Biodiversity and Conservation of Species in the Old Testament 

The Old Testament recognizes Biodiversity

The Old Testament writers were well aware of biodiversity. This is most obviously the case in the very first chapter of the Bible, the account of the creation of the world in six days. It is a very formulaic account, with key phrases repeated over and over. One such phrase is: ‘of every kind’ or ‘according to their kind’. We hear of fruit trees of every kind, seed-bearing plants of every kind, sea creatures of every kind, birds of every kind, wild animals of every kind, domestic animals of every kind, creeping things (i.e. reptiles and insects) of every kind. In  all the phrase occurs ten times, scattered across the accounts of the third, the fifth and the sixth days of creation (Gen. 1:11,12,21,24,25). To say that this passage recognizes biodiversity is an understatement. It celebrates biodiversity. It paints a picture of a world teeming with many, many different forms of life. Another formula that occurs in the  accounts of the fifth and sixth days is the statement that ‘God blessed them’ (1:22,28).

God’s blessing is his gift of fecundity. He enables the creatures to ‘be fruitful and multiply’. Not only diversity but also abundance belongs to the Creator’s will for his creation.

All the English translations of Genesis 1 seem to use the word ‘kind’ (creatures ‘of every kind’ or ‘according to their kinds’), but we could justifiably translate the Hebrew word (min) as species. In the Hebrew Bible this word is only used for kinds of plants or animals, not for kinds of any other things. That is how we use the word species in English. In the story of Noah we can see that the writers did have the concept of species in at least rudimentary form. In the case of animals, at least, they knew that it takes a male and a female of a particular species to reproduce that species. For each species to survive, there have to be two of everything, one of each gender.

Not all ancient people were quite so clear about that. This does not mean that ancient Israelites could distinguish species with the accuracy we can today, and they certainly had no idea of the vast numbers of species we now know to exist. But they did know that if you breed a horse and a donkey, you get a mule, which is infertile, and so they did not approve of mules.

Cross-breeding of species seemed to violate the fundamental distinctions that made for diversity in God’s creation and so was forbidden by the law of Moses (Lev. 19:19). The sheer, abundant variety of the creatures is also celebrated in the great creation psalm, Psalm 104. When the psalmist has described some of the creatures of the land, he breaks into praise:

O LORD, how manifold are your works!

In wisdom you have made them all;

the earth is full of your creatures. (v. 24)

Then he moves on to the sea:

Yonder is the sea, great and wide,

creeping things innumerable are there,

living things both small and great. (v. 25)

The Israelites were not very familiar with the sea. They were not a seafaring people. They thought of the sea as a peculiarly dangerous place for humans. But they knew that it was teeming with living creatures, strange and wonderful, far more than they could count or catalogue.

Most likely in those days the eastern Mediterranean was much more abundantly full of life than it is now. For the psalmist, this sheer diversity is part of what makes God’s creation so admirable and amazing. The diversity of creation manifests the wisdom of the Creator.

For the Old Testament writers it is natural to connect the two.

God delights in biodiversity

Another refrain that runs through the six-day creation story in

Genesis 1 is: ‘God saw that it was good.’ At the end of his work of creation on each day, God looks at his work, is satisfied with it, admires it, pronounces it good. At the end of the sixth day, he ‘saw . . . that . . . it was very good’. The whole is greater than the parts. It all belongs together and the finished whole is not just good, but very good. Still, every part of creation, just in itself, is good. It has value for God.

We can enliven the language a bit. ‘God saw that it was good’ means: he was delighted with it. And among the things that delighted him must be, because it is such a prominent feature of the account, the sheer, abundant variety of creatures.

God’s delight in the diverse reality of his creatures also appears in the book of Job. When God finally answers Job’s complaints, what he does is take Job on a panoramic tour of God’s creation – not a physical tour, but a tour in the imagination, as the great poetry of these chapters evokes one after another the wonders of the natural world.

The intention is to evoke Job’s awe and to put Job in his place, as it were. Having taken Job in imagination through the cosmos, God homes in on the animal creation and describes ten specific creatures – all animals or birds. They are the lion, the raven, the mountain goat, the deer, the wild ass, the wild ox, the sand grouse (usually translated as ostrich),[1] the warhorse, the hawk and the vulture. These particular ten are selected largely because of their magnificent wildness. They are to

remind Job that the world does not revolve around him, that it is full of creatures with whom he has nothing to do and whom he could not dream of controlling. Yet God delights in them, and the poetry conveys his delight. Take, for example, the vulture.

God says to Job:

Is it at your command that the vulture mounts up

and makes her nest on high?

She lives on the rock and makes her home

in the fastness of the rocky crag.

From there she spies the prey;

her eyes see it from far away.

Her young ones suck up blood;

and where the slain are, there she is. (Job 39:27–30)

The vulture, with its blood-sucking chicks, is not perhaps a bird for whom most of us have instinctively warm feelings. But the poetry works rather like a David Attenborough wild-life documentary. We are moved by the wondrous otherness of the creatures. None of us would want to control such a creature. Its wildness delights us, and we can sense God’s own delight in it. In all their wildness and diversity, God is proud of these creatures.

These ten animals and birds are among the jewels in the crown of creation. They are the sort of charismatic creatures few people would want to go extinct. It is easy to raise support for the conservation of creatures like these – like the panda, the tiger, the polar bear, or the great white shark. And with creatures like these, it is easy to appeal to something more than narrow utility to humans. People simply feel that it is good that such creatures exist, even if they never encounter them themselves. People have a gut-feeling sense of what a loss it would be to the creation if such magnificent creatures went extinct.

Of course, the vast majority of the millions of species that may be in danger of extinction do not have such an appeal. To most of us one species of beetle looks much like a hundred others. We have even less appreciation for molluscs, fungi, very small plants and micro-organisms, and to care about their preservation we need arguments that go beyond the cuddliness of the panda or the magnificence of the tiger. But all of these very humble members of the community of creation ave some who appreciate them, some people who enthusiastically

devote their lives to studying them. Entomologists, really can sense something of God’s delight in every single species of beetle.

 All creatures live to glorify God

A biblical theme that has been undeservedly neglected by Christians in the modern period is the idea that the whole creation worships God. This is, so to speak, the corollary of God’s delight in his whole creation. He responds to them with delight and they respond to him with praise and celebration. Not that in most cases they have words to do so, or even the sort of consciousness that can intentionally focus on their Creator, but simply by being themselves, being and doing what God created them to be and do, they bring glory to God.

In that sense we should see the other creatures as fellow-worshippers with us of the Creator who made us all. Psalm 148 is far from the only, but it is the fullest biblical passage on this theme.

It calls on all the creatures, from the angels in heaven, through all the different categories of creatures, to praise the Lord. Long before people are mentioned, it gives us a picture of creation as a great choir engaged in singing God’s praises, a choir we are then invited to join. By praising God through all they are and do, the other creatures help us to praise him too, not only with our lips but in our lives. We who so easily fail to praise God, whether in words or in life, are helped and encouraged to do so by all the ceaseless worship of the rest of creation.

In the ancient world many people worshipped other creatures – heavenly bodies, trees, even animals. The Bible redirects that praise. All the creatures are creatures, created by God, not gods who should be worshipped. On the contrary, the creatures themselves worship God, and our proper response to them is to join in their praise of God.

From divinities to be worshipped they become fellow-worshippers of the only true God. Many Christians have been suspicious of green attitudes to the world because they fear some sort of pantheism. The Bible, they point out, has de-divinized the creation. True, and has not desacralized creation. As creatures who belong to God their creator, the non-human creatures are not divine but they are sacred to God. If we gave more attention to the creatures as our fellow-worshippers, we would not be so prone to instrumentalize them, to regard them as having value only if we can make use of them for our own needs and desires.

---

[1] Arthur Walker-Jones, ‘The So-Called Ostrich in the God Speeches of the Book of Job (Job 39, 13–18)’, Bib 86 (2005): pp. 494–510, that the reference is more probably to the sand grouse.