Genesis 9:2 · World English Bible
The fear of you and the dread of you will be on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the sky. Everything that moves along the ground, and all the fish of the sea, are delivered into your hand.
A mind that believes it has become fearful to all living things is looking at its own dread reflected back through every creature. The separation seemed to make an enemy of the whole world, and so the world appears to cower or to threaten, when it is only the mind's guilt worn by beasts and birds and fish.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
A mind that believes it has become fearful to all living things is looking at its own dread reflected back through every creature. The separation seemed to make an enemy of the whole world, and so the world appears to cower or to threaten, when it is only the mind's guilt worn by beasts and birds and fish. To be given dominion here is no gift of love but the ego's lonely rule over a kingdom made of fear.
What is delivered into the hand is never the animal but the thought that made it seem afraid. Love asks for no such power. The correction comes when the mind lays down the terror it projected and sees that nothing outside it was ever its enemy.
Beast of the earth: the untamed fear the mind believes lives in the body and its instincts, felt as a threat within. Fowl of the air: the drifting anxious thoughts that seem to circle overhead, dread that will not settle. Fishes of the sea: the deep and hidden guilt beneath awareness, fear the mind has sunk out of sight. Hand: the mind's sense of possession and control, the grasp by which the ego claims to rule what it fears.
Christian Psychology lens
Where am I treating my own fear as if it were the world?
Free · No account needed
Lensightful opens every verse of the Bible through the traditions you choose. Save readings, ask a follow-up question, and get one verse a day.
Get Lensightful on the App Store
Christian Psychology