Category Archives: Alphabetical

Ant

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Bible occurrences: Pro 6:6; 30:25.

The notable character of the ant is its prudent habit of providing for the future, and their ceaseless hard work.

Source: [DCox]

Ant. Approximately 100 species of ants live in the Holy Land. Harvester ants are the ones meant in (Proverbs 6:6-8) and (30:25). These tiny insects settle near grain fields, carrying seed after seed into their private storehouses. In cold weather these ants cluster together and hibernate. When winter comes, they have food stored up until the next harvest.
God has provided ants with such amazing instincts that they appear to reason and plan ahead. If stored grain gets wet, they haul it out into the sun to dry. Their hard work was considered a worthy example for human beings by the writer of Proverbs (Prov. 6:6-8; 30:25).

The Ant

If you look at the sixth verse of the sixth chapter of Proverbs, you will read, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.” A sluggard, you know, is a man, or woman, or child, who does not love to read or to do any kind of work, but likes to sleep or be idle all the day long. Do you think you were ever acquainted with one?

Now see what the Bible tells the sluggard to do. It bids him go to the little ant, and “consider her ways,” that is, look on and see what she does. Have you ever watched the ants when they were busy at work? It will give you very pleasant employment for half an hour on a summer’s day. In some places you may see small ant-hills scattered about, so close together that you can hardly step without treading on them; and you may find other places where there are not so many, but where the hills are much larger. I have seen them so large that you could hardly step over one of them without touching it with your foot and breaking some part of it. And then how busy the little creatures are! Just kneel down on the grass beside them, and notice how they work! You will see one little fellow creeping along as fast as he can go, with a grain of sand in his mouth, perhaps as large as his head. He does not stop to rest, but when he has carried his grain to help build the hill, away he goes for another. You may watch them all day and never see them idle at all.

You see why God tells the sluggard to go and look at the little ants: it is that when he sees them so busy, he may be ashamed of himself for being idle, and learn to be “wise,” or diligent in whatever he undertakes. I should not think he could help going to work, after he had looked at them a little while. The ants seem to be very happy, and I think it is because they are so busy. God has put nobody in this world to be idle: even children have something to do. The inside of an ant-hill is very curious, but it is not easy to examine it without destroying all the work that the little insects have taken so much pains to finish. There is a kind of ant in warm climates that builds for itself hills as high as a man. They are not made of sand, but of a kind of clay; and have a great many cells or apartments, and many winding passages leading from one part to another. All this is done, as the Bible says, without “guide, overseer or ruler;” that is, they have no one to direct them how to do it. God gives them skill just as he does to the honey-bees in building the beautiful cells which you have so often admired; all His works are wonderful.

Wild Beast

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The expression occurs twice in the D.V., but much oftener in the A.V., and R. V., where it is in several places a substitute for the awkward “beast of the field”, the Hebrew name of wild animals at large. The first time we read of “wild beasts” in the D.V., it fairly stands for the Hebrew word zîz [Ps. lxxix (Hebr., lxxx), 14], albeit the “singular wild beast” is a clumsy translation. The same Hebrew word in Ps. 49:11, at least for consistency’s sake, should have been rendered in the same manner; “the beauty of the field” must consequently be corrected into “wild beast”. In Is., 13:21, “wild beasts” is an equivalent for the Hebr. Ciyyîm, i. e. denizens of the desert. This word in different places has been translated in divers manners: demons (Isaiah 34:14), dragons (Psalm 73:14; Jeremiah 1:39); it possibly refers to the hyena.

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_animals_in_the_Bible]

Worm

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Worm.

Worms have no backbone, legs, or eyes, although their bodies are sensitive to light and temperature. But they do play a useful role. They improve the soil by working decaying vegetation into the earth and aerating it with their tunnels.

The Bible speaks both literally and figuratively of worms. The word worm also refers to a worm-like creature, such as insect larva. For instance, the palmerworm, cankerworm, and caterpillar of (Joel 1:4) are all caterpillars, which is the larval stage of various moths. (The NKJV, however, translates these as various kinds of locusts.) Grub is another word used for worm in various translations (Is. 51:8), (NEB, NASB). (Job 7:5) and other passages, which refer to infestation of worms, probably mean maggots, the larvae of flies. Decaying matter often teems with tiny worm-like maggots.

Some worms, such as tapeworms and pinworms, are parasites which invade the human body. Thus Herod could be described as “eaten by worms” (Acts 12:23).

The common earthworm also appears in the Bible. (Micah 7:17) refers to worms (snakes, NKJV) coming out of their holes. Perhaps it was an earthworm also that God appointed to strike at the root of Jonah’s shade (Jon. 4:7). The psalmist lamented: “I am a worm… and despised” (Ps. 22:6). Job claimed kinship with the lowly worm (Job 17:14). (Isaiah 41:14) uses “you worm Jacob” as a metaphor of weakness. The Jews associated worms and fire with the place reserved for the ungodly dead Isa. 66:24; Mark 9:44,48.

Source: [Anon-Animals]

See also Lice, Maggots,

Wolf

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Wolf.

Wolves were a menace to the sheep farmers of Palestine. Man’s first dogs were probably tamed wolf pups. Perhaps this kinship enabled wolves to lurk near sheepfolds and gain their reputation for treachery.

Of his youngest son, the patriarch Jacob said: “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf” (Gen. 49:27). The Hebrew word translated ravenous means “to rip and tear,” indicating the bloodthirsty nature of the wolf. Wolves seem particularly cruel because they seek out the weak, old, and defenseless as victims. The flow of blood incites them to rip and tear even more with their powerful jaws.

In many Bible references, wolves represent ruthless enemies. Jesus warned of false prophets “who come… in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly… are ravenous wolves” (Matt. 7:15).

Source: [Anon-Animals]

The Wolf

The wolf is rather larger than our largest dogs, and looks somewhat like them; but he seems more wild, savage and cruel. The wolves go in large companies, making a terrible howling noise; and though they are in general cowardly, yet when they are very hungry they attack large animals, and even men. They almost always go out by night, and the Bible refers to this when it says, “Their horses are more fierce than the evening wolves.” Jacob, just before his death, said of one of his sons, “Benjamin shall raven as a wolf; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at evening he shall divide the spoil.”

There were once a great many wolves in New England and in other parts of the United States, and some are left yet, although many have been killed or driven away. There are still great numbers of them in some countries. In England the month of January used to be called Wolf- monat, or wolf-month; “because,” as an old book says, “people are wont in that moneth to be more in danger to be devoured of wolves than in any season els of the yeare, for that through the extremity of cold and snow those ravenous creatures could not find other beasts sufficient to feed upon.”

A sad story is told of something that happened in Russia a few years since. A woman was one day riding on a sledge with her three children over a lonely road, when suddenly she heard the noise of wolves behind her. She was not very far from home, and tried to urge her horse on, to get out of their reach; but they gained upon her every moment, and were just on the point of rushing on the sledge, when the poor woman, to save the lives of the rest, caught up one of the children and threw it to the wolves. This stopped them but a short time; they devoured it at once and again ran howling after the sledge. The mother threw out a second child, hoping to escape with the other; but in vain. Again the cruel animals were close behind her, and to save her own life, hardly knowing what she did, she threw over her only remaining child. She succeeded in reaching home herself, in safety, but where were her children? She told the terrible story; but while she was endeavoring to excuse herself by telling of her exceeding fright and danger, a man who stood by struck her on the head with an axe and killed her at one blow-saying that a woman who would thus give up her children to save her life, was not fit to live.

The Bible tells us of a time yet to come, when “The wolf shall feed with the lamb.” Perhaps this will be exactly true of the animals in those days, though it now seems so unlikely; but I suppose it means also that wicked and cruel men shall become holy and Christ-like. Then all will be peace on earth, and “none shall hurt or destroy in all” God’s “holy mountain.”

[Cook, Scripture Alphabet of Animals]