Last week we discussed eagles in the first five books of the bible.  This week we discuss their use in the prophets and the poetic books.

Eagles provide beautiful analogies of power, strength, loftiness and fierceness.  Therefore God Himself employs them as poetic images when He speaks through His chosen human authors.

In the Second Book of Samuel, the author tells us of the mighty Israelite warriors Saul and Jonathan, “They were swifter than eagles” (2 Sam. 1:23 NIV).  A number of other passages also use the eagle as a symbol of speed (Habakkuk 1:8, Jeremiah 4:13 and Lamentations 4:19).

Eagles indeed are amazing in their swiftness. Golden eagles, which are common to the Middle East, can travel long distances at an average speed of over eighty miles per hour.  In a power dive, they have been known to reach over two hundred miles per hour.

The power of an eagle is also an inspiring characteristic.  Eagles have been known to fend off lions and other large cats when guarding prey they have taken.  One eagle trained to hunt for human masters in Kazakhstan helped slay 14 wolves in a single day!  Eagle talons in some species are about the size of the claws of a grizzly bear’s, and just as lethal.  Furthermore, the tendons that manipulate the closing of powerful eagle feet, roughly the size of a human hand, have a mechanism that ratchets them closed, allowing them to grasp prey or crush it with limited muscular effort.  Pressures exceeding four hundred psi, similar to a lion’s bite strength, are easily attained.  Small wonder then, that passages such as Hosea  Chapter 8 or Ezekiel Chapter 17  employ the metaphor of “A great eagle with great wings” (Ezek. 17:3 KJV) to speak of mighty armies on the move.

Eagles may master prey much larger than themselves. They have been known to pluck large animals, like mountain goats, off of hillsides and fly with them until dropping them to their deaths.  They can snatch a small lamb or deer and fly off with it.  Small wonder that one of the four faces of mighty cherub angels are described as the face of an eagle (Ezekiel 1:10 and 10:14), for perhaps God made eagles to reflect the majesty of these heavenly beings.  With some species of eagle having lengths well over forty inches and wingspans exceeding ten feet in some birds, they are indeed magnificent depictions of another realm.

With hollow bones and air sacs within their bodies, eagles are remarkably light for their size.  An eagle with a nine-foot wingspan and lethal power in its beak and talons may only weigh 15 pounds! Even limbs and cranial cavities have passages used for breathing and circulating air throughout the body.  Scientists have conducted experiments by closing down air passages normally used for respiration, and lo the birds in the study could breathe through a wing!  The amazing respiratory system of eagles allows them to move their wings furiously at high altitudes, thin with oxygen, and yet not tire.  Often eagles are seen at altitudes exceeding ten thousand feet, and native peoples in many parts of the world see them as messengers going to and from heaven, much like angels, or even the Holy Spirit.

Many years ago my wife and I first became aware of God’s use of the eagle as an autobiographical element in the Word of God.  I was always fascinated with Isaiah 40:31:

“But those who wait for the Lord — who expect, look for and hope in Him — shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up [close to God] as eagles [mount up to the sun]; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint or become tired” (AMP).

The verse is exciting because it promises that the believer can soar like an eagle, enter the heavenly realms, overcome weariness and renew spiritual power and strength.  On top of that, though, I knew that God Himself was pictured as an eagle in scripture in passages like, Deuteronomy 32:11, Jeremiah 48:40 or Exodus 19:4, where he says, “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (NIV).   What a thought, being in the heavenlies with God!  Was this just poetic license?  If I was tempted to think so, the Holy Spirit soon taught me otherwise.

My wife, Linda and I took a vacation during a time of very hectic business and ministry activity.  We were virtually newlyweds, and added to the normal stresses, were questions of how to forge ahead spiritually.  We had been catapulted into a large, public ministry, and with everything so new and strange to us, we were very cautious about any life move that could throw things out of balance.  I would often say, “Let’s wait on the Lord for that one.”  At one point, her rejoinder was, “It seems like all we do is wait!”  Needless to say, our vacation represented a respite in which we were looking to get some answers.

I frequently read Isaiah 40:31 and thought  about what it meant to “wait upon the Lord,” as the King James puts it.  The Hebrew root word used here and translated wait is qavah (pronounced kaw-vaw’).  It signifies binding together and implies twisting.¹ I tried on a number of occasions to get my mind around that one, and kept coming up with the picture of a man waiting for someone as he stood on a street corner.  I kept thinking how time-lapse photography would show a path of walking in various patterns like circles and figure eights that would look like something being twisted together.  I also pictured two men waiting together and could almost visualize a little better the whole idea of twisting representing waiting.  But on our vacation God gave me something much better than anything my imagination could come up with.

As we traveled to various points on our shore vacation we took a lot of time for devotions and did some fasting as well.  We kind of winged it as far as some accommodations, and oddly enough, kept finding places to stay and to eat that had the word Raven in the title.  Raven is the Hebrew word ‘owreb (pronounced o-rabe’) and comes from the word ‘arab (pronounced aw-rab’), which is used in a number of ways, including a meaning of “braid.” That got me thinking in the right direction for what happened next.

A hurricane struck the coast, and we decided to divert our trip up into the mountains.  At one point we were enjoying a drive on a sunny day and came to a beautiful scenic overlook that had attracted quite a group of tourists.  As we perched ourselves adjacent to a stone wall and looked over the undulating, forest-covered hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, I spied three large birds circling not all that far above us.  They were each circling in different circles that intersected, much like how the Olympics’ logo is patterned.  As I watched them soar, I said aloud to myself, “I wonder if those are eagles?”

Immediately, a heavily accented voice responded from nearby in the group of onlookers.  “Those are American Black Eagles!” he said authoritatively in English marked with a Dutch inflection. “I am an amateur, expert ornithologist.  I am from Holland, and I come to the United States every year on two months of vacation in order to enjoy your natural beauty, and to watch the birds.  In Holland, everything is man-made and geometrically planned, so I enjoy the naturalness and wildness of your country.  Those are American black eagles,” he said once again, pointing skyward.

I thanked him, and turned my attention back to the majestic birds.  With wings spread they soared higher and higher, completely effortlessly in what must have been a warm updraft.   As we all watched they went from a few hundred feet above us to a single dot in the sky.  The image was that of a rope being twisted together.  They seemed to braid their three flight paths into a single, tightening configuration that eventually made them a one lone object in the distant air, far above us.

As I stood watching and wondering, my inner man heard, “That’s you, me and Linda,” and I sensed that those were the words of Jesus.  Through His blessed Holy Spirit, the Lord was speaking to me about His plans to invest himself in our lives as we took time to “wait upon the Lord,” let him get involved in our lives and get our lives, aspirations and feelings tangled up in His.  He had sent his Comforter, as He had promised in John 16:13 -14: “He will not speak on His own; he will speak only what he hears, and will tell you what is to come.  He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.”

It was the Holy Spirit conveying the words of Jesus into my heart, and beginning to lead me on a path of intimacy with the Father and the Son by teaching me the ways of the Spirit.

For more information on Eagles in the Bible, purchase a copy of my book, Heaven’s Eagle, from this website.