Play in the Bible

Carl Zimmer, an important science writer, recently wrote about the function and origin of play in animals, in Forbes. Since play is rather widely distributed in vertebrates, it must confer some positive benefits. (The article says that reptiles don't play. It doesn't mention fish, but I am not aware of any play behavior in such animals. Many birds and mammals play.) Zimmer supposes that play helps social animals to bond with each other, enables them to sharpen their skills, and to learn about the environment around them. The same is true of humans. A human child, and probably a human adult, who has no time to play, or lives in an environment that doesn't allow it, is seriously handicapped.

So what is play? Zimmer doesn't define it. The Wikipedia article admits that defining play is difficult. The Free Dictionary has many definitions for play, as both a verb and a noun. Let's say that you and I know what it is, and I won't try to define it carefully, either. Play is something like "an amusing diversion, especially for or by children."

I checked the Bible. Most of the occurrences of the word "play" in the ESV, at any rate, do not match the definition above. Several uses are about performing on a musical instrument, and the most common use is some variation of "play the harlot," in Old Testament prophecies about Israel's disloyalty to God.

There are a few times when the Bible uses play, referring to children, and a couple of the references are to animals playing.

In Job 41, God, speaking to Job, refers to children playing, as if it is natural. In Matthew 11:16-17, Jesus refers to children as having playmates. Isaiah's description of the Peaceable Kingdom includes the idea of children playing. Zechariah's vision of the new, restored Jerusalem also mentions children playing. God seems to think that play is natural, and presumably beneficial. Heaven may include play, depending on what aspect of the future Isaiah and Zechariah were describing.

Here is one of the references to animal play:
Psalm 104:25 Here is the sea, great and wide,
which teems with creatures innumerable,
living things both small and great.
26 There go the ships,
and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.

(There is an alternate reading of verse 26, but it doesn't change the meaning of play. I don't know what animal Leviathan is, or was, and I don't think anyone else knows for certain, either.)

Here's the other:

Job 40:20, describing the place where Behemoth can be found, says:
20 For the mountains yield food for him
where all the wild beasts play.

(I don't know what Behemoth is, or was, either, but it seems clear that it is some sort of animal.)

I suspect that Zimmer is correct (He isn't the first to have had this idea, of course) that animal play bestows some advantage on the animals. My guess is that God invented the idea of play, as well as inventing laughter, and joy. I can't prove this. C. S. Lewis, among others, supposes, in The Screwtape Letters, that these things are the inventions of God. I think he was right. I think some play is good for us. (Too much isn't, at least for adults.) God must have meant children and animals to play, and, I think, he also meant for adults to amuse themselves and others.

My wife often says of me, even when I am doing something really serious, like writing this blog, that I am "playing at" the computer. Perhaps you are playing at one too, right now. Thanks for playing here. I guess I am bonding, at least a little. Perhaps I'm learning skills, too. Whether or not I am, it can be fun. Thank you, God!

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Added August 3, 2013: In reading this post, I noted that I didn't refer to the courtship behavior (actual or figurative, or both) described in the Song of Solomon, aka Song of Songs, as a sort of playing. Perhaps it's just as well that I didn't!

Thanks for reading.