satan, kings of Babel all:
Sheol beneath is stirred up
to meet you when you come;
it rouses the shades to greet you,
all who were leaders of the earth;
it raises from their thrones
all who were kings of the nations.
All of them will answer
and say to you:
‘You too have become as weak as we!
You have become like us!’
Your pomp is brought down to Sheol,
the sound of your harps;
maggots are laid as a bed beneath you,
and worms are your covers.
“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit. (Isaiah 14:9–15)
The dark shades under the earth were kings who aspired to deification during their lives; they called themselves gods and yet they died like dogs. The passage illustrates the sheer verticality of the attempted ascent and precipitous descent of those who refuse to walk humbly before their Lord. Whenever we seek to gain our life, we lose it. Whenever we try to become like God, we become food for worms. Pride comes before a fall, and the fall will be great for those who are splendid in their ambition: “Man in his pomp will not remain; he is like the beasts that perish” (Ps. 49:12). Instead, our great example, Christ, strove against the wild beasts in his desert temptation, resisting the world’s homage and staying his course to the cross where he would be held up for the grandest humiliation, like David dancing before the ark, “I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes” (2 Sam. 6:22). He humiliated himself, allowing himself to be encompassed by dogs (Ps. 22:16), surrounded by the bulls of Bashan (22:12–13); he became like a worm and not a man (22:6), descending even lower than Job in his humiliation, becoming the very potsherd with which Job sloughed off his dirty skin as it returned to the dust from whence it came (22:15). Jesus gave up his life that he might take it up again, knowing that God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. He, even HE, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. How much less should we?
The bestiality of sin is the same perversion that would lead a serpent to think he could rule over God’s divine image on earth. Sin is more than a mere reversion to the animalistic, but it is not less than that. The Bible describes sin itself as a kind of animal, just like Satan who prowls like a lion seeking whom he may devour. As Cain contemplates committing the first murder, God warns him “sin is crouching at the door” and “its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” The word “crouching” (Strong’s 7257 rabats) conjures the image of a four-legged animal, lowering its body to the cursed ground, gathering itself to pounce. Up to this point in Genesis we have only seen one particular animal, the serpent, and when we last saw him, he too was crouched in the cursèd dust. It was prophesied that from that lowly position he would spring and strike at the seed of the woman. And the serpent does not wait long. He pounces upon Cain, Adam and Eve’s firstborn, striking the first blow in a war that has been raging ever since.
What is at stake in Cain’s testing is not just a snake bite to the heel, but the threat that he will fail to “rule over” or take dominion over the inclination to indulge his animalistic urges and instead be mastered by them: “its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Cain of course fails the test. Enraged at God’s righteous judgment between his offering and his brother’s, he decided to set the record straight and issued his own fatal judgment on the matter. Cain’s killing of his brother was an attempt to play God, judge of the world. Jesus, on the other hand took the proper road to claim the same seat of judgment that Cain sought: humbling himself to be born naked and wriggling in the sight of all animals who cared to see, laid in the literal food trough of an animal. Clearly, even Christ himself was not above following his own advice in the pursuit of greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven:
But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher.” Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. (Luke 14:10)
Christ, though divine, came as a lamb to be slaughtered, in order that he might reign as Lord. In Mark, Jesus states even more succinctly: “If anyone would be first, he must be last and servant of all” (Mk. 9:35). And this is where we return to the concept presented in Part 1 that God brought all of the animals before Adam in order to teach him that they were all unfit to be partners in his mission. What they were fit for was servants, over whom Adam was supposed to rule as a servant leader3.
Slaves to Sin, Slaves to Christ
While sin is fundamentally an arrogation –an assertion that we know better than God– its result is enslavement. Trying to become like God, we actually become like the brute beasts, whose backs were built for burdens.
What I will establish in this section is that animals are fit slaves to serve men, but man was not intended to enslave other men. Similarly, man is a fit slave for God, but not to sin- which is animalistic and dehumanizing. The natural starting place to make this case is the Exodus, which becomes the controlling metaphor for the freedom from sin that Christ brought.
“I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bars of your yoke, and made you go upright” (Lev. 26:13). The “yoke” here is symbolic of slavery. But how does it convey that? Well, a yoke is properly for oxen, not for men. In other words, slavery is the treatment of a fellow man in a way that is only proper to the treatment of an animal. It does not constitute abuse of an animal to harness it to a yoke. However, a human was not made for such labor. Additionally, we see the same reference to posture that was discussed earlier. Sin and animals “crouch” on all fours; men do not. That is why after God removes the yoke of slavery from Israel they “go upright” instead of the animal-posture they were forced to endure in Egypt.
To what end did God free Israel? The phrase “go upright” may play double-duty here, as both a physical and a moral posture. The Lord does not free men and then allow them to go on sinning. Freedom from bondage in Egypt preparatory to the greater Exodus when God freed his people from slavery to sin. In bondage to sin we find ourselves enslaved like beasts, but as slaves to God, we become his flock. This is made explicit in Ezekiel 34’s extended metaphor of Israel as a flock being tended by Yahweh:
And they shall know that I am the LORD, when I break the bars of their yoke, and deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them. They shall no more be a prey to the nations, nor shall the beasts of the land devour them. (Ez. 27b-28)
When the Lord’s chosen are enslaved under the yoke of sin, they must dwell outside the bounds of his holy garden. There they dwell with the wild beasts of the field and are prey to those beasts. However, in the land, they are still subject to the shepherd as animal slaves. Even in the New Testament, where the ultimate goal is becoming Sons and Daughters of God, slavery to Christ is still the first step:
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
(Matthew 28:11-30)
Christ is offering a change of masters to beleaguered slaves or “laborers.” He is beseeching them to trade-in their yoke of slavery to sin in exchange for slavery to him. But he is not a hard task master; he will not chain you to a heavy sledge but will gently lead you as a shepherd. That being said, the slavery bit is non-negotiable. “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness” (Rom. 6:18). “For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave” (1 Cor. 7:22). But slavery to Christ is comparative freedom, and it is not the final state of relationship to Christ:
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
(John 8:34-36)
Slavery to Christ comes with a promise of being made Sons and Daughters of God, co-heirs with Christ.
However, not all those whom God frees from sin will realize this end. The great tragedy of the Old and New Testament is that some men take the freedom delivered by God as license to sin. It is because of this that we see constant reminders to New Testament believers, warning them against repeating Israel’s relapses into slavery to sin: “Live in freedom, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants[slaves] of God” (1 Peter 2:16) and “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not be encumbered once more by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). And what happens if we do allow ourselves to relapse? We become like a dog returning to his vomit, “like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like animals [we] too will perish” (2 Pet. 2:12). The prophet Jeremiah paints a gruesome picture of the greater spiritual reality of this regression:
For long ago I broke your yoke
(Jeremiah 2:20, 23-24)
and burst your bonds;
but you said, ‘I will not serve.’
Yes, on every high hill
and under every green tree
you bowed down like a whore.
[…]
How can you say, ‘I am not unclean,
I have not gone after the Baals’?
Look at your way in the valley;
know what you have done—
a restless young camel running here and there,
a wild donkey used to the wilderness,
in her heat sniffing the wind!
Who can restrain her lust?
None who seek her need weary themselves;
in her month they will find her.
Israel failed to recognize the light and glorious slavery to God which was the necessary replacement to her slavery to sin. However, the second state was even worse than the first. Instead of being a human forced to do animal labor, she becomes a disgustingly promiscuous animal whore. I regret to inform you that that is the primary topic of Part 3. There is a natural human revulsion to discussion of these things and I am tempted to excuse the more tender souls among us from completing the trilogy, however, it is God who chose the metaphors (which are actually spiritual realities) so I really don’t think there is anyone exempt from needing to have our dirty little muzzles from being rubbed in these shocking descriptions of our depravity.
– – –
Those who have been looking for continuity between last week’s essay and this week’s may have noticed that Part 1 consisted of me trying to “elevate” the animal kingdom’s status in the created order while this second part presents animals as symbolic of the degeneration of man. Are these contradictory? No.
Each section represents an attempt to push back against two (contradictory) psyops that have been effectively played on modern man. The first is largely a result of the industrial revolution. The car has replaced the horse, the tractor the ox, and the raising and butchering of animals has been so far removed from the everyday experience of most people that… well, we just don’t think of animals that much outside of roadkill, nature documentaries, and the luxury items we call “pets” (which serve the very crucial role of “things to be petted”). Civilized human life used to be inconceivable without the successful breeding, training, and maintaining of a symbiotic relationship with certain domesticated corners of the animal kingdom. Therefore, because citizens of the first world no longer have an awareness of the value (utility) of animals, Part 1 emphasized the ontological importance of animals as creatures and receptacles for the Spirit of God (in the quickening sense, but not the special indwelling that comes at Pentecost).
The second psyop played upon modern man is that man is basically an animal. He is not. He was made with more intimate attention at his creation and was given the innate capacity to be God’s representative on earth (God’s Image). We see this most explicitly in the fact Christ’s humanity was able to manifest the “whole fullness of deity dwell[ing] bodily” (Col. 2:9). Assuredly, there IS a sharp caesura between Creator and creature. God and man are not the same thing, but man is the creature who is most analogous to God. Similarly, there IS a caesura between man and animal, but the animal is the created thing that is most analogous to man.
Jonathan David White is a 2021-22 Theopolis Fellow. He lives in Annapolis, MD with his wife and two sons.
NOTES
- This is one of the core theses of Dr. Leithart’s brilliant book, Creator: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1 (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023). I will not be defending that thesis but assuming it. However, I think there will be much in this article to enjoy even if you feel unsure of that element of my argument. ↩︎
- Peter alludes to this in 2 Peter 2:10–16:
[The false prophets] do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction, […] Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness
The angels are clearly at the top of the hierarchy, men are below, and when man acts like an unreasoning animal failing to worship God rightly, his fitting punishment is to be instructed by an animal. And angels, seeing the dawning of the Sons of God (Saints) refrain from speaking a word against the beings that used to be under them in the created hierarchy. The glory of the Saints is such that those who speak against them are said to “blaspheme.” I am even tempted to say that the “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit” is what is being presented here. Christ allowed that any who opposed him might be forgiven, but a Man might suffer slights against himself that he would never suffer against his wife (The Bride, the Church). ↩︎ - I am aware of the recent backlash against this phrase, much of which I believe to be justified. However, it is undeniable that Jesus presents a mandate for all good leaders to be servants. Of course, that aspect can’t be allowed to overshadow actual leadership. ↩︎