Balaam’s Jenny (Numbers 22)

An entertaining entry into the triangular relationship between God, humans, and nonhuman animals in the Hebrew Bible that can soften human audiences to the insight and guidance offered by animals comes in the parade example of animals instructing humans from the Bible: the story of Balaam and his donkey, or more correctly, his jenny, in Numbers 22. Balaam features in the Hebrew Bible as a non-Israelite prophet hired by one of Israel’s enemies, Balak, king of the Moabites, to curse Israel on Balak’s behalf. According to the received forms of this story, Balaam sets out to meet with Balak, with less than God’s full-throated endorsement, and divine ambivalence crescendos. A divine messenger stands in Balaam’s and his beast of burden’s way as they ride to meet Balak. While the prophet (seer) ironically cannot see the divine messenger, his jenny can. She therefore veers off course or refuses to press forward to what would have been Balaam’s death (as stated in no uncertain terms in Numbers 22:33). She thereby protects the blind prophet. Such maneuvering takes place three times. Balaam, totally unaware of the threat to his life, becomes so incensed with his jenny that he beats her. The story reaches its climax when the Lord gives the jenny human speech. In the ensuing discussion, Balaam comes to recognize his jenny’s perpetual loyalty to him. Her faithfulness should have led him to trust her wisdom in this situation as well.

In the narrative’s concluding scene, the Lord opens Balaam’s eyes so that he too can see the divine messenger’s presence. The messenger explains the situation and Balaam’s failings to him. Balaam responds with a final declaration of his sin and a commitment of obedience to God. One might summarize the outcome of the story with the ironic question, “Who is the real dumb animal?” The audience is invited to consider how nonhuman animals’ eyes may be open to divine and other realities in ways humans’ eyes are not. This line of exploration might result in humans humbling themselves to learn from their fellow Earth dwellers. In the following discussion, I take up this invitation with regard to birds, and especially the family of the corvids, which includes crows and ravens, in order to demonstrate that close observation of the nonhuman world enriches interpretation of biblical texts, and various biblical texts embrace such scientific study.

Outline

After an orientation to the topic (why birds?), I turn to a review of earlier studies addressing the consumption and dietary prohibitions of birds. Then, I consider an angle often overlooked, which is “Flyers as Fantastic Creatures.” From there, I begin investigating what can arise from applying recent turns in animal studies to the texts of the Hebrew Bible, namely, “Birds as Creatures beyond Human Valuation.” Finally, I turn to the main event of my article, “Ravens—Divine Service to Ostracization.” A conclusion draws together the main points of the discussion.

Why Birds?

I begin with a rather basic question: Why, or perhaps how, do birds matter in the biblical texts? There are several ways to answer this. Most fundamentally, they matter because they existed in the lived reality of the ancient Israelite and early Judean communities responsible for the composition of the texts that have become the Hebrew Bible, Jewish Tanakh, and Christian Old Testament. Birds therefore comprised an object ripe for reflection within the communities of their composers. Anna Angelini (2024, 235; cf. 2022, 493) writes with regard to animals in general, following anthropologists Claude Lévi-Strauss, Stanley Tambiah, and Dan Sperber: “[A]nimals are notoriously ‘good to think’: this means that they can activate a high number of cultural representations while at the same time remaining cognitively simple and intuitive tools.” In other words, at least for the ancients, animals could take on a number of meanings or types of significance: they constitute malleable symbols. Such instrumentalization of animals may be problematic if animals are reduced to these purposes, which leads to considerable abuse and misuse of animals, given the laudable intent to have animals matter as subjects and not merely as objects of human thought and action. This critique does have some justification, but animals have other functions as well.

More specificity can be articulated with regard to the birds, a designation I use interchangeably in this article with the slightly more appropriate term “flyers” as a catch-all, given that the biblical category includes bats and can include locusts. For one, these creatures occupy, at least some of the time, the literal space the ancients imagined to have existed between themselves and their God or gods: the air or, often in ancient languages, the heavens or the ether. From this perspective, flyers exist between the divine sphere and the sphere of created things. As such, ancient cultures viewed them as offering heightened potential because they could serve as intermediaries between those physical spheres (Altmann 2019, 67–68). As an overarching roadmap, humans encounter the flyers in the Hebrew Bible in a great variety of ways, including as:

• potential food

• valued created beings

• messengers from God

• examples of the laudable desire for proximity to the divine presence

• intuitive readers of the times

• praiseworthy creatures that trust in divine provision.

With this diversity of topics in mind, I intend to show that depictions of animals in the biblical texts not only include but go beyond the nature–culture dichotomy at the heart of the modern Western scientific divide between humans and other animals. Specifically, reassessing the value placed on nonhuman animal wisdom can enhance an important source of learning in the studies of religion and science.

Consumption and Dietary Prohibitions

According to the biblical narrative, after the flood, humans received permission to eat every kind of animal (Genesis 9:3). To a certain degree, God thereby proclaims all animals “good” for food. This narrative development also includes a change in animals’ attitudes toward humans: they become fearful. The text does not explicitly tell us what the basic tenor of animals’ view of humans had previously been, though Noah was able to bring them onto the ark, which indicates some level of cooperation. Such mythic collaboration and an accompanying vegetarianism or veganism, which also appears in Isaiah 11:6–9, negate both the everyday world of ancient Israel and our own. Regular Israelite, as well as Mesopotamian and Egyptian, realities included considerable hunting and some raising of captive flocks for consumption by the human populations and their deities.

In this broader context, several verses in the biblical books of Leviticus (11:13–19) and Deuteronomy (14:11–20) repeat almost identical lists of flyers that the community of Israel should avoid. The Hebrew terms for these prohibited creatures pose daunting philological problems for those attempting to ascertain their specific identities. Even if scholars have succeeded in large part in seeing the excluded animals as consisting of various types of eagles, vultures, owls, bats, and some aquatic birds, among others, interpreters continue to wrestle to pinpoint the reason or reasons for distinguishing between animals acceptable and prohibited for Israelite consumption. A simple or straightforward answer has yet to arise. Read in their immediate literary contexts, this repeated list of prohibitions does not concern categories of “edible” or physically “healthy” foods. Few people endeavored to consume falcon or hawk in antiquity—though exceptions do appear in the textual record (Altmann 2019, 103–5). Ostriches might be one of the creatures on the banned list, and they were definitely consumed. There is some evidence of consumption of other animals on the list as well, though the case is weaker for the flyers than for some banned aquatic animals (such as catfish, rays, and sharks; Adler and Lernau 2021). Another theory popular in scholarship is that birds were prohibited on the basis of their diets: carrion-eating and carnivorous birds are excluded (Milgrom 1990; Otto 2016, 1306–7). While this hypothesis holds true to an extent, it does not explain the exclusion of the ostrich or the acceptability of ducks. In addition to vegetation, ducks eat insects, amphibians, and other aquatic animals, which the communities behind the biblical texts may not have understood as having blood, per se. However, their diet does not diverge significantly from cormorants, which are excluded. Basically every criterion put forward flounders once one gets into the details. Therefore, my contention is that there is no singular answer that explains the prohibition of every type of bird mentioned (Altmann 2019, 154–60). Rather, on the most basic level of the text, abstention from the various excluded animals intends to mark those following the prohibitions as separate to Israel’s God, or, in the terms of the text, as holy. However, the textual dietary prohibitions of this repeated list carried a reduced importance for concrete community commensal practices into the Hellenistic period of the third–first centuries BCE among Judean communities, especially for the aquatic creatures but also likely for birds. Given the mostly unnecessary prohibition on, for example, eagles, yet disregard for the prohibition on scaleless sharks, it remains difficult to conclude exactly how these texts provided instruction for interested audiences.

The example of consumption and dietary prohibitions marks an especially instrumentalizing approach to animals. The communities behind the texts of the Hebrew Bible imagined birds largely as fit (or not) for human consumption and in some cases for divine offerings. In this latter capacity, they serve both as metaphorical divine food and as cleansing agents. Furthermore, the prohibited types serve as instruments for human theorizing: birds signify and symbolize values and concerns beyond themselves, a concern documented already in the second-century BCE Letter of Aristeas 145–69, which relates animal behaviors to human virtues.

As the subsequent sections show, the value of birds was fraught with a considerable variety of concerns, such that eating them was never just for the belly but played a part, as did all interactions with them, in a person’s and a society’s theological and ethical formation. As stated in Deuteronomy 14:2 and 21 (NRSV): “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God.” In other words, in the communities that viewed these texts as Scriptural, that is, as authoritative or inspirational, adherence to the mandate of the text expressed their loyalty to their deity.

Fantastic Creatures

A first step toward complexity and a more complete view of birds can come by turning attention to a set of fantastic creatures that occupy space between God and humans in both the broader ancient Near East and in the biblical texts themselves. Ancient Near Eastern scholar Annie Caubet (2002, 211) makes the pertinent observation about the iconography of animals that clear distinctions between “real” and “invented” animals do not occur. This insight underscores that the ancients did not necessarily divide the reality they experienced into the same categories modern Westerners do. This insight means that understanding ancient texts requires a different perspective on what is “real” with regard to the nonhuman animal world. I already noted as much in my earlier discussion of Balaam. Comparative evidence of such a lack of distinctions comes from some Indigenous cultures today. They can assume that nonhuman animals have similar minds and cultures to humans. Philippe Descola (2013, 30, 129–30) outlines this different way of approaching reality, which may ascribe interiority and a theory of mind to nonhumans. Beyond Descola’s ethnographic and anthropological reflections, however, wildlife scientist John Marzluff attributes features of such interiority to corvids as well, including mental time travel and a theory of mind (Marzluff and Angell 2012). This convergence opens the door to a different view of the category of nonhuman animals, including those “fantastic creatures” in the graphic and textual representations of the world of ancient Israel.

Investigation of these creatures provides modern Westerners valuable insight. Those called cherubim and seraphim in Hebrew are closely related to the lamassu in Mesopotamia and Uraeus serpent in Egypt. Cultures throughout the ancient Fertile Crescent imagined and formed figures that guarded the holy realms occupied by their deities. Isaiah 6, which relates Isaiah’s temple vision in which he receives his prophetic call, presents one such depiction:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6:1–8 NRSV)

These awesome creatures can cause the monumental Jerusalem temple to shake through the thundering of their voices. They act as attendants or servants in God’s throne room, appearing in a location known for the Uraeus serpents as protective genies in ancient Egypt. In this setting, one of them also plays the role of a purifying intermediary, preparing Isaiah to hear the divine voice and receive his mission.

Cultures throughout the ancient Near East envisioned and carved such creatures to guard the thresholds between mundane and sacred spheres. Prominent examples of such lamassus from the Neo-Assyrian palaces of the ninth–seventh centuries BCE are on display in the British Museum (e.g., BM 118802, a colossal statue of a winged lion from the Nimrud North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, 865–860 BCE). As is well known, a cherub takes up a similar task in Genesis 3:24 on the boundary of the Garden of Eden, in this case making sure humans no longer enter.

A similar and intriguing perspective emerges from Mesopotamian iconography that depicts the wisdom of the ancients coming through apkallus, mythical creatures with human heads and bird- or fish-like bodies (or garments), or the reverse. One can understand these creatures as accessing divine wisdom in part because of their mixture of human and nonhuman animal features. The ancients conceived of mixed creatures that, as a result of their combination, were able to tap into a variety of wisdoms—both human and nonhuman. Pertinent to my topic, many of them possessed bird-like features such as wings.

While these creatures find little space in modern scientific investigations of the world, I discuss them in order to note that their bird-like attributes contributed to the ancient conception of their roles as divine intermediaries, a tradition found among Vikings about corvids, who had special access to the god Odin. This understanding also builds on the notion mentioned earlier that flyers inhabit the space between humans on Earth and deities in the heavens.

Creatures beyond Human Valuation

One additional broad category is important for the discussion of birds: God’s general concern for the created world. As the basis for much theological animal ethics, I will only provide several general statements. The first and most well-known text concerns God’s view of creation as “good”: “And God saw that [it was] good” (Genesis 1:21, 25 for nonhuman animals). This declaration and the discussion of nonhuman animals in the following texts take on import by according value to these creatures without mentioning any usefulness for humanity.

Psalm 104 is widely understood to represent a case of borrowing from the Egyptian hymn to Aten, the Egyptian sun god (Hays 2014, 357–66). This psalm paints a picture of everyday divine care for vegetation, nonhumans, and human creatures. God provides for wild land animals, birds, and domesticated cattle. This care consists of food (verses 14, 15, 21, 27), drink (verses 11, 15, 16), appropriate shelter (verses 12, 17, 18), regular rhythms of times and seasons (verses 19–23), and other important products (oil as lotion in verse 15). The psalm recognizes birds specifically in relation to their places of shelter among the trees.

There is one more psalm, Psalm 84, that conceives of birds as exceptionally close to God’s presence and as exemplary worshippers. This psalm picks up on the solar imagery for God that also underlies Psalm 104. This point is important because it draws upon the fundamental provision that God offers the entire world. However, in Psalm 84, the focus is on God’s intense presence in the Jerusalem temple. After proclaiming the special nature of God’s dwelling and the psalmist’s desire to be there, verses 4–5 [ET: verses 3–4] describe the birds, especially the sparrow and swallow that even take up residence in the Lord’s own earthly home.

Even the sparrow finds a home,

  and the swallow a nest for herself,

  where she may lay her young,

             at your altars, O Lord of hosts,

                                             my King and my God.

Happy are those who live in your house,

                                    ever singing your praise.

Here, the birds embody the proximity to the deity the psalmist desires. Furthermore, the birds also repetitively sing praises to the Lord (יהללוך). In this capacity, the birds are the preeminent worshippers. They demonstrate the appropriate hope for the pilgrims coming to the temple in the verses that follow (verses 6–13 [ET: 5–12]; see Tate 1990, 358). The birds live in the way humans can and should aspire to.

There is also an element of empirical observation at work here: one can call to mind the nests of various birds in the exterior or sometimes even the interior nooks and crannies of large places of worship to imagine how small birds found similar refuge in the Jerusalem temple building.

Again, with the seraphim of Isaiah 6 and ancient Near Eastern lamassu in mind, yet another interpretive pathway opens up. Perhaps there is an ironic play on those semi-divine protectors in Psalm 84? Rather than requiring protection by powerful gatekeepers such as these mythical creatures, God is sufficiently secure to welcome relatively weak birds like the swallow into the holiest of places.

While Palsms 104 and 84 do not single out ravens, these birds do feature in Psalm 147 and Job 38. In Job 38:41, after a long litany of rhetorical questions demonstrating God’s superiority in relation to cosmological and weather phenomena, verses 39–41 highlight God’s provision for nonhuman animals, specifically lions and corvids, especially their young.

Can you hunt the prey for the lion,

or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,

when they crouch in their dens,

or lie in wait in their covert?

Who provides for the raven its prey,

when its young ones cry to God,

and wander about for lack of food? (Job 38:39–41 NRSV)

Why name these two types of animals? They represent traits admired by the text’s composers: strength and ferocity in the case of the lion, and cleverness and ingenuity in the case of the corvids. Yet, these texts focus on their young in order to highlight situations in which even such animals require protection and provision. Also striking in Job 38, like Psalm 104, is the relative or complete omission of humans. Humans receive divine care at the same level as other creatures in Psalm 104, where they only appear in verses 15 and 23, and humans do not appear at all as part of the contents of Job 38.

Psalm 147:9 (NSRV) picks up on the same image of the young corvids crying for food:

1 Praise the Lord!

How good it is to sing praises to our God;

  for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.

2 The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel.

3 He heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds. …

6 The Lord lifts up the downtrodden; he casts the wicked to the ground.

7 Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre. …

9 He gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry.

10 His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner;

11 but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.

God’s provision of food for the animals in verse 9 serves a different rhetorical purpose. In this context, such action functions as a guidepost for human ethics. It is grounded in God’s care for justice, especially for those in dire need in verses 2–3 and 6, who in this psalm are Jerusalem and its outcast children. These objects of care are marked in bold. In verse 9, the psalmist turns to the nonhuman world to make an argument about God’s care for those in need. Just as God demonstrates divine concern for the nonhuman world, God will also restore the oppressed and upend the wicked among humans. Therefore, humans should respond with awe and respect for God (marked with italics). Rather than relying on one’s own strength, speed, or other abilities or accomplishments (which are struck through in the text), one should praise and call out to God, as the young ravens do (also marked with italics). The action of these birds is expressed with the Hebrew term קרא (q-r-’). Its basic meaning is “to call or cry out.” In relation to God, it can mean call for help, which is the primary meaning here. However, it often appears in conjunction with giving praise or worship (as seen in 1 Chronicles 21:26 or Psalms 66:17). Thus, the action taken by the young corvids in connection with the actions taken by the other creatures that rely on the deity offer the human audience an excellent example of reliance upon the deity interconnected with worship. The dual implications of call (קרא) indicate the embrace of careful attention to and emulation of nonhuman animals.

In a thematically related scenario, nonhuman animals may provide humans with objects upon which to reflect and analyze human dilemmas, especially with regard to ethical or moral issues. One can see this type of thought operating in the writing of the prophet Jeremiah in 8:7, where he declares, “Even the stork in the heavens knows its seasons [assumedly for migration], and the partridge and swallow, and crane obey the time for coming, but my people do not know the justice of the Lord” (my translation). In this text, Jeremiah accuses his Judahite audience of religious and other failures akin to rejection of their basic, perhaps even instinctual, behavior on analogy with the basic, instinctual wisdom displayed by the various types of birds that discern when to migrate. Study of bird habits would lead to faithful religious practice.

This section began with the broad theological statement of Genesis 1. It then narrowed its scope to God’s care for birds, including young, vulnerable corvids, which surprisingly appear twice as the objects of divine compassion. Given the value accorded to such animals outside human-dominated spheres, these scriptures indicate that humans should study and follow the lead of these animals’ wise responses to and reliance on the deity. Humans should similarly trust in divine provision and perform justice.

Ravens—Divine Service to Ostracization

After considering the role animals and especially birds can play in the unfolding of the biblical story, my discussion now traces in more depth the depictions of these dark or black birds as they are described in Song of Songs 5:11: “[H]is locks are wavy, black as a raven.” They are generally rendered as ravens or crows in English Bibles, though no distinction between them is provided. Given the description in Leviticus 11:15/Deuteronomy 14:14 “[E]very black bird [ערב] according to its kind [למינו]” (my translation), it is appropriate to render the term as a family distinction for Corvidae or corvids. On the basis of their distribution, the species best known in the ancient Levant was likely the brown-necked raven (Corvus ruficollis). Its head and neck have a brownish hue, giving rise to its English name. However, the fan-tailed raven (Corvus rhipidurus), among others, also inhabits the region and should be included in the designation.

Corvids after the Flood

Beyond the previously noted initial mentions in Job and Psalms, an investigation of corvids’ place in biblical conceptions includes connections with rain or lack thereof and comprises a move from a prized to an impure creature. The most well-known and long-traveled story is of Noah and the raven in Genesis 8:7. The narrative unfolds in Genesis 8:6–12 (NRSV):

At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent out the dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark; and the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him any more.

An early rabbinic interpretation (Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 108b) often accepted today views the raven negatively because it did not return to the ark. However, turning back to an earlier Mesopotamian version of the story provides a different perspective. While there are various versions of the Mesopotamian flood tradition, the extant lines only appear in the story of Gilgamesh. When the boat of the Mesopotamian Noah, here called Utnapishtim, comes to rest on a mountain, he releases a dove that returns, as does a swallow, because they did not find a place to land. After releasing these two birds, he then sends a raven:

I brought out a raven, I let it loose:

off went the raven, it saw the waters receding,

finding food, bowing and bobbing, it did not come back to me. (XI.154–56; George 1999, 94)

Several observations indicate that the narrative honors the corvid. First, the raven successfully finds food and does not return to the boat while the other birds fail. The raven thereby demonstrates its resourcefulness, and thus its superiority, in this regard. Second, unlike in the biblical narrative, in Gilgamesh the raven is sent out last rather than first, which has a crescendo effect.

Moving back to the version in Genesis 8, interpreting the change by the biblical authors is more tenuous. However, the biblical version may suggest again just how competent the composers viewed the raven to be (as also noted by Parmelee (1959, 55)). This accentuates the corvids’ ability to exist in environments where the dove and the human could not.

For the purposes of the discussion here, the importance of the birds, and especially the ravens in these stories, lies in their ability to serve as bearers of practical wisdom for the humans. Noah and Utnapishtim rely on the ravens to demonstrate for the humans that life on dry earth has again become sustainable. Corvids thus blaze the trail for other land creatures and humans.

Further significance of the relationship emerges when reading the flood story in light of the divine–human mediatory function of winged creatures. On this level, the raven not only indicates that the waters have receded but also that the divine wrath has been quelled.

One might consider the relationship between human and bird instrumentalized here, but it contains considerable reciprocity, and perhaps even mutual trust and respect. Noah cares for the raven by bringing it and the other animals aboard. The raven returns the favor by demonstrating the viability of life on the newly dried land.

Judgment Associations

Contrary to this ancient Near Eastern tradition, two biblical texts put the corvids in a negative light: Isaiah 34:11 and Proverbs 30:1.¹ The first passage place corvids in the midst of desert ruins as part of a prophetic judgment oracle against Edom. They appear alongside other creatures that frequent such places.

Owl [pelican] and hedgehog [owl] will possess it,

and owl [hawk] and corvid will dwell in it,

and he will stretch out the line of confusion

and the stones of chaos over it. (Isaiah 34:11; my translation)

My translation highlights the uncertainties regarding the identifications of several animals. Yet regardless of which creatures appear, the text undoubtedly imagines devastated enemy territory. Edom becomes the haunt of fantastic creatures like goat-demons and Lillith in verse 14. The creatures residing in these places may not necessarily be evil, but they take on negative hues through their association with ruins. They thrive where humans no longer do. Human bane is their boon.

A further dismal association for corvids comes to light in Proverbs 30:17 (my translation):

The eye that mocks a father

            and scorns to obey a mother

      ravens of the valley will peck it out

            and children of vultures [eagles] will eat it.

Here, corvids stand parallel to vultures or eagles, and these birds perform a gruesome task of judgment against a contemptuous child. In short, the eye that looks with scorn, the birds will peck out. The image functions as a powerful warning against such behavior, yet this does not mean the birds only receive a negative evaluation. They enforce the desirable order of the world in which children should respect and honor their parents. Thus, the birds may know something about the divine order that unruly children ignore to their peril. Like the case of Noah, there is a kind of wisdom humans can acquire by observing the actions of the animals. Nonetheless, this task of destruction does carry with it a gloom associated with some flyers in the Pentateuch’s dietary prohibitions.

1 Kings 17

With this backdrop in mind, I now turn to an underappreciated narrative in the book of 1 Kings that belongs to the story of the Prophet Elijah found in chapters 17–19. This prophet is famous for his confrontation with Israel’s King Ahab and Queen Jezebel that leads to a three-year drought. At the end of these years, Elijah goes on to challenge the prophets of Baal, a widespread Levantine storm deity, to a contest to see whether Baal or Yhwh could bring rain to end the suffocating drought. My text comes from the beginning of this narrative cycle.

Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” The word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Go from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. You shall drink from the wadi, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” So he went and did according to the word of the Lord; he went and lived by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the wadi. (1 Kings 17:1–6 NRSV)

At the beginning of this narrative cycle, immediately after Elijah declares to King Ahab that drought will come for several years, the prophet follows God’s command to flee beyond Ahab’s reach to the regions of the Jordan River. God states that he will provide sustenance for Elijah there. The fact that Elijah is to drink water from the Wadi Cherith, not from the Jordan River, may point to divine intervention that maintains the flow of water in the seasonal stream, at least for a while, despite the drought conditions (Cogan 2001, 426). However, even more striking is that God commands ravens to feed him. There is a certain parallelism to God’s provision for the Israelites in the desert in Exodus 16 (Wray Beal 2014, 232), but in Exodus the meat is birds rather than being brought by birds (and, of course, the birds are quail rather than corvids).

Thus, there are significant differences that call for investigation: Why does God specifically command corvids to feed Elijah while he is in hiding? Furthermore, in verse 6, the text states that Elijah’s meals consist of bread and meat. These were not rations eaten in antiquity by those on the brink of starvation, for meat was not regularly consumed by non-elites. In other words, God practically provides Elijah with the menu of a feast (though wine does not appear). What is the significance of having ravens bring these dishes?

It is not by chance that corvids are the bird of choice in this narrative for several reasons. First, Elijah hides in a fairly remote area. As discussed earlier in relation to Isaiah 34, ravens were viewed by ancient Israelites as one of the types of birds inhabiting such desolate locations (also noted by Sweeney 2007, 212). Therefore, the use of ravens demonstrates that God’s care extends to such places. Second, recent scientific studies have confirmed age-old observations of corvids’ intelligence. A number of experiments indicate their ability for some abstract thought (Emery and Clayton 2004) and social learning (Marzluff and Angell 2012). Their brain sizes as a percentage of their mass equals those of mammals, providing a neurological explanation for their abilities.

A gap in the narrative concerns the origins of the bread and meat acquired by the corvids. These birds have long had a reputation as clever hunters and scavengers. For example, they were known and disdained for stealing offering meat from altars in ancient Greece, as I discuss later. In modern times, they have been observed herding a flock of doves into traffic and then feasting on the resulting roadkill (Marzluff and Angell 2012, 74). More importantly, the birds are known to cache some of their food for later. Many more stories could be added, but the point is that corvids innovate based on the circumstances and plan for lean times. The corvids served as an appropriate creature for taking care of the prophet. One can surmise that the corvids either hunted fresh meat or simply brought out some from the many caches they had lain aside for such meager times.

A further set of questions might also arise from the narrative when read in light of modern scientific study. What kind of relationship develops between the birds and the prophet? Corvids as human pets are a widely documented phenomenon, even though it has become illegal in some countries: Charles Dickens’s pet raven named Grip inspired an important character in his Barnaby Rudge. They recognize human faces and respond accordingly to those they have labeled as friend or foe (Marzluff et al. 2012).

Given their recognition capabilities, the narrative intimates that they come to view Elijah as a friendly face. As a result, this short narrative provides an example of nonhuman and human collaboration. With regard to the bread, while in Hebrew it is also the general term for “food,” if it does indicate a manufactured product, then it suggests the birds stole it from a human source. If so, then this stealing took place at a moment of widespread hunger, which raises the ethical stakes. However, sociological studies of famine support speculation that while some people were going hungry, others, probably elites, still had plenty (Altmann 2014). Therefore, one can place the corvids in the category depicted in Proverbs 6:30: “A thief is not despised if he steals to fill his appetite when hungry.”

Given the drought conditions, these birds also serve as a nonhuman example for the desired behavior in the immediately following story of the widow of Zarephath, whom Elijah begs for water and bread. She must risk trusting the prophet’s promise that sharing with him will ensure her survival and that of her son, both of whom are on the brink of starvation (1 Kings 17:10–14 NRSV):

So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.”

While the faith demonstrated in Yhwh, Elijah’s God, by this foreign woman from Baal’s home territory has often and rightfully received notice; her exemplary action is in fact previewed in the corvids’ sharing of their provisions. The birds pave the way of faith in Israel’s God that humans are to follow, underlining the value of studying avian behavior.

Corvids in Greek Tradition

Discussion of the corvids in the biblical texts requires one more level of ambivalence. Returning full circle to dietary prohibitions with a text-critical eye on the raven adds another wrinkle. Study of the ancient Greek versions of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 reveals that the earliest manuscripts of the Greek tradition, translated from Hebrew manuscripts of these biblical books in third-century BCE Egypt, did not prohibit these birds (Angelini and Nihan 2020, 60). Rather, the ban on corvids only came as Greek culture increased its influence in Judean communities in both the Levant and Egypt. The earliest inclusion of their prohibition is in a text from Masada, Mas1b from the turn of the era (Altmann 2020, 94). What might have led to this addition of corvids to the list of prohibited birds?

A plausible answer emerges from the study of classical Greek traditions about ravens, κόρακος, which are quite negative: they feature regularly as a part of curses. These birds are imagined to gloat over corpses. As already mentioned, they reportedly stole meat offered on altars, and they generally function as an image of ruin. Several examples provide the flavor of Greek associations with these birds. First, in Aeschylus’s play Agamemnon from the early fifth century BCE, a raven is used to express a kind of look: “Standing over the corpse, in the manner (1473) of a loathsome raven, it glories in (1474) tunelessly singing a song <of joy>” (Aeschylus 2008, 179, 181).

The sixth-century poet BCE Theognis offers a similarly negative view. The English translation reads, “Everything here has gone to the dogs and to ruin” (Gerber 1999, 295). However, rather than “to the dogs,” the Greek texts literally states “to the ravens” (τάδ᾽ ἐν κοράκεσσι). Thus, something going to the ravens indicates that it is in very poor shape.

Aristophanes, the Attic playwright known as the father of comedy from the late fifth and early fourth century BCE mentions ravens a number of times. In his play Clouds, the raven appears, as it frequently does, as part of a curse: “βάλλ᾿ εἰς κόρακας. τίς ἐσθ᾿ ὁ κόψας τὴν θύραν [Buzz off to blazes! [literally: Throw to the ravens], Who’s been pounding on the door?” (Aristophanes 1988, 25). While several less imprecatory uses of ravens occur in ancient Greek literature, this is the general tenor. They were birds associated with destruction, death, unworthiness, low quality, and curses. Thus, it appears the biblical text of the dietary laws did not originally prohibit the black birds but grew to include them due to the disdain for the birds in Greek culture. This is a stark contrast with the different path taken with regard to pigs, which separates Jewish from Greek and, later, Roman culture.

Luke 12:24

A look at the one New Testament reference to ravens provides a sense of completeness to my discussion of the biblical material. The gospel of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount contains the famous exhortation to “consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air that do not sow or reap and yet the Heavenly Father feeds them.” Luke’s version of this text, in Luke 12:24 (NRSV), though perhaps less well known, makes the identification of the birds more explicit:

Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!

If one does “consider the ravens,” while they have neither storehouse nor barn, they certainly do find ways to employ their proportionately large brains to plan, kill, gather, and cache food for lean times. Given their increasingly recognized behavioral similarities to humans in these and other aspects, they serve as apt guides for human responsiveness to God with trusting loyalty. What proves especially striking about this text from Luke is that it comes both at a time when corvids had become a part of the dietary prohibitions and that it appears to have been written, more than any of the other canonical gospels, for an explicitly Greek and more educated audience that would have more awareness of the corvid’s negative status in classical Greek traditions. Nonetheless, they still experience God’s provision and deserve human curiosity and attention.