Genesis 1:29, commentary and pictures

God gave every seed-bearing plant and every fruit-bearing tree on the earth to humanity for food, with the word for meat meaning food in general and not animal flesh. The provision appoints grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables in their simple natural state as the human diet, containing all the elements needed to build good blood and give strength of body and vigor of intellect. No creature was to be killed for human food in that order, and permission to eat flesh was given only after the Flood when every green thing had been destroyed, suffered because of hardness of heart and transgression. That first appointment stands as the great health rule for well-being in this life and guidance toward eternal life, teaching that perverted appetite and custom are not safe guides. God is now leading His people back step by step to that original design, until among those waiting for the Lord flesh will cease to form any part of the diet.

Words and Creation Setting

The word meat in the saying means food in general, not animal flesh, and flesh is never mentioned in the prescription. The words were spoken to Adam when he was appointed monarch of the world under divine supervision, with Christ present as Commander in the heavenly courts. At the same time every beast and bird and creeping thing was given every green herb for food, and everything made was seen to be very good. The saying is the first great health rule in the Bible for well-being in this life and guidance toward eternal life, prescribing seed-bearing herbs upon all the earth and fruit from seed-yielding trees for human food. The Creator's original plan was that food be plant food and that no creature use another animal for food, giving Adam, the father of all living, a garden filled with fruits good for food.

The verse belongs to Adam being given charge of the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it, with seed-bearing herbs and seed-bearing fruit trees given to be for meat and no provision made for animal food. That charge combines equal taxation of the mental and physical powers, joining physical labor in tilling the ground and dressing and keeping the plants and trees given for food with mental study. While humanity obeyed, tending the garden was a pleasure and the earth yielded freely for human wants. God prepared the beautiful garden and provided everything required, planting fruit-bearing trees of every variety and surrounding the pair with liberal bounties for usefulness and beauty and lovely flowers that knew nothing of decay, yet gave Adam employment to dress the garden because he could not be happy without work.

The verse belongs to the joint work of the Father and the Son bringing the earth from the Creator's hand exceedingly beautiful like a noble palace with pure and healthful air. Its surface was not one extensive plain but was diversified with hills and mountains and plains, interspersed with rivers and other waters regularly dispersed. The hills and mountains were not high and ragged as now but regular and beautiful in shape, with no bare high rocks seen upon them, the rocks lying beneath the surface answering as bones to the earth. The hills, mountains, and very beautiful plains were adorned with plants and flowers and tall majestic trees of every description many times larger and much more beautiful than trees now are, which angels beheld and rejoiced over as wonderful and beautiful works.

The seed plants and fruit trees given for food belonged to a perfect creation filled with life, with no disease, decay, or death, where life was in the atmosphere and in every leaf, flower, and tree. Every spire of grass, shrub, and flower displayed divine skill, wisdom, excellence, and love, moving the pair to songs harmonizing with angels and birds. God planted the garden for a perfect pair in perfection of every physical, mental, and spiritual endowment and surrounded them with everything lovely and attractive to the eye to meet their physical necessities. His causing every variety of trees to grow for usefulness and beauty and His giving of fruits, vegetables, and grains was evidence of the goodness and love of a benevolent Creator, placing them in unsurpassed loveliness and glory. The provision included abundant food suited to need and enjoyment, with trees laden with luxuriant fruit of rich fragrance, beautiful to the eye and pleasant to the taste, designed to be food for the holy pair.

That included lovely upright vines bearing very large fruit called grapes in different colors, nearly black, purple, red, pink, and light green, unlike anything seen since the fall, whose branches were trained into beautiful bowers for dwellings of living trees and foliage laden with fragrant fruit. The vines did not trail upon the ground though without trellises but were bowed down by weight of fruit, amid fragrant flowers, caroling birds, and untainted delight. God's plan at creation did not include taking the life of any creature for human food, and originally plants and their fruit were designed as food with no permission to eat animals. Death in man or beast came only in consequence of sin, so taking the life of creatures to sustain human life is the fruit of transgression. Had innocence been kept and the curse never fallen upon man or beast, the earth would never have been stained with blood and flesh-eating with its pain and death would never have been known, and in that order one animal was not to destroy another for food.

Original Diet Prescribed

Genesis 1:29 prescribes the human diet and stands as the first great health rule in the Bible, given for well-being in this life as well as guidance toward eternal life. It was appointed to Adam by the One who created man and understands his needs, to teach what foods best supply the elements needed to build up the body. Perverted appetite, wrong habits, and the customs of society are therefore not safe guides for choosing food. The original plan is that man should subsist upon the natural products of the earth, the seed-bearing plants and the fruit-bearing trees upon the face of all the earth, specifically fruits and grains.

The diet thus chosen by the Creator is grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables, with various roots also to be used. Foods are to be made from the materials provided, principally fruits and grains and nuts. This is the best food and generally the cheapest, a worthy consideration for the poor. Prepared in as simple and natural a manner as possible, these foods are the most healthful and nourishing, giving strength, power of endurance, and vigor of intellect not afforded by a more complex and stimulating diet. Within this ample provision not every wholesome food is equally suited to all persons under all circumstances, so care is needed to suit diet to season, climate, and occupation, with each person choosing by experience and sound judgment what best meets his own necessities.

Our first parents were given food in its natural state, simple grains, fruits of the trees, and vegetables. God gave Adam charge of the garden to dress it and care for it where that food grew, and He intends to bring His people back to live upon that original simple diet. No provision was made for animal food, and no creature was to use another animal for food. The animals themselves lived on vegetables and grains, so humans need not get their vegetable diet secondhand by eating the flesh of dead creatures.

For nearly two thousand years after creation God's children ate no flesh, including pious and godly men such as Adam, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah before the Flood, Daniel, and John the Baptist, with permission to eat flesh coming afterward under peculiar circumstances. God did not form human teeth to tear flesh nor design people to subsist largely on animal food, and Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years as a vegetarian without dyspepsia or gout. God prepared the most nourishing and proper food for Adam, especially fruit, and did not cut off the supply of fruit when Adam lost his Eden home. He still gives skill and understanding in the use of the fruit of the earth, giving tact and skill to many minds in different places to prepare foods suitable for the countries where they live, including more simple and less expensive preparations that the poor can buy.

Flesh Permission and Consequences

Permission to eat animal flesh was not part of the beginning, but came only after the Flood, when every green thing on the earth and every living substance on which man could subsist had been destroyed. In those peculiar circumstances and necessity Noah was permitted to eat of the clean animals that had been taken into the ark, with meat thus added to the green herb already given. Even then animal flesh was not the most healthy article of food for man.

Eating flesh after the fall was only suffered because of the hardness of men's hearts, in order to shorten the period of existence of the long-lived race. Eating the flesh of clean animals was permitted only after transgression and the fall, when death became man's portion, and flesh meat had formed no part of the provision before the flood. No provision was made for animal food in the original appointment of seed-bearing herbs and seed-bearing fruit trees to be for meat, when Adam was given charge of the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it.

When people destroyed the lives of animals and used them for food they departed from that provision. Wanting and eating flesh in the Old World was intemperance in eating and drinking, eating and drinking to excess with depraved appetite that knew no bounds. When the antediluvians demanded flesh meats they sacrificed health on the altar of appetite until abominable idolatry, corruption, violence and ferocity made God cleanse the earth of its moral pollution by the Flood. Eating flesh increased their ferocity and violence and caused them to look upon the blood of human beings with astonishing indifference.

Its free use after the flood went with corruption, shortened lives, and decreasing size and strength. Since that permission the length of human life has been shortening, and physical, mental and moral degeneracy is rapidly increasing in the last days. The curse pronounced upon man and the earth and every living thing has made strange and wonderful changes. That original vitality, perfect in every faculty with perfect soundness and health and glory in the first generations, was lessened by more than two thousand years of indulgence of appetite and lustful passions, with signs of decay beginning in the third generation from Adam and still more rapid degeneration after the flood through excess and violence and debauchery and abominations of every kind bringing disease of every type upon the race.

The same non-flesh lesson was taught to Israel when God brought them from Egypt to train them to be His own people, giving them manna, the bread of heaven, instead of flesh as the food best fitted for that purpose. He could as easily have provided flesh as manna, but for their good deprived them in great measure of animal food in order to bring their perverted appetite into a healthy state so they might enjoy the original Eden diet and be established in Canaan as a pure, happy, healthy and righteous people, a second Eden marred somewhat by the curse. Animal food in the wilderness was granted only because of discontent and murmuring for the fleshpots of Egypt and only for a short time, bringing disease and death to thousands. Later permission to use animal food in Canaan under careful restrictions, with unclean creatures prohibited and fat and blood and torn or undrained flesh forbidden, was a concession that lessened evil results. Willing denial of appetite in obedience to the restriction would have made feebleness and disease unknown among them, given physical and mental strength to them and their descendants, and given clear perception of truth and duty, keen discrimination and sound judgment, but murmuring and lusting after the flesh-pots showed the great loss from rejecting the divinely appointed plan and valuing the earthly above the spiritual.

Health Strength and Character

God's original plan in giving food did not provide for the flesh of dead animals to compose man's food, and man can work without meat. The taste that accepts such food is gross and perverted, and to have dead flesh rotting in the stomach is revolting. Because meat is largely diseased, strenuous efforts should be made to discontinue its use entirely and let meat altogether alone.
The diet chosen by the Creator is grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables, and prepared in as simple and natural a manner as possible, free from spice and grease of all kinds, these are the most healthful and nourishing foods. They impart nourishment to the body, preserve its natural vigor, and give strength, power of endurance, and vigor of intellect not produced by a more complex and stimulating diet. God thereby furnished abundant means for the gratification of an unperverted appetite, spreading before man the products of the earth in bountiful variety palatable to the taste and nutritious to the system, fruits, vegetables, and grains that may be freely eaten without doing violence to the laws of being. Within this ample provision not every wholesome food is equally suited under all circumstances, so care is needed to suit diet to season, climate, and occupation, with each person choosing by experience and sound judgment what best meets his necessities. Craving flesh meats, butter, grease, highly seasoned meats, rich pastry, spiced foods, and condiments comes from perverted appetite, and indigestible condiments injure the tender coats of the stomach.

Meat is not essential for health or strength, for if it were essential it would have been included at the beginning, and God made no mistake in that provision. The grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables appointed contain all the elements of nutrition and all nutritive properties necessary to make good blood, which a flesh diet cannot do. They supply the needs of the system better and more fully than a flesh diet and give more vigorous health and muscular strength without injury to stomach or brain, so muscular strength does not depend on animal food. A few simple articles well cooked make a good wholesome nourishing diet, and money spent for meat is better spent to supply a good variety of fruits, vegetables, and grains, for no one needs to eat flesh meat for want of something better. The nutrition and life in plants produces growth, and eating animal flesh only receives that same plant nutrition secondhand through the animal that ate the grains and vegetables, so it is better to get it direct by eating the plant food God gave. Man should take food at the first cooking, taking the very best obtainable and preparing it in the best manner for strength, rather than waiting for food to go through the animal and then eating dead flesh. Plant food is also safer because any defect, disease, or faulty growth in grain, vegetable, or fruit can be seen and its use avoided, while diseased animals may be killed and inoculate disease with direst results though no analysis gives light, as shown by fattened cattle shipped without water in heat and slaughtered unfit to eat and by distillery cows in inflammatory conditions whose milk shows no morbid constituents by chemistry though the stomach finds poison.

The flesh of dead animals is dangerous because disease is fast becoming universal and the curse rests more heavily in consequence of human habits and crimes. Animals are now so diseased that eating meat is really dangerous and unclean, and flesh meat was not designed at the beginning nor necessary, since God furnished all essential for health and strength of mind and body from the vegetable world. The truth about this original design is to be presented, using reason and care to select foods that make the very best blood and keep the blood in an unfevered condition. Killing God's creatures to consume their flesh as a luxury harms soul and body and conflicts with becoming pure, refined, and holy to have the companionship of heavenly angels. Returning to wholesome and delicious plant food by dispensing with flesh foods expresses mercy toward the dumb creatures placed under human dominion, a mercy to be practiced personally and taught to children. Flesh meats, butter, cheese, grease, rich pastry, spiced foods, and condiments derange the stomach, excite the nerves, enfeeble the intellect, prevent good bloodmaking, fever the blood, arouse the animal propensities, weaken moral and intellectual powers until they serve baser passions, excite and strengthen the lower passions in children, deaden moral powers, and hinder Christian perfection, so children's moral sensibilities cannot be easily aroused unless food is carefully selected. Departing from the provision by destroying animal lives for food increased ferocity and violence and caused human blood to be regarded with astonishing indifference.

Choosing simple healthful grains and fruits rather than highly seasoned stimulating food restores health to those made sick by overeating, saves much suffering from great variety and condiments and spices, makes the mind clear, and fills one with earnest desire for knowledge of the Word. This pure wholesome diet of grains, nuts, and fruits stands in contrast to flesh meat, condiments, spices, tobacco, and strong drink, which destroy desire for it and break down sinew, muscle, nerve, and reasoning power. The path of nature is sure and safe and wide enough for all, and eating this simple wholesome food with thanksgiving and care without burdening the stomach brings divine cooperation in preserving health. Simple habits in harmony with nature gave abundant supply with fewer imaginary wants and more opportunity to work in divine ways, while selfishness and unnatural taste brought excess and want, and Christ's simple fare for the throng assures His power and tender care for common needs, pledging supply though fare be plain or scanty and promising His abiding presence above worldly luxuries. Eating flesh is unnatural, and not an ounce of flesh meat should enter the stomach, for God's original purpose is that the human diet be vegetables, fruits, and grains, to which people are to return.

Literal Creation and Sabbath

Genesis 1:29 belongs to a creation week of only seven literal days, with the world now only about six thousand years old and not the product of six vast indefinite periods followed by another indefinite rest. God performed the work in six days just like every other week and rested on the seventh, each day measured as a generation because each day He generated or produced some new portion of His work and gave its productions at the close of the day. That first seven days originated the weekly cycle till the close of time, six days given to man for labor because God employed the same period in creation, and the seventh reserved as rest in commemoration of His rest, as declared when He spoke His law audibly from Sinai pointing back to His example on the first seven days of time. To turn the days into vast indefinite periods covering thousands or millions of years to accommodate the Bible to science destroys the force of the fourth commandment, frees men from its claims, and undermines and destroys the force of the Word of God. To profess to believe the record while holding that view is infidelity in disguise, the worst kind of infidelity, charging God with commanding men to observe a week of seven literal days in commemoration of seven indefinite periods, which is unlike His dealings with mortals and an impeachment of His wisdom.

Genesis 1:29 belongs to God's great work of creation that gives the reason for the institution of the Sabbath. When the earth came from His hand it was holy and beautiful, with every flower, every shrub, every tree answering the purpose of its Creator, everything upon which the eye rested lovely and filling the mind with thoughts of divine love, and every sound music in harmony with His voice. Sin marred that perfect work, and thorns and thistles, sorrow and pain and death are all the result of disobedience to God. Yet the earth though marred with the curse still reveals goodness and bears witness of the Creator in green fields, lofty trees, glad sunshine, clouds, dew, solemn stillness of night, glory of starry heavens, beauty of the moon, and every drop of rain and every ray of light testifying to forbearance and love.

Genesis 1:29 is part of the authentic Mosaic account of creation found in God's word alone, which came fresh from the fountain of eternal truth and has been kept pure through all ages. It makes known the power that laid the foundation of the earth and stretched out the heavens, and gives the true history of the human race without human prejudice or human pride, shining light into the far distant past where human research cannot penetrate. It gives the plain Scripture facts of what God revealed, to be held against human reasoning, geology, and suppositions explaining creation by natural causes, even when professed Christians accept those suppositions. Just how God wrought in giving food and in the rest of creation He never revealed, and human science cannot search out the secrets of the God of Heaven or explain them from natural causes. It is inconsistent to declare the revealed prophecies of Daniel and Revelation too obscure to understand while eagerly receiving mere suppositions about what God has not revealed.

The herbs and trees given for food belonged to a pre-flood world in which men, animals, and trees were much larger than those living now or for many generations past. Bones, petrified wood, and instruments found in mountains and valleys do not prove the earth was populated long before creation by a superior race, but give evidence of that different former state. Great changes took place in the earth at the flood, and the men, beasts, and trees many times larger than now that were buried at the flood were preserved to prove that the inhabitants of the old world perished by a flood and to establish faith in inspired history. Without Bible history geology can prove nothing about time, and the time of those relics is learned only from the inspired record, so accounting for creation by natural principles apart from God's word leads only to uncertainty.

The creative energy that called the world into existence is in the Word of God. This Word imparts power and begets life, and every command is a promise that, accepted by the will and received into the soul, brings with it the life of the Infinite One, transforms the nature, and recreates the soul in the image of God. The life thus imparted is sustained in the same manner, by every word proceeding from the mouth of God. God spoke and His words created His works in the natural world as a reservoir of means made ready for Him to employ instantly to do His pleasure, with nothing useless in what He made, though under the curse tares were sown by the enemy. Therefore rational beings should not cause confusion in the world but live to God and honor Him, because God and Saviour is all-wise and all-sufficient and came to this world that His perfection might be revealed in humanity.

Man came from the hand of the Creator perfect and beautiful in form and so filled with vital force that corrupt appetites and passions and general violations of physical law were not sensibly felt upon the race for more than a thousand years. Present sickness, suffering, debility, and premature death are not the appointed lot of humanity but the consequence of long-prevailing violation of physical law, with the vital forces greatly weakened by indulgence of appetite and lustful passion, so that more recent generations feel the pressure of infirmity and disease more rapidly and heavily with every generation. God could have spoken the world into existence in one day, but the six days set the pattern that regular hours for work and sleep must be preserved, periods of rest and sleep must be observed, work must stop before exhaustion, and turning night into day and straining the powers to breakdown never pays.

Returning and Living the Diet

God is leading His people back, step by step, to the original design that they should subsist upon the natural products of the earth, and dietetic reform is that return kept in its true principles. True reform is not merely abandoning injurious articles to live on a meager and insufficient diet from partial knowledge and distorted views, but He reforms diet step by step toward that original standard of simple fruits, grains, and vegetables in order to make His people healthy, happy, and holy. As He led Israel toward the promised land as a second Eden marred somewhat by the curse, so He will not work miracles to give health while injurious habits of appetite are indulged.

Among those waiting for the coming of the Lord, meat-eating will eventually be done away and flesh will cease to form a part of the diet. This end should ever be kept in view and worked steadily toward by educating taste and bringing diet to God's plan, and continuing in flesh-eating is not in harmony with the light given. The food originally provided in Eden of fruits, grains, and vegetables is better suited to human wants than a feverish flesh diet, giving health, physical and mental strength, clear perception of truth and duty, keen discrimination, and sound judgment, and as flesh was removed from Israel in the wilderness to bring perverted appetite into a healthy state so they might enjoy this food again, so the work now is to return to it.

The food given to Adam in his sinless state is the best for use as people seek to regain that sinless state and to keep the body in a sinless state. Diet reform is to be progressive toward that food, discarding all flesh meat now because it is contrary to the best development of the physical, mental, and moral powers, and moving away from milk, butter, cream, eggs, and cheese because disease in animals is increasing with the increase of wickedness until there will soon be no safety in using them. God gives ability and tact to prepare wholesome, palatable, nourishing, inexpensive food without these animal foods and without flesh-meat, tea, coffee, and rich desserts, eating freely of fruit in its natural state. By precept and example His people are to learn to live healthfully and teach others what they learn as Bible instruction, preserving health and increasing strength by avoiding the large amount of cooking that has filled the world with chronic invalids and discarding all unwholesome recipes, and the time is coming when recipes for cooking will not be needed because this original diet will have been learned.

Continuous meat-eating does positive injury to the system and has no excuse except a depraved, perverted appetite. God is bringing His people back to the beginning design of fruits, grains, and vegetables with no meat, and would have them teach a better way until animal flesh composes no part of the diet and a butcher's shop is looked upon with disgust, though that full step is not yet taken. People are built up from what they eat, and eating animal food strengthens animal passions, while the beginning plant food replaces gross meat. Taste is therefore to be educated away from meat and toward liking for fruits and grains, using less and less until none is used at all, and this educating work belongs to all connected with His institutions.

Christian temperance means studying diet broadly and deeply, educating taste, and bringing eating into harmony with the original plan. This is done from principle and by personal example rather than by attacking wrong habits, pointing out defects, arousing combativeness, cultivating fault-finding, or making isolated ideas a test. Eating meat, butter, eggs, and cheese is not to be presented as a test nor borne in front as the burden of the work, but people are to be educated to see the evils of objectionable things and to use reason in selecting foods that make the very best blood and keep it in an unfevered condition, because the flesh of dead animals is dangerous from disease fast becoming universal and from the curse resting more heavily in consequence of human habits and crimes. Living out the original plan benefits the reformer and exerts an influence that leads others to better habits and pleases and honors God.

The original provision of grains, fruits, nuts, and other products of the soil is the foundation for teaching health reform by demonstration and instruction together with the last message of warning and medical missionary work. Sanitariums are to enlighten those who come for treatment by showing them how to live upon it. Human life can be safely sustained on those Eden productions from herbs and trees, and a wholesome, nourishing, appetizing diet can be provided without meat, tea, or coffee. Diet is to consist of foods made from the materials provided, principally fruits and grains and nuts, though various roots will also be used, and God is working in behalf of His people and does not desire them to be without resources but will teach them how to make these healthful foods.

To care for the sick away from the bustle and noise of crowded cities, where sin has brought want and suffering and care and anguish, and to locate sanitariums amid the scenes of nature where there is good air and plenty of room and ground for cultivation, follows the order of the garden where man was first placed. Eden was very beautiful with lovely fragrant flowers and trees bearing their burden of precious fruits for human use, with birds caroling songs of praise and with Adam and Eve delighting in untainted purity, and those sights and sounds are the surroundings He would have man rejoice in today. The more closely His order is followed in educational and medical work, the more wonderfully He will work to restore suffering humanity, for He created mankind for happiness, not continual worry, to be a joyous people reposing in Him in His goodness, mercy, and love.

The diet for this time should be of the most simple kind, with grains and fruits prepared free from grease and in as natural a condition as possible as the food for the tables of all who are preparing for translation. Flesh meat should not be placed before children because its influence excites and strengthens the lower passions and has a tendency to deaden the moral powers. As far as possible the table is to be brought back to the original plan that did not include living upon the flesh of animals by freeing it from all flesh meats and the flesh of dead animals and by living on plain, wholesome food in abundance, such as good milk, fruit, and bread, with fruit used freely in different ways and appetite brought under control. This way is better for physical and mental soundness, avoids the diseases incurred by using the flesh of diseased animals, satisfies every want without butter and without rich desserts that take much time and strength to prepare, stops frittering away time, strength, and money simply for gratification of taste, and makes the table a constant educator in healthfulness, simplicity, economy, and self-denial.

He prepared the most nourishing and proper food for Adam, especially fruit, and did not cut off the supply of fruit when Adam lost his Eden home, and fruit in its natural state is good to eat and to be appreciated with clear discernment. The Creator surrounded mankind with bounties of fruits and vegetables for simple food, whose place flesh meat was to discard being supplied with the best fruits and vegetables prepared in their most natural state, free from grease and spices, and skillfully arranged by parents and children together with a clear conscience. Those who fully adopt this provision enjoy it and can speak understandingly of its benefits, while those who have never followed it strictly and those who still gratify taste with fattened turkey and other flesh meats pervert appetite, are controlled by taste not principle, and are not judges of its benefits. Cooking a variety of foods and mixing them together takes needless time and labor, renders naturally good food unwholesome and harmful, and burdens the digestive organs.