Principle
In the Law of Moses, God told Israel to avoid mixing seed in one field, yoking different animal types, mixing fabrics in a garment, and cross-breeding animals.
Explanation
We previously established that GOD told Israel to be holy (separate) because He is holy.
It follows that, in close proximity to this instruction, GOD gave other commands to Israel to keep other things separate from one another. He did not explain why, but only gave the instruction to follow.
Mixture of Seed
9 “You shall not sow your vineyard with different kinds of seed, lest the yield and the seed you sow and the fruit of your vineyard become unholy.
Deuteronomy 22:9 OSB
Mixture in Plowing
10 You shall not plow with a young bull and a donkey together.
Deuteronomy 22:10 OSB
Mixture of Garment Material
11 You shall not wear a garment of different sorts, such as wool and linen mixed together.
Deuteronomy 22:11 OSB
Mixture in Animal Breeding
19 ‘You shall keep My law. You shall not let your cattle mate with a different species. You shall not sow your field with mixed seeds. Nor shall a garment of mixed linen and wool come upon you.
Leviticus 19:19 OSB
Why did GOD give Israel such peculiar instructions?
Leviticus 19:19, which I just cited, is found in the context of GOD instructing Israel, through Moses, on being holy as He is holy. The text begins and ends as follows:
1 Now the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
…
I am the Lord your God, who brings you out of the land of Egypt.
37 ‘Therefore you shall keep all My law and all My ordinances, and perform them: I am the Lord your God.’”
Leviticus 19:1-2, 36b-37 OSB
What would cross-breeding animals or planting multiple crops in a field have to do with holiness?
Scripture does not directly tell us, but I believe it does reveal the answer.
We previously established that, when GOD flooded the world, he destroyed what Scripture calls “the ancient world.” I refer to the “ancient world” as The First World.
Since The First World was destroyed, yet “planet earth” continues to exist, what, then, was destroyed with The First World?
A holistic answer is beyond the scope of this post, but let’s make some observations.
Satan is ultimately to blame for introducing sin, but in the Bible, the mass corruption of The First World is first mentioned in association with certain angels mating with women and bearing the first Nephilim giants.
After being introduced to these concepts, Moses wrote:
11 Now the earth was corrupt before God and filled with unrighteousness. 12 Thus the Lord God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh corrupted their way on the earth. 13 Then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with unrighteousness through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
Genesis 6:11-13 OSB
So, what was destroyed? All people, land creatures, many/most marine life, and vegetation from The First World.
Why did GOD destroy animals and plants in the flood?
Have you looked closely at ancient hieroglyphics, such as those from Egypt or other cultures in Africa or South America? Creatures are often depicted as mixed, monster-like beings, such as these below.
Multiple ancient cultures share similar depictions, as well as tales of alien-like beings interacting with their ancestors. These oral traditions have likely evolved over time, yet there remains undeniable commonality between them.
I don’t believe these ancient hieroglyphics and cross-culture oral traditions exist by chance or because of creative imaginations.
I think they exist because ancient people in these cultures recorded what they saw and details have trickled down to us thousands of years after The First World was eliminated.
If these things existed before the flood, this could also explain why there exists no culture who can definitively explain the origin of these things. There are gaps and guesses.
I believe GOD destroyed the animals in the flood because these rebellious angels who married human women and corrupted human DNA, or those that they taught during this time, also corrupted much of animal (and plant) makeup. I think this is what Genesis 6:11-13 is communicating when it says the earth was corrupt.
In my view, it would be completely inconsistent with GOD’s character—who, as far as I can discern, behaves consistently in a practical and logical manner—that He would destroy animals and plants in a global flood unless they did not also need purging and cleansing. The only reason I can imagine that plants and animals would need cleansing, is if they, like humans, had become corrupt in their makeup.
If what I’m suggesting is accurate, it could also shed light on the ever-present question about the origin and elimination of dinosaurs.
What if the rebellious angels or Nephilim modified reptilian creature DNA to engineer the dinosaurs?
It’s speculation, admittedly, but then again, all answers to the dinosaur question are speculative because Scripture doesn’t tell us.
The Lexham English Septuagint (LES) translation of the Old Testament writings includes certain writings excluded from the Protestant Bible canon. One example is the Book of Enoch.
This article is not debating the merits of The Book of Enoch, but I submit one passage for your consideration, alongside the Scripture above, which may give further insight.
But first, let me ask you:
What did the original Nephilim giants eat?
Large creatures generally require more food.
7:1 Then [the angels] took for themselves women, each of them choosing a woman for themselves. They began to go to them and defile them. And they taught them sorcery and enchantments and cutting of roots and explained herbs to them.
2 But those who became pregnant brought forth great giants from three thousand cubits. 3 These giants ate up the produce of the humans. When the humans were not able to provide food for them, 4 the giants had courage against them and ate up the humans. 5 They began to sin against birds and wild animals and reptiles and fish, and each one of them ate up the flesh and drank the blood. 6 Then the earth brought up charges against the lawless ones.
Enoch 7:1-6
(The subsequent text through Enoch 9, as presented in the LES, tells how GOD decided to flood the world based upon these events. I have not yet observed any statements in this section that contradicts [other] Scripture.)
According to the Book of Enoch, the original Nephilim began eating humans and then sinned against the animals, eating them and drinking their blood.
Is it simply that the Nephilim ate these animals when GOD hadn’t yet authorized the killing of His creatures (until after the flood, see Genesis 9:3)?
Or, could it be that the their insatiable appetite drove them to apply their advanced knowledge toward experimenting with engineering larger creatures that could provide increased food sustenance for themselves?
Enoch 8:3 mentions one angel leader named Chochiel who was skilled in “the science of symptoms.” When you read the context, if this text is accurate, there was definitely experimentation happening.
And the Genesis account affirms that great advances were made in Cain’s lineage around this timeframe, such as music, metallurgy and smithing, and perhaps even agriculture (see Genesis 4:20-22).
But the overall outcome of these efforts was destructive and not beneficial to mankind and creation, enough that it apparently necessitated purging the animals and plants along with the humans.
Avoiding a Sequel in the Second World
Following the flood, upon exiting the ark, GOD permitted Noah and his descendants to eat animals in addition to plants, as I previously cited, from Genesis 9:1-7.
As the population of Noah’s descendants increased, they failed to spread out, apparently fearful that GOD might again flood the world, despite His promise evidenced by the rainbow.
Having arrested and casting out the human-marrying rebellious angels and destroying their giant Nephilim sons in the floodwaters, the need for a new world government was emerging to deal with the problem of the growing capability of Noah’s descendants.
They had begun building the Tower of Babel.
3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them with fire.” They had brick for stone and asphalt for mortar. 4 They also said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower, whose top will reach to heaven; and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the sons of men built. 6 Then the Lord said, “Indeed, the people are one race and one language, and they have begun to do what they said. Now they will not fail to accomplish what they have undertaken. 7 Come, let Us go down there and confuse their language, so they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city and the tower. 9 Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the languages of all the earth; and from there the Lord God scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:3-9 OSB
For reasons not completely clear, building the tower and communicating as one unified people at that time would have either hindered GOD’s eternal plan or was simply not best for mankind, so He intervened.
When GOD established the multitude of nations, He established The Second World—a second system of universal government, because He placed angels over each nation to rule and watch over them, just as there had been watchers over the First World.
Although the original Nephilim were destroyed, their giant-producing DNA elements survived, apparently through Ham’s wife, for giants are immediately mentioned after the flood.
We established in the previous Principle that, generations later, GOD called Abraham, and created the nation of Israel (which did not exist at the foundation of The Second World), because the other nations had already become, or would soon become, corrupt as their ruling angels rebelled and chose Satan over GOD.
Israel’s purpose was to reflect, through its holiness—its separate-ness, to the Gentile nations, how Israel’s God, Jehovah, is holy (separate, distinct) from their nation’s gods (their appointed angels plus any false or non-existent idols).
At the time GOD gave the Law to Moses, these Gentile nations probably had developed or inherited practices involving the mixture of seeds, garments, and animals that were akin to those seen in The First World.
If so, it stands to reason why GOD would want Israel to be different in these ways, and why avoiding these practices would be linked to holiness as a people. I believe this is why we have these peculiar commands included in the Law.
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