Ancient Israel and the Natural Environment

The importance of Israel in the history of the relationship of mankind to the environment results from the wide influence of the Judaic religion and its implicit attitudes toward the natural world.

Israel was a very small country, and for much of its history was at the mercy of the great Near Eastern empires, so that the evident deterioration of the Holy Land is not the result solely of the attitudes and practices of the Jews. But the Judaic system of thought has made its impact felt both directly and also through Christianity and Islam upon a major portion of the human race, and consequently has affected mankind’s treatment of the earth.

The major distinctive contribution of Israel to mankind is, of course, the idea of ethical monotheism. The God of the Jews was one God only, and tolerated no other gods beside him. He was not regarded primarily as a nature deity. True enough, God was the creator of all the earth and all that is in it, and the sky and stars as well. His creative power could be seen in the things that he had made, and his actions of providence and miracle could be seen in the world of nature. But God was above and beyond his creation, ruling it from on high. He might ride upon the storm, but he was not the storm. He had formed the earth, and caused the waters to flow, but he was not the earth or waters. He was not in the earthquake, wind, and fire, though he might send them. Thus the transcendent God of Israel could be set over against his creation in a way that was impossible with the many nature gods of surrounding peoples.

The Jews loved nature, and saw great beauty in it. The poetry of much of the Song of Songs reflects this, as in this lyrical passage describing the coming of spring:

The winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear in the earth, the time of singing has come, And the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance.

Other passages — many of the psalms, like the great 104th; the story of creation in Genesis; and the words of the voice from the whirlwind in Job — are some of the finest descriptions of nature in all ancient literature.

When the Jews looked at nature, they saw it not only as beautiful in itself, but as a manifestation of the power and majesty of the Creator. “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork,” sang the psalmist. The sea, the trees, the mountains, and all living creatures give glory to God. “The whole earth is full of his glory.” The magnificent 148th Psalm calls the roll of the creatures and exhorts them to praise God. The natural environment, while not regarded as identical with God or an extension of his being, could serve as evidence of his mighty presence, and was therefore full of significance.

When God created the world, he repeatedly called it good. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Unlike the Persians, the Jews conceived no evil counter-creator, and thus everything in nature was regarded as good in itself. True enough, some animals were regarded as ritually unclean; their flesh was not eaten, and contact with them was avoided, but in their proper place in the world’s order, they were among God’s good creatures. God knows all his creatures, the Jews believed, delights in them, and gives them their food in due season.

“The earth is the Lord’s,” the Biblical writers repeatedly asserted, “the world and those who dwell therein.” The Judaic teaching was that God is the ruler of the universe and retains the ultimate dominion over the natural environment. “In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it; for his hands formed the dry land.” He not only created the world, but afterward maintained his sovereignty over it.

Mankind’s place on earth, according to the Judaic view, is subordinate to God’s ultimate dominion. God created human beings, male and female, in his own image, and gave them dominion over “the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth,” but only as God’s deputies. Human beings are not the lords of creation, free to do with the earth as they please, but God’s viceroys, responsible to God for their actions. The Judaic emphasis upon ethical conduct in obedience to God’s law applied also to human treatment of the natural environment. The grant of dominion was not a license to kill, exploit heedlessly, and pollute, and was not understood as such by the ancient Jews, although later Western thought did indeed take it in that distorted sense.

Compared with the nature cults of the surrounding peoples, Judaic thought regarded the natural environment with greater respect and care. True enough, their neighbors identified their gods with natural forces, but their attitude toward them was manipulative, and worship was intended to encourage good returns to the worshiper. To the Jews, the earth and its creatures were a trust from God, to be protected and used wisely.

The Book of Genesis says that “the Lord God took man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” Mankind was given a task by God, to tend the unspoiled natural world by the careful practice of agriculture. Even then, certain trees were to be preserved from human use. When mankind failed that trust, creation fell too, but the task was left the same. Mankind was still to till and keep the earth, but now in toil, sweat, and pain.

One of the punishments meted out to unfaithful mankind after the Fall was that the earth would bring forth unpleasant weeds, thorns, and thistles. In many places throughout the Hebrew Bible, the aspect of the natural world serves as a moral commentary upon the conduct of mankind. When people do evil, when they fail to obey the will of God, render unjust judgments, and mistreat those who are helpless, “the ground mourns,” “the grain is destroyed,” and “the vine and all of the trees of the field are withered.” But when God is pleased with his people, when they have suffered enough and manifested their faithfulness to him, nature expresses God’s goodness. “The mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk.” “The desert shall rejoice and blossom.” These are the results, however, not of wise husbandry and sound agricultural practices or the lack of them, but of social and political justice or its absence.

The ancient Jews regarded pastoral activities as the good, normal occupation of mankind. Their early history is marked by a sense of conflict between this way of life and settled agriculture; in Genesis, Cain’s offering of the fruit of the ground was rejected by God, but Abel’s gift of lambs from the flock was accepted. The hostility between urban and rural cultures is also not unknown in the Bible. Yet work on the land was not considered degrading; it could be said of a king that “he loved the soil.” As a good work, Abraham planted a tree by a well. The Jews built dams, barriers, channels, and storage cisterns for the conservation of water, particularly in the drier parts of Palestine, depending as they did upon the “former and latter rains” of the late fall and early spring. Lacking great rivers, they found “their Nile in the sky,” as the Egyptians noted with some astonishment.

The Hebrew Bible contains many commandments concerning the proper use of the land. Prominent among them are those dealing with the Sabbath. Not only was one day in seven set aside for people and domestic animals to rest, but one year in seven was made a fallow year for the land, the produce it brought forth of itself being reserved for the poor. Prohibitions against plowing with an ox and donkey together and against sowing a field with more than one type of seed at a time are related to the desire for ritual purity which is as strong among the Jews as among the Persians. Prohibitions against uncleanness would also have applied to contamination of springs, streams, and the land. Like the Persians, the Jews abhorred blood and dead bodies more than the commoner forms of pollution, but provisions were made for the careful disposal of the latter as well. Other provisions of the Jewish law seem, however, to be motivated by kindness and a respect for other creatures. For example, it was forbidden to muzzle an ox while he was treading the grain, or to take a mother bird which was sitting on eggs or the young.

The Jews seem to have possessed considerable practical ecological insight, and they might have prevented some of the extreme damage which has been sustained by the Holy Land in deforestation, erosion, and exhaustion of the soil. Because their homeland was periodically disrupted by military campaigns and exploited by a series of conquerors, however, it is impossible to say what the Jews by themselves might have done for their land in antiquity.