Abstract
Psalm 104 is associated with biblical creation theology, but it seldom receives as much attention as the book of Genesis. Yet Genesis has been and continues to be used to justify human dominion over other animals, which has contributed to a new era in the earth’s history known as the “Anthropocene” epoch. In contrast, Psalm 104 provides an ecological representation of creation that recognizes God’s care for animals. Humans appear in the psalm, but only as one creature among others. A focus on Psalm 104 may foster an approach to biblical creation theology that is more attentive to animals and useful as an ecological frame for reading Genesis and other texts.
Introduction
A remarkable development has taken place over the last two decades. Animals, who were long associated primarily with the biological and natural sciences, are wandering beyond their conventional academic habitats and turning up more frequently in the humanities and social sciences, where they have inspired the emergence of a thriving interdisciplinary field called “animal studies.” 1 I have argued elsewhere that this new area of research and writing, which has already influenced the fields of religious and theological studies, can also lead to an enriched reading of the Hebrew Bible. 2 After all, animals appear far more frequently and play more important roles in the Hebrew Bible than is usually acknowledged. Among numerous biblical texts that do refer to animals, one of the most striking is the beautiful hymn in Psalm 104.
I want to consider here the potential relevance of Psalm 104 for a theological reading of the Bible that takes animals seriously. Biblical scholars have long discussed this psalm under the rubric of creation theology. When readers of the Bible think about creation, however, they are often inclined to focus on the early chapters of Genesis. From a canonical perspective, this is not surprising, since the Genesis stories open both the Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible. Yet a narrow focus on Genesis ignores the interweaving of creation themes throughout the Hebrew Bible that biblical scholars have highlighted. 3 More significantly for my purposes here, placing too much emphasis on Genesis while thinking about the relationships of animals to humans and to God risks reinforcing the tendency to use a few verses from Genesis 1–3 and 9 to justify human exploitation of the environment generally and animals specifically. Such justification is especially troubling in our contemporary context for reading, sometimes referred to as the “Anthropocene” epoch, where the negative impact of human activities on animals and the earth is increasingly severe. If it is the case that biblical interpretation is shaped by, and often responds to, its contexts, then I want to suggest that in the context of the Anthropocene, our development of a biblical theology of creation and of animals should consider starting from Psalm 104 rather than Genesis, allowing the emphases of this psalm to provide a primary frame for interpretation while Genesis plays a subordinate, though still important, role.
The Anthropocene Epoch
Before making this argument for Psalm 104, however, it is important to stress the significance of the Anthropocene as one way of characterizing our contemporary context. The idea of an Anthropocene is grounded in discussions among scientists that are often quite technical. 4 For our purposes here, it is sufficient to note that the term refers to the recognition that changes in the earth’s biogeochemical systems caused by human activities have grown severe enough that they are starting to leave a recognizable record in the stratigraphic layers of the planet’s crust, which are used by scientists to divide earth’s history into ages, epochs, and periods. Thus some scientists propose that we are now living in the Anthropocene epoch, shaped indelibly by changes to earth systems wrought by humanity (anthropos). Although these changes do not all involve animals, human-animal interactions are implicated in such changes in at least two significant ways. First, the massive expansion in numbers of domesticated animals produced across the earth for human consumption leads not only to the incredible suffering of both domesticated animals and human (primarily non-white) laborers, discussed by many animal studies scholars and animal and labor rights activists, but also to ecological damage caused by the contribution of industrial animal agriculture to climate change, deforestation, water pollution, and so forth. 5 Second, a range of human activities including habitat destruction (often for agriculture), anthropogenic climate change, poaching, and other factors appear to be creating what some call “the sixth great extinction” of animal species, which may become comparable to massive extinction events such as those that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs. 6
But how does this relate to biblical interpretation? First, while most discussions of the Anthropocene focus on either the Industrial Revolution or the post-World War II “great acceleration” of industrial societies as key moments in our reshaping of earth systems, some archaeologists suggest that the trajectory leading to the Anthropocene should actually be traced back to the domestication of plants and animals associated with the rise of agriculture. 7 On this account, the agricultural world that thoroughly shaped the Hebrew Bible (as emphasized by biblical scholars in recent years 8 ) would be placed within the story of the Anthropocene rather than prior to it. Indeed, ecological theorist Timothy Morton, writing from outside of religious studies, calls attention to Genesis 2–3, with its association between the origins of agriculture and God’s curse on the ground (Gen. 3:17–19), as part of his argument that our current ecological crises result from an “agrilogistics” that is continuous with Mesopotamian agriculture. 9 Morton even uses the phrase “we Mesopotamians” 10 to suggest that a “Mesopotamian logic” associated with agriculture “eventually created global warming.” 11
More significantly, historians have called attention to the ways in which early modern thinkers interpreted Genesis to buttress theological arguments for the superiority of humans over the rest of creation and the God-given right for humans to exploit the earth’s resources, including animals. 12 These interpretations contributed to the Industrial Revolution, and so to the emergence of the Anthropocene. Theological ideas highlighted in such interpretations include the command to humans, who were created “in the image of God,” to populate the earth and rule over other creatures (Gen 1:27–28), and the divine right to fill the earth and to eat animals, who consequently will fear humans (Gen 9:1–7).
Creation in Genesis 1 and Psalm 104
Like some other readers of Genesis, I believe the book’s stories of creation and flood can be read in ways that are more positive in their representations of, and consequences for, animals. Indeed, I have suggested elsewhere that if Genesis 1 and Psalm 104 “are read together, rather than separately as more often happens, they might be seen to balance one another in ways that later traditions have forgotten.” 13 Nevertheless, the weight of traditions of interpretations of Genesis continues to influence readers who use the book to justify our right to exploit animals and the earth. This justification is grounded in the fact that the texts do give humans a distinctive and exalted role in comparison with other creatures. Understanding ourselves to have divine permission to rule over the earth and the rest of its inhabitants as God’s privileged representatives, humans continue to act in ways that created and continue to create the Anthropocene.
For precisely this reason, I want to argue for a theological prioritization of Psalm 104 in our contemporary context. Remarkably, this psalm lacks altogether the human exceptionalism found in Genesis and in other texts such as Psalm 8. In the words of Adele Berlin, Psalm 104 “represents the cosmos as a nonhierarchical ecosystem in which each component, including humans, is interconnected, and all are provided for.” 14 Indeed, Psalm 104 gives more attention to non-human animals than to humans, though humans appear in the poem alongside other creatures.
To call for a prioritization of Psalm 104 over the Genesis creation tales is not to ignore Genesis or dismiss its relevance. To the contrary: while scholars sometimes emphasize the psalm’s similarities to the Egyptian “Great Hymn to the Aten,” biblical scholars today more often examine Psalm 104 by comparing it with Genesis 1. 15 Jon Levenson has conveniently summarized three reasons for concluding that the two texts are directly related to one another: (1) the order of creation in Genesis 1 corresponds in several respects with the order in which elements of the created world are described in Psalm 104; (2) the assertion in Psalm 104:26 that God “formed” Leviathan is consistent with the claim in Genesis 1:21 that “God created the great sea monsters,” in contrast to texts that understand Leviathan or another serpent as a foe of the Deity; and (3) the two texts share vocabulary. 16 There are, of course, differences between the texts as well. Levenson uses one of these differences—the lack of a seven-day scheme in Psalm 104—to argue that Psalm 104 is probably older than Genesis 1. Other scholars, including Berlin, suggest instead that Genesis 1 “informs” Psalm 104 as a kind of “blueprint.” 17 Yet for my purposes, chronological priority is less important than strong intertextual links. What interests me here is the potential of Psalm 104 to reorient our understanding of biblical approaches to creation, and to the relations among non-human animals, God, and humans, as we grapple with theological implications of the fact that we live in, and contribute to, the Anthropocene.
Reading Psalm 104 with Animals in the Anthropocene Era
What, then, are the characteristics of this psalm that make it useful to read with animals in the Anthropocene? Here I note five distinct, but interwoven, features:
Wild Ass. Detail from Roman mosaic. Musee Archeologique, El Jemm, Tunis. Photo credit: Gilles Mermet/Art Resource, NY.
Interrelatedness of the Created World
Psalm 104 represents the created world in an ecological fashion as a tapestry of interrelated features rather than simply the outcome of a series of steps that took place long ago. Like other creation texts, the poem describes several actions taken by God in the past that allow the present flourishing of life on earth to take place, e.g., setting the earth on its foundations (104:5), covering the earth with the “deep” (104:6), assigning the waters to specific places (104:8), setting limits on where those waters may go (104:9), and making the moon and darkness alongside the sun and light (104:19–20). Most of the poem, however, describes elements of the world that can be seen in the present of the psalmist. Among these elements, phenomena created in the past, such as water, light and sun, and darkness and moon, continue to exist. More significantly for my purposes here, multiple species of animals appear throughout this psalm: wild asses (104:11), birds (104:12, 17) including the stork (104:17), cattle or other grass-eating beasts (104:14), mountain goats or ibexes (104:18), hyraxes (104:18), lions (104:21), water animals including the great beast Leviathan (104:26), and, more generally, the “living creatures” of field (104:11), forest (104:20), and sea (104:25). 18 These animals do not exist independently of other elements of creation but depend upon them. For example, while God may have created waters in the past and put them in their appropriate places (104:8–9), now these waters sustain the animals both directly (104:11) and indirectly, when they nourish the trees in which birds live and sing (104:12, 16-17). So too, while God created moon and darkness, alongside sun and light, in the past, now these serve to mark the times in which non-human animals as well as humans live (104:19–23). Thus, all parts of creation exist in relation to one another.
As James L. Mays notes in a brief but beautiful reflection on Psalm 104, here all the elements of creation “are interrelated in the great web of the works of the Lord.” 19 This representation of the world around us as a “web” of “interrelated” components, relying upon one another rather than existing as independent entities, is far more consistent with contemporary ecological thinking than a sequence of distinct creative acts such as we find in Genesis 1. As Morton argues, the ecological perspectives we need today emphasize “a vast, sprawling mesh of interconnection without a definite center or edge. It is radical intimacy, coexistence with other beings, sentient and otherwise….” 20 While application of such a statement to Psalm 104 would need to be qualified by the fact that God does serve as a kind of “center” here, there is surely no other part of the Bible that goes as far as Psalm 104 in portraying the world as “a vast, sprawling mesh of interconnection” characterized by “coexistence with other beings, sentient and otherwise,” including multiple species of animals. Together with the speeches of God in Job, Psalm 104 underscores more than other parts of the Bible the biodiversity of creatures that scientists insist is crucial for the health of life on earth. As Arthur Walker-Jones points out, “in comparison to the more famous versions of creation in Genesis 1–3, Psalm 104 is far more ecological.” 21
Edward Hicks (1780–1849), Peaceable Kingdom. Oil on canvas. Photo credit: DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY.
A Time and Place for All Creation
Psalm 104 represents the created world as an assemblage of diverse places and recurring times in which multiple species of animals are given room to carry out their distinctive ways of living. Psalm 104 points to a variety of terrains that can be found on the earth, including the sea or deep (104:3, 6–9, 25–26), mountains (104:8, 10, 13, 18), valleys (104:8, 10), springs or streams (104:10, 12), trees (104:12, 16–17), fields of grass and other plants (104:14), and rocks (104:18). Significantly, these settings do not simply illustrate the geography of creation. Rather, in addition to demonstrating the power of God, they provide places where animals can live, as noted above with the references to birds found in trees alongside the streams. Indeed, several of these terrains are referred to explicitly as spaces that are “for” animals: the grass is “for” the cattle and other grazing animals (104:14), the mountains are “for” the mountain goats or ibexes (104:18a), and the rocks are “for” the hyraxes (104:18b). The language of habitation appears as well: birds have a “dwelling” in the branches alongside the steams (104:12), birds have “nests,” and storks have a “house” in the trees (104:17), hyraxes have a “refuge” in the rocks (104:18), and lions have their own “dwelling places” (104:22, sometimes translated “dens”). Over in the sea one finds “creeping things without number, living things small and great” (104:25), including the great Leviathan (104:26). All of the animals have been given particular places to live by God, places suitable for their ways of living and rightly recognized by some biblical scholars as “habitat.” 22
Moreover, some of the animals have been assigned specific times in which to carry out their lives. Light and darkness, and sun and moon, do not exist solely for themselves but also to mark time for animals. When darkness falls, “and it is night, all the living things of the forest come creeping out in it” (104:20). In particular, this is when “the young lions roar for prey, seeking from God their food” (104:21). The situation changes, however, when the sun comes out. At that point lions “lie down in their dwelling places” (104:22) and “humans go out to their work, and to their labor until the evening” (104:23).
I will return to humans below. For the moment, however, I want to underscore the significance for animals of this attention to place and time. Today, “place” has become one of the most important considerations among animal studies scholars who focus on matters of extinction. 23 Habitat destruction by humans is one of the leading causes of the increases in endangered species, and the extinctions that are now being seen globally. Animals have evolved to live not simply in any available space whatsoever, but in very particular types of habitat that are required for animals to meet their species-specific needs. As human populations and development have grown, there is simply not enough space left for some species to flourish or even survive in their species-specific ways. Moreover, some animals, such as certain species of birds or sea turtles, are attached not simply to particular types of habitat but to very specific sites, returning for example to their own place of birth in order to reproduce. As humans transform these places for our use, they often become unavailable to the animals who rely on them.
The significance of “time” for animals is perhaps less obvious, since animals are sometimes assumed to live in a kind of timeless present. Yet time, too, has become an important topic for scholars of animal studies, who note for example how the lives of both individual animals and species, including humans, are formed as “multispecies knots” at the embodied intersection of “sequence” (animals evolve over time, and many of them are taught by their forebears) and “synchrony” (animal lives are shaped by interactions with other individuals and other species living in the same particular time and place). 24 The killing of an animal upon whom others rely, for example a mother bear whose cubs have not yet been taught how to survive, or the gradual extinction of a species over time, as individual members of a species struggle to survive under increasingly challenging conditions, are thus temporal as well as ecological tragedies. From another temporal perspective, animal scientists note that many animals, especially mammals, who are normally active during the day have had to become more nocturnal in order to avoid interference from, and conflicts with, humans. 25 Though this change allows individual animals to continue living, it also creates uncertain consequences for entire ecosystems.
When read against the background of these contemporary concerns about animals, place, and time, Psalm 104 is remarkable. Contrary to the assumption that any space on earth is in principle available to humans and our projects, even if we displace animals in the process, the psalm asserts that some places are “for” the animals, rather than for us. Contrary to the assumption that humans can monopolize all times for our projects, even if we disrupt animal lives, the psalm reminds us that there are times for animals, and times for humans. More astonishing still, these distinctions between places and times that are for us, and places and times that are for animals, have been established by God.
Importance of the Sea
Alongside other habitats, Psalm 104 recognizes “the sea, great and wide” (104:25) as a place teeming with life. It might seem strange that I have singled out the sea here, since I have mentioned the waters already as one of several places designated by God for animals in Psalm 104. In recent years, however, scientists have noted with increasing concern that life in the world’s oceans and other waterways is facing particular challenges that have previously not been seen, such as overfishing and the collapse of marine food chains, the “accidental” but routine extermination of “bycatch” (animals not targeted as food but nonetheless killed by industrial fishing, including dolphins, sea turtles, sea birds, and others), pollution and industrial runoff, acidification and drought associated with climate change, and other factors caused by humans. Such challenges are all too easy to ignore, since the invisibility of most underwater life encourages acceptance of the myth of “the inexhaustible sea,” which humans can continue to harvest for our own purposes. 26
Although the writer of Psalm 104 could not envision these contemporary crises, the emphases of the hymn are surprisingly relevant to them. Like a number of other biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts, Psalm 104 highlights the relationship between God and the waters. We do find a hint, here, of the conflict between God and the primeval waters and their mythological denizens that is more pronounced in other biblical texts such as Ps 74:13–15, Isa 51:9–10, or Job 38:8–11, as well as non-biblical literature. God does not create the waters in Psalm 104 or calmly separate them as in Gen 1:7. Rather, God gives a “rebuke” to waters that already exist, a rebuke that causes them to “flee” (104:7). The waters “went up to the mountains” and “went down to the valleys,” retreating behind boundaries that God has given them and beyond which they may not pass (104:8–9). As Patrick Miller perceptively notes, the waters “scurry away to their proper homes like frightened animals.” 27 Though God may be in control of the waters, they clearly have a life of their own. Thus Psalm 104 fits within the ancient Near Eastern tradition of personifying the waters as forces of chaos potentially opposed to God and dangerous for life.
Yet this is not the whole story. Although the theme of conflict between God and the waters is more noticeable here than in Genesis 1, Psalm 104 tones down that theme in comparison with other biblical texts such as Psalm 74. 28 As noted already, the waters in Psalm 104 nurture particular species of animals such as the wild ass, which traditionally lives in dry places, as well as the trees in which birds live and sing. More significantly, when the sea comes into view again in v. 25, the emphasis is on the living creatures that are found there, “creeping things without number, living things small and great” (104:25). Although the great sea creature Leviathan appears here, he lacks the fierceness that characterizes him in Ps 74:14, Isa 27:1, and Job 40:25–41:3 (English 41:1–11). Instead of being represented as a formidable opponent, Leviathan “plays” in the sea (104:26). As Miller in particular notes, this portrait of a playful Leviathan contributes to an emphasis within Psalm 104 on pleasure and joy. 29 Alone among biblical texts, moreover, Ps 104:26 explicitly claims that God “formed” or “made” Leviathan, using the same verb that is applied to God’s creation of both humans and animals from the soil in Genesis 2:7–8, 19. Of course, the presence of humans on the sea is also acknowledged, in the form of “ships” that “go” upon it (104:26). But the emphasis here clearly falls upon the “innumerable” (104:25) creatures who make the sea their home. While the survival of these creatures is, today, under significant threat from humans, Psalm 104 reminds us that God formed them, not for our benefit, but rather to play in the sea.
Lion, from the procession road at Babylon, built by Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BCE). Glazed terracotta tiles. Photo: Franck Raux. Louvre Museum, Paris. Photo credit: © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.
God Sustains All Creatures
Psalm 104 underscores the role that God plays in sustaining all creatures with food and drink. As many commentators have noted, God in Psalm 104 is especially focused on the feeding and watering of a diverse collection of animals. God “gives drink to all the living things of the field,” so that “the wild asses quench their thirst” (104:11). God “makes grass to grow for the animals, and vegetation for cultivation by humans, to bring forth food from the earth” (104:14).
The lions, moreover, appear to know that God supplies them with prey, and they roar for it in the night (104:21), almost as if in prayer. As Miller observes, this assertion about the relationship between great carnivores and God prevents our reading Psalm 104 in a “romanticized” fashion. Not unlike parts of Job, Psalm 104 “incorporates the understanding of a food chain that pits animal against animal.” 30
After laying out what Levenson calls this “panorama of the natural world”
31
(which, however, includes humans within it), the psalmist refers to “God’s provisioning for life”
32
again as part of a summary statement of praise to God about the dependence of all creatures on God: These all look to you to give their food in its season. You give to them, and they gather it up. You open your hand, and they are satisfied with good things. You hide your face, and they are dismayed. You take away their breath, and they die, and return to the dust. You send out your breath, and they are created, And you renew the face of the soil. (104:27–30)
It is crucial to note that God here, as elsewhere in Psalm 104, has a direct relationship with animals, human and non-human alike. They all rely upon God for sustenance, and God provides it. Indeed, God’s relationship not only with animals but also the earth is apparent from the use of the word rûaḥ, which appears in vv. 29 and 30. Many translations render this word as “breath” in v. 29, where it refers to the rûaḥ of the animals, and as “spirit” in v. 30, where it refers to the rûaḥ of God. Although both translations are possible, this bifurcated way of rendering the word in English obscures the close relations among God, animals, and soil that are represented in these consecutive verses. The breath or spirit of God flows from God to the animals, and returns from the animals to God; but it also renews the ground, or what we might translate with Ted Hiebert as “arable soil” (’ădāmâ) [104:30]), 33 apparently making it fertile for the growth of plants that humans and other animals rely upon for food (104:14). Thus, while we often refer to Psalm 104 as a “creation” text, it might be more appropriate to say with James Barr that the emphasis falls on “sustenance, support, provision” of God’s creatures; “it is the continuance of life that is emphasized.” 34 God intends for animal life to flourish on earth and takes action for its continuation, as is clear also from the preservation of all species, or “kinds,” of animals in the flood story. 35
Theocentric Portrait of Creation
Psalm 104 provides us with a picture of creation that is not anthropocentric, but rather theocentric. Humans play a role in Psalm 104, but we are merely one of God’s creatures among others, with no privileged position. Humans are first mentioned in the second half of v. 14, after “all the living creatures of the field” (104:11a), wild asses (104:11b), birds (104:12), and cattle or other grass-eating animals (104:14a) have already appeared. Although this sequence resembles Genesis 1, inasmuch as animals appear before humans, Psalm 104 returns to non-human animals after referring to humans.
When humans do appear in the hymn, moreover, they often stand in parallel to other animals. In the second part of v. 14, human ingestion of plants (in an apparently vegetarian diet that recalls the diet of humans in Genesis prior to the flood), and our enjoyment of wine, oil, and bread in v. 15, follows immediately after the ingestion of grass by other animals in the first part of v. 14, and is followed immediately by references to the birds who inhabit the cedars of Lebanon in vv. 16 and 17. The reappearance of humans in v. 23, where they go out to work until the evening, follows immediately after the reference to lions who call out to God for prey in the night but return to their dwelling places when the sun rises. The reference to ships in v. 26 stands in parallel to the reference to Leviathan in the same verse and follows immediately after references to the teeming life that inhabits the sea in v. 25.
Humans are, moreover, surely included in the multitude of creatures who depend upon God’s provisioning and breath/spirit in vv. 27-–30. If birds sing in v. 12, and lions roar in v. 21, so also humans sing in vv. 33–34. There is no hint, in this hymn, of any exalted position for humans such as we find in Genesis 1 or Psalm 8. As Elizabeth Johnson observes in her theological reading of it, Psalm 104 contains “no trace of a mandate for human dominion. It is a theocentric depiction of the world” that “stands as a counterweight to mastery carried out on the assumption that humans have a right to rule other species.” 36
Ironically, as Johnson also notes, the one place in Psalm 104 where something like human exceptionalism does appear, without any parallel among animals, is the first half of v. 35. Here we find the appeal, “Let sinners disappear from the earth, and the wicked again be no more.” This sudden reference to human wickedness might seem out of place. After all, the emphasis throughout the rest of this psalm has been upon joyfulness and pleasure, not only on the part of humans (104:15, 33–34) and other creatures, such as the singing birds and playful Leviathan, but even on the part of God (104:31). Partly for this reason, Johnson and others suggest that the nature of the wickedness in view here should be understood in the context of the psalm as a whole. Sin can be understood in this hymn as sin against God’s creation and the creatures that inhabit it, and sinners as those who, in Miller’s words “interfere with God’s good provision for each creature, who tear down the trees in which the birds sing, who destroy Leviathan playing in the ocean, who poke holes in the heavenly tent, who let loose the forces of nature that God has brought under control in the very creation of the world.” 37
In the context of the Anthropocene, that judgment arguably characterizes most of us, even if we are not entirely aware of the ecological consequences of our actions. In an otherwise beautiful poem, the reference to human evil in 104:35 may remind us of Jer 12:4 (“How long will the land mourn, and the vegetation throughout the field dry up? Because of the wickedness of those who live in it, the animals and the birds are swept away”) or the reflection on human sin in Hos 4:3 (“Therefore the earth mourns, and everything that lives on it withers. Also the living creatures of the field, and the birds in the skies, and even the fish in the sea are disappearing”).
Conclusion: The Transformative Potential of Psalm 104
Psalm 104 ends, however, as it began, with an expression of praise for God. Indeed, the words “Bless YHWH, my soul” appear in both the opening and the closing verses of the psalm, though additional praise language occurs there as well, especially at the end. In the context of the psalm as a whole, God is being praised for creating and sustaining a beautiful, complex, interdependent world, full of God’s creatures, including humans but especially non-human animals, for whom the earth was created. We are here, but we are given no special consideration apart from the acknowledgment that our sin threatens to unravel God’s work.
Why is this poem so little known, or emphasized, among readers of the Bible, including even some ministers? Like most psalms, Psalm 104 does appear in the Revised Common Lectionary, where it is associated primarily with Pentecost. Yet the Lectionary recommends reading the psalm, as it does many other texts, in fragmented ways. Unless one uses an alternative framework for reading Psalms, such as the Anglican Daily Office, it is quite possible to be an active participant in Christian worship and never hear or read Psalm 104 in its entirety. Moreover, Psalm 104 stands in some tension with emphases that have shaped the theological use of the Hebrew Bible throughout modernity. While Protestant theology in particular has been inclined to focus on human history as the scene of God’s activity, and God’s word as the primary locus of a special revelation, Psalm 104 relegates humans and our activities to one among many sites of divine concern and can even be seen as an expression of a kind of “Hebrew natural theology.” 38
I am more interested, however, in what Walker-Jones calls the “transformative potential” of Psalm 104. 39 In my view, this potential lies partly in the possibility of allowing Psalm 104 to frame our approach to the creation stories in Genesis rather than the other way around. As long as Genesis 1–3 determines our understanding of biblical creation theology from the start, the reception history of verses in those chapters that hold an exalted view of the role of humans over other animals, as well as other passages that support such a view (e.g., Gen 9:1–7; Ps 8:5–8 [Hebrew 6–9]), will encourage some readers to understand creation theology, as such, to be excessively anthropocentric.
Highlighting Psalm 104 will not remove passages that articulate human exceptionalism. If, however, more emphasis is placed upon Psalm 104—read in its entirety, and often—than is currently the case, one might imagine a shift in perspective whereby an ecological understanding of God and God’s desire for creation becomes the norm. Within such an understanding, one would no longer ask how such a distinctive psalm fits within biblical tradition, but rather, how passages that are used to excuse our exploitation of the earth and its creatures can be reconciled with Psalm 104.
This shift in perspective would not justify ignoring Genesis. To the contrary, it might provide an ecological frame that encourages recognition of such features of Genesis as God’s creation of animals and desire for them to flourish, use of the same substances to form humans and animals, and activity to preserve all animal species at the time of the flood. More importantly still, it might encourage those of us who read the Hebrew Bible to take more action to preserve the lives of those animals who, like us, all look to God for our sustenance.
Footnotes
1.
E.g., Kari Weil, Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now? (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); Dawne McCance, Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013); Matthew Calarco, Thinking Through Animals: Identity, Difference, Indistinction (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015).
2.
Ken Stone, Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017). On animal studies and religious studies, see Aaron S. Gross, The Question of the Animal and Religion: Theoretical Studies, Practical Implications (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015); and, with more attention to theological and biblical themes, Stephen D. Moore, ed., Divinanimality: Animal Theory, Creaturely Theology (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014).
3.
E.g., Terence E. Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005).
4.
For summary, see Erle C. Ellis, Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
5.
Tony Weis, The Ecological Footprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock (New York: Zed Books, 2013).
6.
Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Henry Holt, 2014).
7.
Bruce D. Smith and Melinda A. Zeder, “The Onset of the Anthropocene.” Anthropocene 4 (2013): 8–13.
8.
E.g., Theodore Hiebert, The Yahwist’s Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009 [1996]); Ellen F. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
9.
Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 38–40.
10.
Ibid., 6, 9.
11.
Ibid., 11.
12.
Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
13.
Stone, Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies, 131–32.
14.
Adele Berlin, “The Wisdom of Creation in Psalm 104,” in Ronald Troxel, Kelvin Friebel, and Dennis Magary, eds., Seeking Out the Wisdom of the Ancients: Essays Offered to Honor Michael V. Fox on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 71–83 (74 n. 9).
15.
Bernd U. Schipper, “Egyptian Backgrounds to the Psalms,” in William P. Brown, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 57–75.
16.
Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 54–7.
17.
Berlin, “The Wisdom of Creation in Psalm 104,” 75–6.
18.
Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.
19.
James L. Mays, “‘Maker of Heaven and Earth’: Creation in the Psalms,” in William P. Brown and S. Dean McBride, Jr., eds., God Who Creates: Essays in Honor of W. Sibley Towner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 75–86 (84).
20.
Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 8.
21.
Arthur Walker-Jones, The Green Psalter: Resources for an Ecological Spirituality (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 139.
22.
E.g., Patrick D. Miller, Jr., “The Poetry of Creation: Psalm 104,” in Brown and McBride, eds., God Who Creates: Essays in Honor of W. Sibley Towner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 87–103 (99); Mays, “Maker of Heaven and Earth,” 85; Stone, Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies, 132, 174.
23.
E.g., Thom van Dooren, Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
24.
Deborah Bird Rose, “Multispecies Knots of Ethical Time,” Environmental Philosophy 9/1 (2012): 127–140.
25.
Kaitlyn M. Gaynor, et al., “The Influence of Human Disturbance on Wildlife Nocturnality,” Science 360 (15 June 2018): 1232–35.
26.
I borrow this phrase from Charles Clover, The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and What We Eat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
27.
Miller, “The Poetry of Creation,” 96.
28.
Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, 53–65, passim.
29.
Miller, “The Poetry of Creation,” 98.
30.
Miller, “The Poetry of Creation,” 99.
31.
Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, 57.
32.
Miller, “The Poetry of Creation,” 91.
33.
Hiebert, Yahwist’s Landscape, 32–41, passim.
34.
James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 84, emphasis original.
35.
On the implications of the flood story for species preservation, see Stone, Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies, 164–81.
36.
Elizabeth A. Johnson, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 275.
37.
Miller, “The Poetry of Creation,” 100.
38.
Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology, 84.
39.
Walker-Jones, The Green Psalter, 119.