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Dear Friends,
Vegetarians often defend their choice not to eat meat, by claiming that to begin with, God intended that humans be vegetarian. It was only after the flood that destroyed all of humankind apart from Noah and his family, that God allowed humans to eat meat. Today, I would like to study the relevant verses with you, seeing how God intended for the world to be and how he adjusted himself after discovering that his hopes were impossible to realize.
At the end of the first description of Creation, in Genesis 1, on the sixth day, God creates man and woman. He then blesses them, giving humankind seniority over the rest of nature:
| וַיְבָרֶךְ אֹתָם אֱלֹהִים וַיֹּאמֶר לָהֶם אֱלֹהִים פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ וּמִלְאוּ אֶת הָאָרֶץ וְכִבְשֻׁהָ וּרְדוּ בִּדְגַת הַיָּם וּבְעוֹף הַשָּׁמַיִם וּבְכָל חַיָּה הָרֹמֶשֶׂת עַל הָאָרֶץ: וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים הִנֵּה נָתַתִּי לָכֶם אֶת כָּל עֵשֶׂב זֹרֵעַ זֶרַע אֲשֶׁר עַל פְּנֵי כָל הָאָרֶץ וְאֶת כָּל הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר בּוֹ פְרִי עֵץ זֹרֵעַ זָרַע לָכֶם יִהְיֶה לְאָכְלָה: וּלְכָל חַיַּת הָאָרֶץ וּלְכָל עוֹף הַשָּׁמַיִם וּלְכֹל רוֹמֵשׂ עַל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר בּוֹ נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה אֶת כָּל-יֶרֶק עֵשֶׂב לְאָכְלָה וַיְהִי כֵן |
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And God blessed them, and he said to them: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the sky and over every living being that creeps on the earth: and God said: Here, I have given to you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of the entire earth and every tree in which there is a fruit of a tree yielding seed, for you it shall be for food: And to every beast of the earth and every fowl of the sky and to every being that creeps on the earth wherein there is a living soul (I have given) every green herb for food, and it was so.
(Genesis 1:28-30) |
From these verses, we learn three important matters:
1. Part of the blessing of fruitfulness for mankind includes submission of the rest of nature before them: they are the center of creation and rulers of the world.
2. While man is supposed to rule the other creatures, he is not supposed to eat them. For consumption he is only (and all) vegetation.
3. All other living beings are also expected to be herbivores.
And so, after creation, mankind was apparently vegetarian. When left to guard the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were commanded to eat the fruit – פרי, “peri” – from all of the trees other than one, again indicating that this was their sustenance.
However, in predeluvian times the entire population of the planet became corrupt – not only man was corrupt (Genesis 6:5): “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all day long”, but also every living being (Genesis 6:11-12): “And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence: And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt! For all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth”.
After bringing a great flood on the Earth, God realizes that he has to find a way for the people to be able to live with his laws. An important part of this is allowing them to eat meat, as appears in God’s blessing to humanity after the flood in Genesis 9:1-7, and especially in verse 3: “Every living thing shall be food for you, like the green herb I have given to you everything”.
This blessing is in fact a refined version of the first: it begins with an identical phrase – פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ , “Be fruitful and multiply”. This phrase appears only in Genesis 1 during the creation of man (twice) and in Genesis 9 after the flood (twice). It is specifically meant to remind us of Creation, and is in fact and indicator that this is God’s way of fixing creation: mankind is now allowed to eat meat, which it was originally forbidden to do. It is the only time we see such a divine “correction”, and is apparently a very important one.
The new blessing then continues to set the new boundaries and make them very clear: you may rule all the animals and you may even eat them, but beware! You may not eat their blood and you may not spill human blood. The punishment for bloodshed is death, as we learn from the blessing in verse 6. If we look at history, humankind did not learn its lesson and continued to shed blood, despite God’s hope that allowing us to consume animals would subdue some of our animal need for bloodshed.
Have a Great Week!
Naama Baumgarten
The Biblical Hebrew Online Team
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עֵשֶׂב
Transcription: Esev
Literal Meaning: Herb, grass.
More about Esev: Esev is often used as a general word for all low growth – grass, weeds etc.
פְּרִי
Transcription: Peri
Literal Meaning: Fruit
More about Peri:The word is often used in a wider context, such as the fruit of the womb, the fruit of actions (for better or for worse) and the fruit of thought.
יֶרֶק
Transcription: Yerek
Literal Meaning: Green vegetation, vegetable
More about Yerek: The word is derived from “yarok”, the color green. While “Yerek” has the meaning of any green vegetation in Biblical Hebrew, in Modern Hebrew it came to have only the specific meaning “vegetable”, and is used even for vegetables that are not green.
חָמָס
Transcription: Xamas
Literal Meaning: Violence, wrongdoing
More about Xamas: The word is popularly used in the Bible, denoting the worst kind of wrongdoing and violence. An earth full of this kind of violence is apparently impossible to repair.
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