(The article I planned to post this week isn’t finished yet, so I decided to share some thoughts I had written some time ago about the Biblical origins of farming. I pray that they contain some truths that might be helpful.)
When God created mankind, he described for them their mission on the earth. They were told to be fruitful, to multiply and fill the earth, to subdue the earth, and the rule over the creatures of the earth. God gave man the responsibility of having dominion. He was not just another one of God’s creatures. Man was the image of God, His representative on earth. As God’s image bearer and representative, man was to reflect the glory of the creator by his Godly Dominion over the creation.
It seems to me that the garden of Eden was a training ground for man, showing him how he was to have dominion over the earth. This dominion was not to be one of the exploit and ruin of creation for the sake of man, but rather one of beauty, fruitfulness, and care. This dominion was one of stewardship; the delegated care and fruitful management of that which belongs to another. The creation should benefit from the hand of man.
Man was created to work the ground, and the ground was designed to be worked by man. Genesis 2:4,5 says “When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground . . .” (emphasis mine). Many people would have us believe that nature is in its perfect and best state as wilderness, and any intrusion by man is a blight on the landscape. However, although the ‘unsubdued’ parts of nature were declared ‘good’ by God at the end of the creation week, the man and his role to work and care for the earth was also declared good. Wilderness is good, but its design and intent was that it should be improved by man’s proper management. Isaiah 45:18 declares, “For this is what the Lord says – he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited,” (emphasis mine).
Obviously, the application of dominion was not limited exclusively to farming and working the ground itself. Other means of dominion by proper fishing, construction, metalworking, woodworking, and other crafts are practiced by Godly men in scripture, including the Lord Jesus himself. But scripture seems to indicate that agriculture should be one of the foundational and primary applications of man’s dominion, rather than one of the rarest like we see today.
