Kaajte great question. After reading through this thread it caused me to ponder on some theological implications to perhaps pepper some consideration on animal meat eating timing. Or at least hopefullly spark some thought in that direction. By the way Kaatje, you are quite an impassioned deep thinker upon Him. Love it
Because God's unfolding plan has meaning (like skins to cover Adam and Eve, Abel vs. Cain offering etc), it Is to me also interesting to consider like what is the revelatorily interesting about Him that we could now eat animals after leaving the arc? Like how might that be metaphoric or implicational of something theological about Him, His character, or His plan? The skin in the garden and accepting Abel's sacrifice fit theologically. But eating meat? Like maybe as opposed to drinking milk (meat/meat of the word--like as mankind progresses through time with God's revelation, he/she is able to eat weighter food with more intimately powerful nutrients)?
Or maybe from manna to meat? "Eat my body." And even more controversial (because of its sacredness, "Drink my blood." Just like we see escalation from temple show bread and slaughterhouse sacrifices, we move on to them being metaphor for God Himself in human intimate flesh and blood. We could not eat the blood of animals. But when Christ came, heartily drink His blood. That sounds strange to us. No doubt how it might have seem of such offense to even perhaps the pagan world in the 1st century...and of course the religious Jews.
So maybe something like that where we see graduating pictures of God's unfolding revelation of Himself, so perhaps this is maybe why no meat at first. Then after the arc eat meat. The first Adam / second Adam (Noah as a type). Human nature / resurrected bodies. This kind of pattern of going from this to that. And although eating meat next to plants seems more savage perhaps, what it does to me suggest in His word in Gen 9 is: "I give all to you, as I gave the green plant." So in that sense, even in the garden Adam and Eve did not have this fullest access to God's creation in this way (even though in paradise without sin). But now after Noah, we get "the full range of His creation available to us INTIMATELY so.
So that makes me wonder though, if the lion and lamb or wolf and lamb will lie down next to each other in the 1,000 year reign, will animals no longer eat meat? Living longer because the protective canopy is back? If animals don't eat meat, will people stop eating meat because the very presence of Christ (the fullness of metaphor actualized) is present then?