Although Ellen F. Davis’ short book clocks in at just under 200 pages of actual content, it packs quite a punch. Reading it led me to pour through texts all across the Old Testament to see if these themes she drew out from them, which I had never heard before, are truly there. For the most part, it seems to me that they are.

Davis’s goal in this book is to bring out what she believes to be an agrarian vision that is scattered throughout the Hebrew scriptures. In fact, I she argues that these calls to care for and love the land are saturated in almost every aspect of the scriptures, from the narratives to the laws to the poetry.

She starts in Genesis 1 where I think she makes a strong case for the high view of nature in the creation account. Right in the center of this beautiful and greatly misunderstood liturgical poem, we have a description of “plants seeding seeds”. This image of a system of plants being able to grow and produce more of itself directly contrasts with the common belief of Israel’s neighbor’s that the soil was productive because of direct insemination from the gods. In Genesis, we have a beautiful built-in feature which leads to the fruitfulness we see on earth. It also fought against the locally prevalent idea that humans produced food in order to feed the gods. In the Genesis account, it was God who provided the food and system which continually feeds every living thing. Soon, humans are created in God’s own image and are immediately then called to “subdue” and “have dominion” over all God had just created. Whatever those words mean, they must be seen in light of bearing the divine image of God. So every time we see a plant growing, we can turn to thank YHWH. But we can also have a part in this system he has created (via agriculture), and when we damage the soil to prevent it from being able to bear fruit, we are revolting against his design and revoking our own divine calling. She calls back to this poem again and again throughout the book.

She moves on through Genesis and stops at the Tower of Babel where she will develop another theme which will continue throughout her book. To her, the Tower of Babel is not a story against other gods. The tower is not a ziggurat, but a citadel. The Israelites began as a nomadic people in an area which was very difficult to cultivate a healthy supply of crops, so the health of the soil and what sprang from it was often a matter of life and death. Even as Israel continued to grow and settle down, they were still primarily an agricultural society, each living on their ancestral plot of land. The big cities were seen as centers of pride and destruction in contrast to the simple life in the fields where a farmer knows fully well that once they do their jobs, it’s up to God to provide the bounty. Cities are often too far removed from the agricultural sector to fully recognize the faith in God it takes to provide the food we all eat. Instead, people are used to necessities appearing on demand without any respect to its journey. Pride and self reliance are common delusions that result from this separation. The image in the scriptures eventually shifts the archetypal city from Babel to Babylon. Davis does not end the book with the conclusion that cities are evil and should be abandoned however. She herself lives in a city. If Babylon is the archetypal bad city, then Zion, or Jerusalem, is the archetypal good city. Cities are important and even crucial in order for most to learn how to better help and maintain the beauty of the wilderness as well as to help keep our potentially harmful activities within more contained areas instead of continually destroying the nature around us.

She also dips a bit into the law (Leviticus in particular) and makes the claim that the priestly author did not separate humans from nature nearly as much as we do. Thus, including a law forbidding the trimming of one’s beard and a law forbidding the trimming the edges of a field within the same breath was perfectly natural for them. This is incomprehensible to us who cannot see any relation between the two situations. To us, the latter law is a moral issue while the former is simply cultural. However, the Levitical writer was blending the lines between farmer and farm. This was the weakest section in my opinion, but not the least helpful nor least interesting. I just think there were times when she stretched a bit further than she had evidence for.

She also wrote of the prophets, calling Amos and Hosea the first two agrarian writers. I had recently read Hosea and not noticed any agrarian themes. Rereading it now, it seems so obvious. I don’t believe it is a case of my being overly influenced by Davis’ words, but that I had simply been conditioned to brush over these strong references to the land until reading her book. I’m excited to read more of the prophets to see how deep this agrarian stream runs.

As I already briefly stated, there were a few points I felt she was on fairly shaky ground. Reading through parts of Leviticus may work for her reading, but other parts just don’t seem to fit that mold. I also felt that she was speaking more anachronistically than she presented herself. Obviously she is well aware that many of our terms and categories simply did not exist during the time the Old Testament was written and I do not think she is trying to imply otherwise. However, at times I felt like the agrarian themes were second or even third string messages rather than the central idea which this book often seemed to argue. Perhaps this comes from nothing more than trying to push especially hard at a mostly unacknowledged (and sometimes outright rejected) aspect of the scriptures. I think when we put this agrarian reading back in with all the other important themes and elements which have been weaved throughout these holy scriptures, it will find its rightful place.

I really loved this book. It is like a light has come on and illuminated a stream of the scriptures that I never knew was there. It was there all along of course, but was lying in silence, waiting for me to notice it. Of course this has little to do with salvation which may make some uncomfortable. But this view is not over and against salvation; She is not suggesting that the Old Testament is nothing more than a call to treat nature nicely, but that it is our vocational call as image bearers to care for our Father’s creation.