“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you” (Deut 5:13-14).

There are differences in the wording of the original Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) and the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5. These differences ought not be a cause for concern since Deuteronomy is an exposition/interpretation of the law (see Deut 1:5).

In the original version of the commandment about the Sabbath, there is no reference to a provision of rest for domestic animals (see Exod 20:10), although it is implied (see Exod 23:12). In Deuteronomy 5, Moses makes what was implicit explicit. God’s people are to be kind to their animals. And God isn’t just the giver of commandments about treating animals well (Deut 25:4; see Gen 1:28). As their creator, he himself has compassion for animals too (Gen 2:19-20; 6:19-20; Psa 104:11-30).

Expressing the Image of God

And herein lies my point. When we treat animals with kindness, we are not just being descent people, we are actively expressing the image of God within us. We can, by extension, say the same thing about the environment as well. Because God loves and cares for creation (see Rom 8:22), we should too. The attitude of “it’s all going to burn anyway” is completely out of touch with the heart of God since it fails to reckon with the fact that the plan of redemption includes the animal world as well as the environment too (Isa 11:6-7; 55:12; 65:25).

So if we have no regard for animals or for our environment, we need to repent for being completely out of touch with the heart of God. For God doesn’t just love his covenant people. He even loves Israel’s enemies and their “pets” too! “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” (Jonah 4:11).