A Sidebar Post about God's Answer to Job (a supplement to #4 in the series)

As we noted in Part 4 of our series about Pets in Heaven, God was teaching Job via a listing of rhetorical questioning about creation. We covered the section of God's response to Job which dealt with animals in order to look for indications of His character or design that could either (hopefully) support the idea that our pets can be in heaven or abruptly dash all optimism by showing that is impossible. 

In one regard, God's answer spanning Job 39-41 is probably the best example of multi-tasking different levels of teaching that you will ever find. That makes sense because God was doing the talking!  All the while that God is putting creation into perspective for Job, he is also giving direct information about what He created and still more clues and dots that can be connected when sought out at deeper levels. 

This post serves as a side bar to include a few things that I found to be interesting, although they had little to noting to do with Pets in Heaven. 



The Ostrich • 39:13-18

¹³The wings of the ostrich flap joyfully,
but are her feathers and plumage like the stork’s?
¹⁴She abandons her eggs on the ground
and lets them be warmed in the sand.
¹⁵She forgets that a foot may crush them
or that some wild animal may trample them.
¹⁶She treats her young harshly, as if they were not her own,
with no fear that her labor may have been in vain.
¹⁷For God has deprived her of wisdom;
He has not endowed her with understanding. 
¹⁸When she proudly  spreads her wings,
she laughs at the horse and its rider.

The ostrich is an odd bird any way you look at it. Verse 13 contrasts the ostrich with the stork; in Job's culture, the stork was a symbol of parenting. I'm not sure what to say about "abandons her eggs" in verse 14. As bad as that seems, Australian scientists found that eggs lightly buried in sand on a sunny day were slightly safer than if the mother had been sitting on them because the presence of the mother would attract predators; they are so big that they are... a sitting duck?  Whereas, if she was not there the chance of the eggs being discovered was more random. And as for verse 15, the egg shells of an ostrich are as tough as pottery and it would take a pretty heavy wild animal to crush them by trampling. In tests, they would withstand up to 200 pounds, of course, that is measures under steady pressure and not jumping on them. Wisdom, mentioned in verse 17, cannot be directly matched with intelligence, however, relative to body weight, the ostrich does have an extremely small brain.

The Horse and the Hawk

In the fourth post of the series, God Purposefully Made Animals, I said that these three animals have a spirit-realm component in their descriptions. They all have traits unique to their species which no amount of evolutionary theory can adequately explain—it seems as if they were designed for man before mankind was created. Perhaps you could explain why humans would connect with these animals at an emotional level, but that does not show why the animals... 

Horse • 39:19-25 

¹⁹Do you give the horse his might? 
Do you clothe his neck with a mane? 
²⁰Do you make him leap like the locust? 
His majestic snorting is terrible.  
²¹He paws in the valley, and rejoices in his strength; 
He goes out to meet the weapons.  
²²He laughs at fear and is not dismayed; 
And he does not turn back from the sword.  
²³The quiver rattles against him, 
The flashing spear and javelin.  
²⁴With shaking and rage he races over the ground, 
And he does not stand still at the voice of the trumpet.  
²⁵As often as the trumpet sounds he says, ‘Aha!’ 
And he scents the battle from afar, 
And the thunder of the captains and the war cry.
 
    If I were asked what is Jesus' favorite animal, I would guess the horse. While you could make a good case for the lamb, I think the horse beats it by a nose.  The lamb symbolizes aspects of Jesus' first coming to Earth in human form, but the horse embodies aspects of His next coming. Yes, I know the Bible uses the Lion to express His Kingship, but the horse is the animal that takes the King to war. Any real man is going to be attracted to valiant power of conquest, and Jesus was/is a real man.  A King does not want conflict to continue forever, but in this season, until Satan is cast in the Lake of Fire, I think Jesus is partial to his horse. 

This description of a horse in Job shows an animal that likes what he is doing, and presumably likes humans as well.   The horse has a place on the battlefield, the ability of fearless strength, and a role in the mission. Our take-away point is that God's design and plan includes strong relationships between animals and humans.

Birds • 39:26-30
²⁶Does your skill teach the hawk to use its pinions,
Stretching his wings toward the south?
²⁷Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up
And makes his nest on high?
²⁸On the cliff he dwells and lodges,
Upon the rocky crag, an inaccessible place.
²⁹From there he spies out food;
His eyes see it from afar.
³⁰His young ones also suck up blood;
And where the slain are, there is he.

Depending upon the translation you use, the bird in this passage might be an eagle, hawk, falcon, or buzzard. Whichever you like, it is a bird of prey.¹ We tend to think of falconry as a practice of medieval Europe, but there is archeological evidence and pictographs of birds hunting for men in the ancient world as well. While mankind does train these birds to hunt for him, God reminds Job that the ability to fly and spot a potential dinner at a distance are things God designed. Moreover, God's design is so efficient that the bird can meet its own need for food and have both time and energy remaining for being of service to man.  The birds have a place on the cliffs, an ability for searching, and a role in cleaning the environment of carrion.

Behemoth and Leviathan • Chapters 40 and 41

First off, neither of these animals are "pets." Behemoth is a land monster and Leviathan is a sea monster. If dinosaurs² are in the Bible, then these are them! I am including them in this supplementary post because they help us understand how God thinks about His creation, and the better that we glimpse at God's thoughts, the better we can see that He has a plan across the Ages, and possibly see how our pets fit into that.

Job accepts behemoth and leviathan as real, existing creatures, and we should too. But we also need to be aware that parallel spiritual and physical descriptions are being made. Many animals have gone extinct in our natural realm since Job's time, but that does not mean that the animal's spiritual existence or its implications are dead.  These chapters can also be read at the level of being an allegory; it is not a question of either/or, it is both. One can read the natural descriptions of these creatures and, if you are looking for it, a picture of activity in the unseen realm of the supernatural will pop out at you.


And this is the take-away for our Pets in Heaven discussion:
     God, who is supernatural, creates life that fills a place or a niche in His plan, endows these creatures with the abilities they need for their specific role, and describes them to Job within the context of His answer for the challenge that had just concluded in the heavenly court. Job had not only survived to the end physically, (one of the conditions of play had been that Satan could not kill him), but Job had come through a supernatural ordeal with his heart for the Lord intact.  (Job had questioned God, but never lost reverence for Him, never cursed or denied Him.)
     In Job 42:5, Job is saying, "My ears had heard of you before, but now my eyes have seen you." He had heard the oral tradition of his ancestors; his ears had heard the stories going back to Adam. But now,  Job's eyes were enlightened and he saw God speaking from a whirling Spirit-wind. It is significant that the Lord spent nearly the entire speech elaborating on Creation because this underscores the reality of "on Earth as it is in Heaven" where Earth is a counterpart of Heaven.

None of this proves that our pets will go to heaven. In fact, God's answer to Job lends a greater degree of support to it being the other way around: that pets on Earth had counterparts in Heaven! What we do get a "faith-proof" for is that animals have places, abilities, and roles in both the physical and spiritual realms.   


Footnotes

¹ The predatory bird in verse 26 has shorter wings than the vulture in 27; short wings mean sharper turns in a forest environment and a wider wingspan is better for hunting in open areas.
² The word dinosaur was first used in 1841. It did not exist at the time the King James Version was translated into English. Prior to that time, the common word for such creatures was dragon. When translated as crocodiles or hippopotami, the description God is giving to Job does not fit.