by John Roberts

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Elements of Nature

The elements of nature are things like land, water, air, animals, plants, minerals, stars, lightening, fire, the setting of the sun, wind, thunder, or the smell of a flower. On average, every 20th word in the Bible is an element of nature. Biblical words from nature support its spiritual messages, enrich the beauty of its language, and add character and content to its stories. While one in 20 words in the Bible is something from nature, everything in nature is something from God. Every single element of God’s creation stands in testimony to the divine wisdom, power, love, and omnipresence of its Creator. Whether in the Bible or in Creation, elements of nature serve either as links between the Biblical narrative and the experience of living on earth or they serve to focus our attention toward God. In both ways elements of nature serve to enhance Christian teaching and understanding. They are used abundantly in worship, sermons, and songs of praise.

Elements of Nature in the Bible

Nature is present throughout the Bible. Creation is essential to the composition of the Word. Elements of nature appear as geography, weather, a sense of time and place, animals, plants, land, water, sky, the sun, the moon, stars, and more. In addition to these literal elements of nature, symbolic, metaphoric, and spiritual uses are often intertwined.

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,
but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14)

A list of the elements of nature that appear in the Bible, compiled from the New International Version (NIV) of the Holy Bible, contains 542 words(View List). Around 70% of the words are universally-recognized, everyday things like land, water, fire, earth, and the natural division of time, a day, a month, or a year. The ten most frequently used words are day, land, year, earth, water, gold, sea, silver and night.

When all 542 elements of nature are grouped into general categories, the largest groups are animals (24%), plants (16%), geography (16%), and terms referring to water (13%). Relatively smaller groups are land (11%), environment (hot, dark, blue, morning, etc.) (10%), minerals (5%), earthly heavens (sky, space, tec.), (5%), and terms referring to fire (1%). (View Graph)

The order in which the Bible tells us that the elements of nature were created by God is:

First day (Genesis 1:1-2)

Heaven, earth, water, light, and darkness with their names of day, evening, and morning

Second Day (Genesis 1:3-5)

Sky

Third Day (Genesis 1:9-13)

Land, seas, and vegetation

Fourth Day (Genesis 1: 14-19)

Seasons, days, years, sun, moon, and stars

Fifth Day (Genesis 1: 20-23)

Sea creatures and birds

Sixth Day (Genesis 1: 24-25)

Land creatures and livestock

The Confusing Nature of Names

One would think that a bird is a bird and a fish is a fish, and that plants do certain things and animals others. However, in nature there are birds that swim and fish that fly. There are mammals that walk, crawl, run fast, swim in the deep oceans, or fly through the sky in the darkness of night. There are plants that eat insects and insects that eat plants. To add to the bewildering complexity, each individual thing may have many different names (and plenty of things have no name). The origin of names can give us some clue as to why this is.

In Genesis 1:3-9 God named the light as day, the darkness as night, the expanse above as sky, the dry ground as land, and the waters He called seas. However, God gave the task of naming the other things in nature to humans.

Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. (Genesis 2:19-20)

Adam named things. The generations after Adam named things. Noah may have named things on the ark that he was not familiar with, and then there was the confusion of language and the scattering of people after Babel.

That is why it was called Babel—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:9)

Thus it is that, beyond Adam’s initial effort, a single type of animal, or plant may have multiple names. A cougar and a mountain lion are the same animal, a linden is but a basswood tree by another name, and a maple tree is l’erable in France, and lönntra in Sweden. It is also why two very different things in nature can have the same name. A robin in America is quite different than a robin in England. Science has attempted to reduce this confusion by designating a two-part Latin name for each individual species. Instead of the various translations for maple tree, in any nation and any language, this single type of tree – Acer saccharum – can be universally identified by name. However, even many of these scientific names have changed over time.

Biblically, different translations of Greek or Hebrew words for things in nature will sometimes vary considerably. In 1 Kings 10:22, the King James Bible translates a single word (Strong 8500, G/K 9415) as peacocks, while the NIV translators chose baboons. In Leviticus 11:18 the King James translators chose pelican while those for the NIV chose desert owl for the same original word (Strong 6893, G/K 7684). Similarly, in Proverbs 30:31 King James reads “a greyhound” where the NIV reads “strutting rooster.”

There are animal and plant names in the Bible that we struggle to understand. What exactly is a behemoth (Job 40:15)? It has been suggested to be an elephant or a hippopotamus, but neither fit the Biblical description well. The leviathan, as described in Job 41:1-34, is an animal that has beams of light coming from its eyes, flames darting from his mouth, and smoke pouring from his nostrils. This hardly can be a whale. Perhaps it is something unknown to us. Dragons are mentioned 14 times in the NIV Bible (in Revelations) and 34 times throughout the King James Bible. Did dragons exist on earth or do they only reside in visions?

Some plants and animals named in the Bible may no longer exist, and certainly there are many, many things, including Dinosaurs, that go unmentioned. The Bible only includes about 200 of the more than 1.5 million life forms in nature. It is not a natural science text book, it is God’s book. It serves his purposes, and He chose not to educate us about earthly, material things, but about the spiritual things of God.

God saw that his creation was good and blessed it, but He chose not to name the things He created. We know from the story of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) that the confusion of names – multiple names for the same thing, things with no name, and names for things that do not currently exist – to all this there is an element of divine intention.

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate. (1 Corinthians 1:19 and Isaiah 29:14)

He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.
…“Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” (1Corinthians 1:28-31)

If we can take a clue from the above passages, the complexity of names for things in nature may serve to frustrate human confidence in what we know and thus enhance our need for God. Our minds can not comprehend 1.5 million life forms, but we can know of God, place our trust in Him, and be thankful that He created all things and knows all things in nature (Psalm 50:10-12 and Psalm 104).

Naming of Things in Nature

There are benefits that come from the actual task of naming things in nature. Naming occurs when a relationship or friendship is special, as when a parent names a child, a spouse creates a nickname, or even when a person names a pet, their car, or a favorite place (Knob Hill, Sunset Beach, etc.).

Naming is also used to diminish fear of the unknown, bolster courage in the face of danger, or simplify the complex and seemingly impossible. Whether you are deep in the Amazon Jungle or simply with your son on his first night of camping in the woods, it is familiarity – the knowing of names for those things that are around you – that still serves to comfort and encourage us. “Wow, listen, it’s an owl!”, or “Oh, can you hear the loon calling?” – these are pretty reassuring messages for your frightened, wide-awake little boy trying to be his bravest, next to you, in his sleeping bag, in the dark tent.

With over 6.8 billion people on earth, it is hard to know what it was like, but Adam was alone in the world. When Noah and his family first stepped off the ark there was no one else on earth. Can you imagine being the first humans on earth, or the only humans left on earth after the flood? How overwhelming it must have been. How intimidating and seemingly impossible it must have been. God was with them in many ways, but, his gift, the task of naming things, must have been truly comforting for these first and only humans on earth.

Today around the world, many people still live off the land and are very familiar with the local parts of nature that are necessary for their food and shelter. For such people everything nearby that is useful, common, beautiful, or dangerous has been given a name, and thus provides a degree of comfort to those who know the names. However, in the developed world, people can become insolated from the reality that God’s Creation provides us with everything we need to live life on earth. The hazard of being less familiar with the things in God’s Creation is that we become more worried and afraid, like the little boy in the tent, of the very things that God has provided for us. God created nature for his purposes. He placed us in it for his purposes. Technological advances have allowed us to be less dependant on nature, less familiar with nature, and consequently less affected, influenced, or even aware of the God-designed purposes of nature.

The Bible is God’s instrument. It is God breathed. It has survived plagues, wars, greed, corruption, language barriers, banishment, and thousands of years in order to be available to you as God revelation. If it remains unread it serves no divine purpose. It serves only worldly purposes – a decoration or a personal adornment.

Nature is also God’s instrument.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.(Romans 1:20)

Nature was created by God. It has survived since the dawn of Creation in order to be available to you for the purposes for which God created it. If the covers of this, God’s other “book,” remain unopened, it can not serve the divine purposes in our lives either. For most of us, the main obstacle to studying the Bible is not a lack of reading skill, but in the case of nature, personal study is often limited by a lack of what might be called, reading skill. Access to the language of nature is through the names for its things. It is God’s directive that we name the things in nature. There is purpose in naming and thus learning names. Learning the names in nature serves very much the same function as learning to read the written word. It is the way you begin to comprehend the hidden messages in his Creation.

What you are looking at – a flower, a tree, a bird, a star – all these things tend to remain insignificant or, at best, just curious things until they are given a name. There is a reason God gave the task of naming things in nature to humans. To know that what you are looking at is a Mayflower, a Maple Tree, a Mourning warbler, or the Milky Way is the avenue by that God has given to us, assigned to us, to begin to access the spiritual messages hidden amongst the pages of his Creation. More importantly though, when you start learning the names of things in nature you start to pay more attention to his Creation, and thus to God. This is one of the fundamental divine purposes of nature. When you read in your Bible, go to Bible class, or hear a sermon, do you know what spiritual insight will be revealed beforehand? Open the covers of God’s Creation. Fear not, trust in God. Have faith in God’s purposes, and his light will guide your way.

The Role of Nature in Miracles

Throughout God’s creation there are many things that we recognize and accept without a passing thought – the light of day, the air we breathe, and the presence of gravity. These things are obviously part of what we call nature. A less obvious aspect of nature is the absence of things. The absence of water is dry. Deserts are places best defined by the absence of water. The absence of light is dark, as in the dark of night or the darkness of shadow or shade. The absence of wind is called calm or perhaps quiet which is also the absence of noise. Whether it is the desert or the tropics, the night or the day, the howl of wind or the dead calm there is no question that such things are a normal part of what we know as nature.

A hill, a river, a beach, soil, forests, wilderness, or oceans are all recognized as normal parts of nature. When such things are altered by humans there is often a distinction made with the altered being referred to as artificial and the unaltered as natural. This does not change our expectations. Whether it’s paved streets, high-rise apartments, polluted rivers, smog, the fluorescent light bulb, the artificial is by no means unusual to us, and more importantly, it does not change our concept of nature. Right from birth, we constantly evaluate the world around us. Quite early in life we become familiar with the common things in nature. We know what they look like, how they behave, and how they react to change. All of us know we can not walk on water. God created nature to behave in this manner. Nature is incomprehensibly complex, but it is also reliably repetitive and predictable. This relentless normalcy of nature serves divine purpose.

It is normal for water to change into something resembling a rock when it freezes. We also know that, on its own, water never suddenly changes into wine, nor does a body of water open a path of dry land before us when we need to head across it.. A bush does not burst into flame without incinerating. The sun and the moon never stop moving across the sky. A few small fish and 7 loaves of bread will not feed over 4,000 hungry people. When God makes such things happen, because of how familiar we are with what is normal in nature, we have no trouble recognizing that a miracle has happened. Over 70% of the miracles in the Old Testament and over half of all the miracles in the Bible are of this type – an altering the normal ways of nature

Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?” (Numbers 22:28)

Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, “Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?” They replied, “Certainly, O king.” He said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.” (Daniel 3:24-25)

Summary

God created nature. He placed us in nature but unlike anything else He created, God has given us choice. Just as we can choose whether or not to believe in God, trust our lives to Christ, or read the Bible, we have been allowed the choice of whether or not to open ourselves up to the experiences of God’s Creation. Christians can choose to open the pages of nature or almost completely ignore nature: neither choice will be a requirement of salvation. But if you recognize nature as God’s Creation, trust that God has placed us in nature for his purposes, know that everything in nature points you towards God, begin to learn the names of the things in nature around you, you will gain spiritual insight. As it is written in Romans 1:20, the invisible qualities of God—his eternal power and divine nature—will begin to be seen and understood more clearly.