That's Okay: I' Make Lamb.

There's a question I've been asked a number of times in the past, so I thought it might be fun to address it here. The question usually goes something like this:

“After the Flood, God told Noah that it was now okay to eat meat. Does that mean animals didn't eat meat prior to the Flood?”

Well, first off, the Scriptures are clear that at creation, everyone and everything was a vegetarian: both humanity (Gen 1:29; cf. 9:3) and the original representatives of the animal “kinds” (1:30)—or archaebaramins, if you will, just to schmancy this place up a bit.

Now, because death is God's payment for breaking His Law (Rom 6:23, 7:7; 1Cor 15:56; 1 Jhn 3:4), we know that there could be no death prior to Adam breaking covenant with God. In other words, if there's no sin of man, then there's no payment for the sin of man. But because Adam did break covenant with God, the negative sanctions of the covenant—called “curses”—were applied. The curses included two types of death—two types of separation: one immediate and the other eventual: the separation of man from God (Gen 3:23-24) and the separation of the soul from the body (Gen 3:19; 5:5).

There were many things besides mankind that were cursed as well. We know from the Genesis account that the ground was cursed, bringing up thorns and thistles (Gen 3:18) and eventually receiving back Adam's body (v. 19), but as Paul explains for us in Romans 8, “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (v. 22), “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (v. 23; cf. v. 19). So Adam's sin affected not only his own person and the rest of humanity for whom he federally represented (Rom 5:12; 1 Cor 15:21,22), his sin also affected everything over which he was given dominion (Rom 8:20-21)—or as Paul put it, “the whole creation.” Related to this, Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15 that men and sentient animals are born into the world as diverse varieties of resurrection seed (vv. 35-44). They live, they die, they're planted, and on the last day, they'll be raised as a great crop at the Harvest (Jhn 5:28-29; 6:39, 40, 44; 11:24; Act 24:15). “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22).

What we're left with, then, is not only the impossibility of human death before Adam's sin, but also the impossibility of animal death before sin. Therefore, we can say with confidence that animals were not consuming meat at any time prior to the Fall.

So, with that established, if we take a gander at Genesis 9:1-6—the passage alluded to in the initial question—we'll discover a few interested things. We find that, although life-for-life is required of any creature, man or beast, who unlawfully slays an image-bearer (vv. 5-6), when God explicitly addressed the eating of meat after the Flood (vv. 3-4), the proclamation was directed at the people (v. 1) and not the animals. This is why the fear of man was imputed to both the animals that disembarked the Ark and those that remained in the seas (v. 2)—for man was now given a new role: that of the Grill Master. And so it was, dear children, that Texas barbecue was born; mighty meat, meat of renown.

Beyond the Genesis 9 dialog, there are some intriguing bits three chapters back: “And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them” (Gen 6:7). I find it interesting that when God said, “it repenteth me that I have made them,” He seemingly includes, “both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air.”

Further along in the same passage we find that, “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (vv. 11-13).
We actually have external confirmation of this violent world in the form of the fossil record. There we find numerous examples of ambiguous carnivory (like crushed bones in coprolite and even ridiculous Russian doll situations of creatures inside of creatures inside of other creatures), predation (as evidenced by healed bite injuries on prey animals), and even cannibalism. Since these fossils are the mineralized remains of dead animals, we know that they must have died and been buried after the Fall; and with consideration for the conditions necessary for fossilization to occur, it's likely that most of them were buried during the global Flood.
 Besides, we also have fossilized thorns and thistles in the fossil record, which, as we've already seen, are Fall-resultant phenomena. (Or do we really think that the Man who became sin for us—the Man who would begin rolling back the curse by conquering death—went to the cross crowned with a trademark of the curse as a matter of pure coincidence? I think not. . .)

So, when all of this is taken together—the objective biblical record of inordinate and universal pre-Flood violence, and the complementary confirmation of violent acts via fossil evidence—I believe this plumps the argument that a number of animals had adopted a carnivorous or omnivorous lifestyle after the Fall but prior to the Flood. This is, incidentally, why the name Carnotaurus ought not be changed to Vegetaurus (what's so special about a "plant-eating bull," anyway?), and why we ought not assume that the great-great-great-grandpappy of Smilidon had a sunny disposition, as the latter's prefix might falsely imply. After all, people, it was still a cat.

And who knows? Perhaps even mankind dabbled unlawfully in the eating of meat prior to the Flood. Should this really surprise us?

A lot more could be said here, but perhaps that's sufficient for now.