In Genesis 9 God had given Noah the command to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth," not only with the animals, but with mankind.
What was it that God had said to Noah in Genesis 9:1? "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." What they wanted to do was to build a tower in defiance of God, and build a city in which they could all gather so that they would not have to scatter themselves over the whole earth. Who was the one that they chose to lead this? Nimrod.
They chose Nimrod, who was against everything that God did, to thwart God's plan of scattering them abroad over the face of the whole earth. That was their choice. They could have chosen Shem, or Noah and Shem, depending on whether Noah was still alive at the time, because it was Noah's job, and Shem's after him, to fill the whole earth with the people. But instead they chose Cush and Nimrod because their platform was, "No. Let's stay in our own little cities and stay united and build house to house (let us say) and be here cheek by jowl, and not let God tell us what to do." Instead they chose to rebel against God. They chose self-determination.
What happened is that God said, "I'm going to do what I told you to do anyway," and He confused their language and scattered them abroad over the whole earth. But they chose. That was their choice, and their punishment was a scattering and an inability to understand one another. Confusion. That just fits the mold of what we saw there in Proverbs 29:2. If they had followed the righteous leader, they would have been happy, but instead they followed the scoundrel, the wicked, and what did they have but misery. Since then things have not gotten much better.
Unfortunately, the relationship between man and animals unraveled. God created them friendly and compatible to mankind, but we find that after the Flood the relationship is anything but compatible.
The Flood marked the end of an age. Here God is using the relationship between man and animals to show that now life is going to be dominated by fear. I want you to think about that. It is not just the relationship between man and animals (that is just an illustration), but now life is going to be dominated by fear—and not only that—by a measure of force that God never intended was going to have to be required to exercise man's dominion. The dominion is still there. But the relationship has changed.
Remember Genesis 4:1-5. Abel brought to God an animal sacrifice. That shows us that God had already showed them that their dominion over animals extended to the place that they were able to take an animal's life. God was well pleased with Abel's animal sacrifice. He was so well pleased that it is recorded back in Hebrews 11 that it still witnesses. So God was not overly concerned about the killing of an animal, but what we need to understand is that they understood about sacrificing, and some of the sacrifices had to be eaten. That was a requirement of God. The sin offering was to be eaten, part of it anyway, and the peace offering was to be eaten.
They deduced that a man must feed his animals before himself. And so, in doing it this way, he was showing his concern for the fearful (Genesis 9:1-2), the weak, the helpless, and the dependent. Let us begin to pursue this.
