A Beast Appears Trivia Quiz

The raven gets a bit of a bad reputation from the Bible, mainly through Leviticus 11:13-15, which describes the bird as being unclean because it is a carrion eater and, therefore, should not be eaten. Even Genesis casts a poor light upon it in Chapter 8:6-7, when it is the bird that Noah first casts out to try and find dry land, but it fails to return. Consequently, a mythology of fear has developed around the creature, and it is of little wonder then that the raven (and its cousin, the crow) have become a staple of the occult and horror stories.

This then makes it an interesting choice and, possibly, a humbling experience that it should be chosen by the Lord as the provider for the prophet Elijah. In 1 Kings 17:1-7 Elijah forecasts that there will be a drought that will last for three years. This is a judgement being delivered for the wickedness of King Ahab and his wife, Jezebel. For providing this prediction Elijah must flee, and the Lord directs him to hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan River. There is a brook there from which he can drink to sustain himself and the ravens deliver meat and bread to him twice a day.

The bum rap, mentioned in the first paragraph, aside, the raven has become a symbol of God's care and his ability to provide for his flock. This is spelled out in Luke 12:24; "Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!" and Job 38:41's "Who provides food for the raven, when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?" is answered by Psalm's 147:9 "He provides food for the cattle and for the young ravens when they call".

Today, we have a tendency to look at the donkey as a mere beast of burden or, for want of a better word, a stupid animal. However, a donkey was a symbol of wealth in the Old Testament and one of the best examples of this is Judges 10:3-5 which tells of the minor Judge, Jair, who had thirty sons who rode upon thirty donkeys. The donkey was the steed of kings and no more powerful a king was there than Jesus Christ, who is described in Matthew 21:5 "Say to Daughter Zion, 'See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey'".

The donkey is also a symbol of peace, care and humbleness and the story of Balaam exemplifies the latter. Numbers 22 tells how Balak, king of Moab, summons Balaam to place a curse on the Israelites so that he may defeat them. Balaam, after one refusal, sets forth to meet Balak on his donkey, but an angel of the Lord blocks his path on three occasions. On the first two encounters the donkey turns away from the angel and, unable to do so on the third visit, he merely sits down where he stands. Balaam, for his part, has beaten the donkey on all three occasions. It is only at the last that the Lord puts words in the donkey's mouth and asks "what have I done to make you beat me these three times?" Balaam's eyes are finally opened and he sees the angel and her drawn sword. He bows low and falls face down declaring that he has sinned, at which point the angel informs him that the donkey had saved his life by turning away for she surely would have struck him down.

David was the shepherd who became king. This was an amazing achievement when, at the time, the profession of shepherd was not held in high regard. It was a task given to the lowly or to children. However, all the tools that David needed to become a leader of men he learned by, first, being a leader of sheep. To this end he gained the aptitudes of caring and protecting his people and dealing through integrity. In many ways this also symbolizes the way the Lord looks upon his flock. This is exemplified in 1 Samuel 13:14; "... the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people".

There are many references to sheep throughout the Bible, but the most symbolic reference comes from Matthew 25:32 where he compares God's people to sheep; "all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." This infers that God is our shepherd and the most famous reference to this arrives through Psalm 23:1; "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want". Essentially, we are safe in his care.

In the Old Testament, as evidenced in Leviticus, the dove was a sacrificial animal; Leviticus 1:14 "'If the offering to the LORD is a burnt offering of birds, you are to offer a dove or a young pigeon", and again in Leviticus 12:6 "When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering". The dove was considered one of the purest of creatures, hence its worthiness as a sacrifice.

The story of Noah in Genesis 8:8-11 delivers a new symbolism upon the dove. In verse eight, Noah sends out a dove to find dry land. The bird returns to him in verse nine to indicate that it cannot do so. After Noah waits seven days in verse ten, he launches the bird on the same mission a second time. On this occasion, verse eleven tells us, that the bird returned with an olive sprig in its beak, signifying that it has found dry land. This also symbolizes a peace agreement between God and his people and the dove and the olive branch have since come to be a picture of peace in most endeavours.

In the New Testament the dove became a representative of the Holy Spirit;
"As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him" (Matthew 3:16) and
"...and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." (Luke 3:22)

Bears have both a good and a bad rap in the Bible. On the one hand they are seen as being protectors who exhibit ferocity when their families are in danger. This is spelled out in 2 Samuel 17:8 "You know your father and his men; they are fighters, and as fierce as a wild bear robbed of her cubs". On the other hand, they are seen as agents of the devil by attacking flocks of sheep. In 1 Samuel 17:34 David is speaking to Saul; "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock". The flock, in this instance, is a metaphor for God's people who are being attacked.

The story of Elisha casts a different light. On this occasion they are agents of God and are sent forth to showcase the Lord's wrath. In 2 Kings 2:23-24, Elisha has traveled to Bethel where he is jeered by the crowd with insults such as "go away baldy" and "go up". The former stings because hair was revered at the time as it was a sign of honor, vitality, and divine favor and, with the the latter "go up", the crowd is referencing Elijah, who was taken up to Heaven. In other words, they're not simply telling him to leave the town, but to leave the Earth. Elisha places a curse on the crowd and two she-bears emerge from the woods and kill forty two people.

The lion is used as a symbol in a number of forms, both positive and negative. From the positive aspect they are representations of majesty, power, boldness and strength. It is symbolic then that Jesus is called the "Lion of Judah" (Revelations 5:5) and this majesty is enhanced in Revelations 19:16 where Jesus is declared the "King of Kings". Isaiah 31:4 describes the lion's fearlessness when the shepherds are called out against him to protect their flock, "it is not frightened by their shouts or disturbed by their clamor".

It is surprising to see that the lion can also have a negative connotation, but this majestic beast can be seen as a vehicle of destruction. This is how Proverbs 28:15 describes a wicked ruler over helpless people, and then, Saint Peter, who compares Satan to roaring lion waiting to devour the unwary (1 Peter 5:8).

The final take here is to show how the Bible uses the strength of a lion to show the power of God, and this is where the story of Daniel is important. Both of these tales will serve to show that no matter how powerful we may rise to be in this world, we are no match for that of the Lord. In Daniel 6:21-22, he is thrown into a den full of lions which, in the normal course would mean a gruesome death, yet Daniel emerges unscathed because the Lord has closed their mouths. The other is in Daniel 7:4 where he dreams of four mythical beasts. One of these is a winged lion, reputedly representative of King Nebuchadnezzar, who has his wings torn off, and then stood on two feet like a human.

The rooster is a familiar animal in the Bible and he serves as a natural alarm clock that signals the end of the night and the beginning of the new day. By extension, as an alarm, it also represents a call to all to be vigilant.

The most famous mention of a rooster in the Bible involves Jesus and his prophecy that Saint Peter would deny him three times before the rooster crows. Matthew (26:34) records "Truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times", however, this forms such an important piece of Christ's Passion that a similar narrative appears in all four gospels (see also Mark 14:30, Luke 22:34 and John 13:38).

Peter does deny Jesus and, immediately after the third denial, the rooster crows. The poignancy of this moment is palpable. Peter has not been vigilant (not heeded the alarm) and has broken his vow of loyalty to Jesus. The rooster crows signaling that the night has fallen away from the prophecy of Jesus and revealed it to be true. It has also awakened (a new dawn) in Peter that he has been weak and that he has a need for repentance.

Early Hebrew culture saw the snake as a symbol of fertility and healing but there is little of that in the Bible. From the outset, in Genesis 3:1, he is painted as a deceptive little trickster who goes a long way into deceiving Eve to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, an action that will eventually lead to Adam and Eve being evicted from the Garden of Eden. Whether or not the serpent here is the devil or merely his representative is not clear, Genesis doesn't indicate one way or the other. It is easy to draw the conclusion of the former because Revelation 20:2 does name Satan as the ancient serpent... "He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years."

The snake is also seen a symbol of the pharaoh's dominion over the people and the lands of Egypt so that when Aaron and Moses (Exodus 7:8-10) casts down their staves and they turn into snakes it is telling the pharaohs that there is a higher sovereignty than theirs. This is further enhanced when the pharaoh calls upon his magicians to cast down their own staves. They duly turn into snakes, but Aaron's serpent swallows them all.

In today's society we accredit dogs as being "man's best friend", known for their loyalty and companionship... but there's not much of that camaraderie evident in the Bible where they're generally labelled as being dirty and dangerous. For example, Proverbs 26:11 recounts "as a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly". 1 Kings 14:11 and 21:19 tell of dogs eating the bodies of those cursed by God. Further, the most famous example of this is Jezebel - "Dogs will devour Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel." (1 Kings 21: 23). Deuteronomy 23:18 goes so far as to call prostitutes dogs.

To look for positives for dogs in the Bible is difficult, but one can be found in the "Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus" (Luke 16: 19-31). Lazarus, covered in sores and suffering desperate hunger, pleads for scraps from the rich man's table but is denied. Dogs come to lick Lazarus' sores. On the surface this may sound disdainful, but it is an attempt at healing by the dogs. To understand this, one must go back to Ancient Greece where Hippocrates wrote about dogs and their ability to understand how to heal. He pointed to a dog keeping an injured leg elevated, knowing which plants to eat to make it vomit when it had eaten something to upset its stomach and, as above, licking its wounds to keep them clean, knowing that it will heal quicker.

Yet there is a form of redemption for the dog, as well, in the Bible and it comes in the story of Jesus and the Gentile woman Syrophoenicia (Matthew 15). The woman pleads with Jesus to cure her daughter of a demonic possession, however, the Messiah avoids acceding to her request by testing her apparent faith. In Matthew 15:26 he tells her "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs", meaning it as a veiled insult but the woman responds with "Yes it is, Lord," she said. "Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." In one fell swoop the woman has changed the status of the dog. It also indicates to Jesus that her faith was true and he agrees to cure her daughter.

Many may associate the golden calf with Moses as he is the one who destroyed it in such dramatic fashion, but it was his brother Aaron, at the behest of the people, who built the false idol. Exodus 32 explains how the Israelites had managed to flee Egypt and now waited while Moses was on Mount Sinai retrieving the Ten Commandments. He was gone a long time, and the people became impatient so they built the idol so that they could worship something.

The question then is "why a calf"? Surely there were more powerful symbols such as the lion that they could have utilized. There is some suggestion that the influence may have been Egyptian. The Israelites had only just escaped from that land, a place that revered many gods and, among them, was Hathor, a goddess of joy, love and fertility, who was often depicted as a cow. Whilst that suggestion is moot, a more probable reason could be that the bull was seen as a symbol of wealth and, as such, was considered to be one of the great sacrificial animals, one worthy of God. "If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, he must bring to the Lord a young bull without defect as a sin offering for the sin he has committed" (Leviticus 4:3).

Alternatively, the bull was also a symbol of strength, so the Israelites may have been drawing upon this. Deuteronomy 33:17 tells us "In majesty he is like a first-born bull; his horns are the horns of a wild ox. With them he will gore the nations, even those at the ends of the earth. Such are the ten thousands of Ephraim; such are the thousands of Manasseh."

(Footnote) This is not the only time that a golden calf appears in the Bible. 1 Kings 12:25-30 describes Jeroboam building two golden calves for the people of Israel to worship. One he placed at Bethal and the other at Dan.