Page 139 - Through New Eyes

134 THROUGH NEW EYES

(or hieratic) tasks. It is significant that man’s prophetic task is
not mentioned here. Service is the essence of man’s kingly task,
and guarding is the essence of his priestly task, as we shall see.
Man’s understanding of these two duties was to be progressive.
Though made “like God,” man was to become more and more like
God through a process of growth and maturation in His image.

Man as King
First, God brought animals to the man to see what he would
name them. Man would learn from the animals and acquire wis-
dom from them. Acquiring knowledge and wisdom is the first
part of man’s kingly function. It is his scient@ task to understand
the world before working with it.
Solomon is the great example of a king in the Bible, and we
are told of his wisdom as he investigated the creation: “And he
spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even to the
hyssop that grows on the wall; he spoke also of animals and birds
and creeping things and fish” (1 Kings 4:33). An example of how
Solomon “named” the animals, and learned from them, is in
Proverbs 6:6: “Go to the ant, O sluggard, observe her ways and
be wise.” Another example is Proverbs 30:24-28:

Four things are small on the earth,
but they are exceedingly wise:
The ants are not a strong folk,
but they prepare their food in the summer;
The badgers are not a mighty folk,
yet they make their houses in the rocks;
The locusts have no king,
yet all of them go out in ranks;
The lizard you may grasp with the hands,
yet it is in kings’ pzdaces.z

Once man has begun to understand the world, he can begin
working with it. Building on his scientific task, thus, is his
aathetic task of beautifying the world, advancing it from glory to
glory. Here again Solomon is the great example, as his beautiful
temple and palace show.
As we have seen, working with the creation is always analo-
gous to working with human beings, for the things in the crea-