I am making a covenant with you and your descendants, and with the animals you brought with you — all these birds and livestock and wild animals. Genesis 9:8-12
“For every animal among the trees is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10-11 NLV)
“Why did you beat your donkey those three times?” the angel of the Lord demanded. “Look, I have come to block your way because you are stubbornly resisting me. Three times the donkey saw me and shied away; otherwise, I would certainly have killed you by now and spared the donkey” (Numbers 22:32-33).
“In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety.” (Hosea 2:18)
No reference to animals having souls and yet God still makes sacred covenants with His creation.
Saving an animal from tragedy? What was the Ark for or was Noah stupid to ‘save the animals too.’ Noah was told to save the animals...what were we to learn in the action?
Surely the verse from Hosea describes something? What might that be?
Also:
Genesis 9:1-29
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. ...
Why would the Lord require a reckoning of both man and beast of the lifeblood each have have taken? Wouldn’t that be absurd if the beast cannot hope to attain WITHOUT the capability to understand either the crime or the punishment to either a higher or lesser station resulting from said reckoning.
There is no excuse for treating a creature of God badly, but they are not human.
When I shoot a deer, I hope to have one shot kills. I have passed up shots that I didn't have confidence for a clean kill. I think treating animals cruelly is a sign of mental imbalance. To somehow derive satisfaction tormenting an animal because they can't fight back is abhorrent and sick. By the same token, shooting a hog in the head and skinning them for sausage is what they were born for.
The Bible tells us how to treat our animals, but it also tells us how to treat our slaves. It doesn't say we have to have slaves, just how to treat them if we had them. He wants respect and care with His possessions. Treating an animal with respect shows respect for God.
BTW, as an aside, this is why Americans have always striven to treat prisoners and POW's with respect. As much as we would like to skin an Al Quida alive, the law doesn't allow for it. As Christians, we are to respect ALL life, even non believers.
Animals are eternal. There is ample evidence that God creates all of his living, thinking beings as eternal creatures. They were in Eden first, after all. If they suddenly were made only temporary, it would be the ONLY place in the Bible where God changed His mind about the world He wanted and the beings in it. God does not change. What He has created He will have again. What man screwed up, He will fix to create again what was once created. Enough said.