Did some animals eat other animals (predation) before sin entered the world?

God then blessed them and told them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” This was said before sin entered the scene. Some have claimed that sexual union is sinful, but this is true only outside the marriage bond. At this time Adam and Eve were to rule over other animate creatures. By sin they spoiled this, so that man does not now have the same authority over animals, though Noah was told, “the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast” etc. (Gen. 9:2). This is a mercy of God, for otherwise animals could take terrible advantage of their superior strength to terrorize men.

At the first men were vegetarians (v. 29), and beasts also were not carnivorous. God gave them sufficient food in herbs, fruits, etc., and no doubt they did not desire anything else.

At the first men were vegetarians (v.29), and beasts also were not carnivorous. God gave them sufficient food in herbs, fruits, etc., and no doubt they did not desire anything else.

"To every beast of the earth I have given every green herb for meat." This would imply that animals were not carnivorous. There is a difference between cattle and beasts; but in that statement the cattle are left out; the "beasts" are what we call wild beasts. It is perfectly competent to God to have restricted them for the time, or to have changed them.

113 As regards carnivorous animals, and one man and one woman, the fact is a question of God's power. It is distinctly stated, that herbs were given for food to the beasts of the field, not clearly from ignorance, for lions were eating men in Moses' time, but, with the deliberate intention of alleging a revelation, Moses contradicts the whole existing order of facts as to animals. He had no need to be a comparative anatomist to know that there were wild beasts. He declares that at first they were given the green herb for food. Scripture gives us to understand they ate that in the ark, and speaks of it as representing the reign of peace. Whether God, who foreknew the fall, made them as they are, or whether they were changed in disposition and internal organization, I do not pretend to say (but I believe man fell the first day); but the passage is not ignorance of science, for no science was needed. It is a direct contradiction of universal experience, and professes to be a revelation. To say that it cannot be true is absurd. It is morally appropriate. All men had a tradition of a golden age of blessing. Plato said the beasts used to converse then:

And what is the alleged ground in scripture? "Man was to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the b'hemah or herbivorous animals. The carnivorous creatures are not mentioned, and possibly were not included in man's dominion"! But this is distinctly refuted by ver. 30, which expressly assigns every green herb to "every beast " or animal of the earth. The same text proves that at this time "every animal in the earth was herbivorous," though it is boldly laid down that this cannot be meant. Nor should any believer question the past fact, if assured by inspired prophecy that the day is coming, when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard lie down with the kid, when the cow and the bear shall feed, their young lying down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. Here undoubtedly science will decry and scoff; but he who believes (as Dawson does) the unfallen state of Adam and his Eden, if not his earth, is inconsistent in curtailing his rule to a petty domain. The apostle, we have seen, interprets his headship of creation in general, whatever modern geology may pronounce to the contrary.

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb producing seed that [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which [is] the fruit of a tree producing seed: to you it shall be for food; and to every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to every thing that creeps upon the earth, in which [is] a living soul, every green herb for food. And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold [it was] very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day" (vers. 29-31). Man has still his distinctive place in God's commission and plan; but it is in the state of innocence. After the fall came in corruption and violence. Animal life was not permitted to man till after the deluge. Herbs and fruit were given at first to man, and to the subject creation every green herb. Death was not in the Adamic earth till sin. Granted that Rom. 5:12-21 does not go beyond the human race as fallen under death through sin; but Rom. 8:19- 22 looks at "all the creation" as ruined through the fall of its head. Neither scripture raises any question about states of the earth anterior to Adam. We have seen in Gen. 1:1-2, the general principle of a previous condition called into being and destroyed; which, as far as it goes, leaves room for death by one means or another among the then animals. In no previous conditions was there man existing, still less the great moral trial of Adam the first head, and the varied dispensations of God, till through the last, the risen Adam, God gives those who believe the victory. Whatever gradual approach may have been made before, the six days describe the formation of that platform where man would be tested in every way according to divine wisdom, and God was in due time to bring in Christ, His Son, become man to glorify Him, not only in obedience but in redemption, and a wholly new and everlasting creation only as yet come in the person of its glorious Head on high. The words of God here spoken are in view of man and earth yet unfallen.

The closing verses of the chapter show that the vegetable kingdom was designed to provide food for both man and beast. After the flood animal food was given to man — see, Genesis 9:3-4. Before sin came in, and death by sin, no animal was to be slain for man's food.

First of all, "the whole creation" groans and travails in pain together. This was the case when the Apostle Paul wrote these words, and it certainly is so now. In these words the fist reference is to the lower creation, which has been dragged down by the fall of man. Dominion was given to Adam over all, and by his sin he ruined all. He was, so to speak, the top link, intelligently connected with the Creator, with all other links in the chain dependent on him. When he fell, all creation fell with him; animals became wild and destructive. We may not have ears to hear the groan of the lamb or kid as the leopard pounces upon it, or of the fly as, entangled in the web, it feels the spider's bite; but the groaning is there.

Yet nature remains unfallen from its place as the eldest of revelations. There is nothing fallen but man, and even his fall has only in a sense confirmed its witness to us as from Him to whom man's ruin is no surprise, and redemption no after-thought. Assuredly, such a world of conflict and destruction, beast preying upon beast, down to the minutest being that comes under the microscope, would be to an unfallen being an inharmonious and incongruous mystery. How striking, then, that we find the yet unfallen parents of our race shut off from it in a specially prepared and sheltered garden of delight, which might be for them a better witness of Creating Love, — a memory of blessing to them when fallen. Then, when at last sent forth into the earth, with the new strife that had been awakened in their souls, they could find from the conflicting elements around, with which they were in so manifest sympathy, the assurance of omniscient foresight undeceived and undethroned.

We have first, what is too plain a fact, that sin and death are here. That death is, no one can dispute; that sin is, if any one denies, the common conscience of men will everywhere rebuke him. Sin, too, is something peculiarly man's own; man has a power for self-debasement which the beast has not, and which can hardly be an acquisition he has made, seeing it is manifestly a degeneracy. It is a principle born with him also, a universal heritage, early and quickly developing. All the evidence we can expect then is in proof of the statement here, that by one man sin entered into the world; while the shadow of it over man, which the beast feels not, confirms the further one that death came in for him as penalty with sin. If geology can appeal to facts which show that death existed before man upon the earth it in no wise touches the truth of this at all. Scripture never asserts that death came in for the beast through sin or through man. Nor does it assert that there was no death in the beginning, which is a mere mistaken inference from the green herb assigned to the living thing for food. The "world" of which the apostle speaks here is doubtless the world of men alone: it is "to all men" that death came through, as he says.