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Tam's avatar

I like the end of the book of Jonah (an underrated, very funny and short book of the Bible). Basically Jonah goes to this foreign land to warn them (against his will) of God's wrath to come, and they respond by taking it seriously and dressing both themselves and all of their animals in sackcloth and ashes. At the end, Jonah is like, "Come on, destroy them they suck," and God responds, "You are concerned over the gourd plant [that God used as an object lesson] which cost you no effort and which you did not grow; it came up in one night and in one night it perished. And should I not be concerned over the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot know their right hand from their left, not to mention all the animals?"

Awesome punchline and another clear sign of God's care for animals.

God's covenant after the Flood is also with animals as well as people. (Yes, I know this did not literally occur, but hopefully the story says something real.) "See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that was with you: the birds, the tame animals, and all the wild animals that were with you - all that came out of the ark."

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Noah Birnbaum's avatar

Great post! A few things to add (more from a Jewish perspective, but given that these are in the Bible, may be compelling to a Christian too):

1) (Similar to what you said with slight caveats + adding) God only gives Adam “dominion” over the animals AFTER they’ve committed the sin of eating from the tree of knowledge - along with labor and hard child birth. This can very easily be interpreted as a reluctant thing from God’s POV. Ideally, it can be argued, we should not have dominion (famously, Rav Kook believed this and was a vegetarian - minus on Shabbat)!

2) The ritual slaughter (schecheting) required to make meat kosher in judaism is relatively painless compared to the other methods used to kill animals at that time. Maimonidies (among others) argue that this is was designed, at least in part, to minimize animal suffering.

3) Shiluach Hakein is a commandment (mitzvah) in the Torah found in Deuteronomy 22:6-7: It commands that if you find a bird’s nest with a mother bird sitting on her eggs or chicks, you should not take the mother along with her young. Instead, you must first send away the mother bird before taking the eggs or chicks. This is often interpreted (for example, by Maimonidies) as being about compassion for animals!

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