Allegorical Interpretation of Animals

The image-nature is already active within him. Let the saying be clear by way of an example. Man is a rational being; and this essential capacity exists also in the infant, though the rationality does not. Thus the infant also has this power; for when the logos is fulfilled, these things are demonstrated, if he responds to instruction.

So also the image, until it is encroached upon, maintains the value of the first creation; but when evil and hardship are attached, it is necessary to receive the flesh according to what has been said in the Gospel, which is the word of repentance, so that having developed the lying-in-waitness lying upon him, we might make manifest the forms of the image.

And 'and let them rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the heaven and the cattle and all the earth and all the creeping things that creep upon the earth' (Genesis 1:26), according to the previous discourse, would show the beginning dominion of man over the animals subjected to him. For one would marvel how all things, being beyond his power and being wild and having a nature to harm, are simultaneously caught by great fires and nets; yet this would not happen in this way, unless he had a beginning dominion over them from God. For even when large herds of various animals are driven by the gathering of a child or otherwise by a weak man, they clearly demonstrate that there must be a divine power in the rational animal, by which these things are subjected to him. And a beginning dominion is nothing other than a lawful standing. Nothing of the others rules the same-kind; and even if the so-called firstling of a flock is a sheep, it begins the herds according to the preceding way, not by reasoning according to men the shepherds, but it does this by nature. And man became according to the image and likeness of God, in order to rule the things mentioned.

And since we say that the mind of man is man according to another understanding, having been commanded to become according to the image and likeness of God, we appropriately receive that he rules those beasts about which the saint says he sends up a prayer, 'Do not deliver to the beasts a soul confessing to you' (Psalm 22:20), which were the opposing energies, outside of which he prays for the confessing soul to be, or evil thoughts being subjected by them. Again, to the I...

Regarding Job, it is said: 'Behold, beasts eat grass beside you like oxen' (Job 1:24), not that the immediate beasts were driven wild in nature by Job, but that the disorder of opposing powers was being made manifest because they lacked strength against the greatness of the saint's virtue. And many things are found in the Scripture where animals are mystically led.

For indeed, some are called fishes symbolically among men, whom the cast kingdom of the heavens draws into the sea. For from every kind, that is, from every character of men and nation, the proclamation of the Word draws. So it begins also with these fishes. And the winged ones are intellectual, some being slandered and others praised: 'Young vultures flying on high' is said, and concerning a father or mother being spoken ill of, it has been said: 'Ravens tore him from the cliffs and young eagles devoured him' (1 Kings 19:4), which would not be according to history, since slandering parents is found everywhere, while ravens are not found everywhere; but it is clear that, being held by this error under dark energies, he is in some way subdued and devoured, those which, being lowly, are accustomed to wear away a crevice.

And regarding the others, the lover of beauty will find animals taken both praiseworthily and slanderously. Thus the man has been set as ruler over all these, having been born in the image of God. The apostles, having come to this state so that they might be like God according to the image, were the rulers of the fishes of the intellectual sea, having become fishermen by Christ saying to them: 'Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men' (Matthew 4:19), as also to Peter: 'From now on you will be catching men' (Luke 5:10), those dwelling in the aforementioned sea.

And because they were also rulers of beasts, they received authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy. But it is also shown in the Psalm how authority is given by God to the righteous against such things, the Holy Spirit saying to the virtuous one: 'He shall tread upon the asp and the basilisk; he shall trample the lion and the dragon' (Psalm 91:13). And He gave them also authority over the winged ones who snatch up the one being sent by the Word.