2458. — Ps. 104: 29-31. — M. M. — This text speaks of animals in general and not of particular animals. The passage shows God's care for animals. He gives them their food in due season; when He takes away their breath, they die and return to their dust; He sends forth His Spirit, and the earth is inhabited again with animals. He does not tell us they are recreated. The thought is that the face of the ground is renewed by the things which live upon it year by year. So far as humanity can understand at all, there is nothing in the beast which looks forward to the future, or expects anything in the future. They suffer because of man; "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now;" and they do this because man yielded to sin. But we do not know, nor can we understand, how God is bound in any way to bring back again the countless brute creation which have died or suffered from man's cruelty upon this earth.