a plant-based diet (Gen 1:29-30)

Reading through the story of creation

29 God said, “Now, I have given you all the plants seeding seed all over the earth and every tree that has in it tree-fruit sowing seed: they are yours to eat, 30 and to all the beasts of the earth, all the birds of the sky, and everything that creeps on the ground that has life in it, every green plant to eat.” And it was so.

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֗ים הִנֵּה֩ נָתַ֨תִּי לָכֶ֜ם אֶת־כָּל־עֵ֣שֶׂב ׀ זֹרֵ֣עַ זֶ֗רַע אֲשֶׁר֙ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י כָל־הָאָ֔רֶץ וְאֶת־כָּל־הָעֵ֛ץ אֲשֶׁר־בּ֥וֹ פְרִי־עֵ֖ץ זֹרֵ֣עַ זָ֑רַע לָכֶ֥ם יִֽהְיֶ֖ה לְאָכְלָֽה׃ וּֽלְכָל־חַיַּ֣ת הָ֠אָרֶץ וּלְכָל־ע֨וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֜יִם וּלְכֹ֣ל ׀ רוֹמֵ֣שׂ עַל־הָאָ֗רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־בּוֹ֙ נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֔ה אֶת־כָּל־יֶ֥רֶק עֵ֖שֶׂב לְאָכְלָ֑ה וַֽיְהִי־כֵֽן׃

I’m not sure I’ve ever before commented on two full verses in a single post as I’m going to do today. This will start happening much more frequently as we move forward in the Bible. In this particular case, most of what these two verses say has been discussed in earlier posts. I’ll note a few smaller points and then take a look at the big idea that we’re encountering here.

God said

V. 24 and v. 29 both begin with the same two Hebrew words: ויאמר אלהים vayomer elohim. I explained back in v. 3 why I decided to translate אמר as “think” in this expression. Now, of course, God is speaking directly (“you”) to the earthlings, and “said” is the appropriate translation. Not all thoughts are verbal, but if you want to communicate thought you must do so in words, so “say” makes sense for that purpose.

now

God is not merely saying these things but calling attention to them. The Hebrew word is הִנֵּה֩ hinneh. I’ll discuss it at more length when we see it again in v. 31.

plants … every tree

We saw these two categories back on Day Three. I’ll remind you that plants, including trees, do not seem to be thought of in the Bible as being alive. Their purpose, according to Genesis 1, is to feed the animals, perhaps explaining the correspondence between Day Three and Day Six in the two parts of Creation Week.

beasts … birds … everything that creeps

Once again the category of b’hemah, which we took to be the domesticated animals, is missing, suggesting that its absence in v. 28 is neither a mistake nor so significant as perhaps we might have thought it to be. Why we still have two categories of Earth creatures (beasts and creeping things) along with the Sky creatures is not clear — and the Sea creatures are not mentioned at all. Marine eco-systems don’t seem to be part of the knowledge base in Genesis 1 other than the fact that there obviously are living creatures who make their homes in the water.

And it was so.

Did you notice? This “was” (וַֽיְהִי) is the only verb in v. 30. Once again, the human beings who are being addressed directly are lumped together with the other living things. The phrase נפשׁ חיה ‘life’ is never applied in this chapter directly to human beings, yet it is clear that we, like they, must eat to live. The verb “I have given” of v. 29 applies to us and to the rest of the animals alike.

Another point that’s worth looking at here is this: What was so? Up until now — with the possible exception of Day Two, when “it was so” seems to be in the wrong place in the MT but in the right place in the LXX — what follows the phrase va-yehi khen is that we are shown how it became so: God made it, the earth brought it forth, and so on. Not this time.

All the creatures have now come into existence. Apparently what “was so” was God’s announcement about what the animals were to eat: plants. And that brings us to the elephant in the room, if I may use that somewhat awkward metaphor.

God’s world, as described in Genesis 1, is a vegan world. Plants grow out of the ground — how is not really explained — but are not “alive” as the creatures that can move around are. No doubt farmers in the ancient world understood something about plants’ need for sunlight, but Genesis 1 is not interested in this question.

Genesis 1 is interested in asserting that animals are not supposed to eat other animals. It is a divine instruction that will be countermanded only after the Flood (apologies for the spoiler):

Every living thing that creeps shall be for you to eat; like the green plants, I have given them all to you. (Gen 9:3)

The natural instinct of human beings — to say nothing of carnivorous animals — is to eat meat, which can only be obtained by killing other animals. That was not the original plan. The world was intended to be vegan, or at least vegetarian.

Two possibilities for why this should be spring immediately to mind. One of them should be obvious to everyone. The other is somewhat less obvious but becomes more so when we think about the story to come.

The obvious possibility is, to paraphrase John Prine, “God don’t like killin’.” Violence is at least part, and a big part, of what prompts God to bring the Flood, and the explicit permission to eat meat that comes in its aftermath is clearly a concession to the embodied creatures of our dog-eat-dog world.

The other possibility is also present in the Flood story, but implicitly (we’ll see how when we get there). When “God distinguished light from darkness” back in v. 4, we remarked that making distinctions of this kind was itself distinctive of the parts of the Torah that involve priestly concerns. It seems plausible that the provision of a plant-based diet for the humans and the (other) animals was a priestly way of insisting that animals could not be killed wantonly. Rather, the God who gave life to the animals retained for himself the right to take life back.

When in Deuteronomy 12 animal sacrifice is restricted to a single site in the entire country, the text must add that it is all right to kill animals for meat anywhere in the country as long as certain rules are followed. The permission to kill animals in this way tells us that others understood such killing as restricted to ritual sacrifice.

Did the priests think animals ought not to be killed except for the purpose of offering (some of) the meat to God? Or did they think that, if creation had remained as it was originally intended to be, there would be no such thing as animal sacrifice? Indeed, perhaps there would have been no need for priestly ritual at all. What happened happened, so we can’t answer this question.

Next time, we will finish Genesis 1. But that will not bring us quite to the end of the story of creation!