My subject? Crows. Surprised? I’ve never really made much mention of animals in scripture before, but suddenly, I’m interested. This particular bird is one that I’ve held a long fascination for. You know this bird scripturally as a raven.

Common Ravens are omnivorous and highly opportunistic: their diet may vary widely with location, season and serendipity.

In no land are they more numerous than in Palestine. In general appearance it resembles the crow, but is much larger, being almost two feet long, of a glossy black, with whiskers around the beak, and rather stiff-pointed neck feathers. A bird exhibiting as much intelligence as any, and of a saucy, impudent disposition, it has been an object of interest from the beginning.

It has been able to speak sentences of a few words when carefully taught, and by its uncanny acts has made itself a bird surrounded by superstition, myth, fable, and is connected with the religious rites of many nations. It is partially a carrion feeder, if offal or bodies are fresh; it also eats the young of other birds and very small animals and seeds, berries and fruit, having as varied a diet as any bird. It is noisy, with a loud, rough, emphatic cry, and its young are clamorous at feeding time.

A few years ago at the college, I watched from my car as a crow sat on top of a trash bin. He observed his surroundings to ensure no one was coming, then hopped down into the opening of the can, which was pretty overloaded with garbage. He picked through a few things and flew out with a ketchup packet in his beak.

It was a sealed packet, but this guy was already a pro with this sort of packaging. He again sat on the top of the can to check his surroundings, then flew down to the ground, put the packet under his feet, and proceeded to peck at the plastic packaging until he had pecked a hole into it. Then he stuck his beak inside and took a sampling of ketchup out, and lifted his head to ingest it.

Across its range in the northern hemisphere, and throughout human history, the Common Raven has been a powerful symbol and a popular subject of mythology and folklore.

In many post-conversion Western traditions, ravens have long been considered to be birds of ill omen, in part because of the negative symbolism of their all-black plumage and eating of carrion. In Sweden, ravens are known as the ghosts of murdered people, and in Germany as the souls of the damned. In Danish folklore, a Valravn that ate a king’s heart gained human knowledge, could perform great malicious acts, could lead people astray, had superhuman powers, and were “terrible animals”.

Many indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America and northeast Asia revered it as a god. In Tlingit and Haida cultures, Raven was both a Trickster and Creator god. Related beliefs are widespread among the peoples of Siberia and northeast Asia. The Kamchatka peninsula, for example, was supposed to have been created by the raven god Kutkh.

In Irish mythology, the goddess Morrígan alighted on the hero Cú Chulainn’s shoulder in the form of a raven after his death.

In Welsh mythology they were associated with the Welsh god Bran the Blessed, whose name translates to “raven.” According to the Mabinogion, Bran’s head was buried in the White Hill of London as a talisman against invasion.

A legend developed that England would not fall to a foreign invader so long as there were ravens at the Tower of London; although the official Tower of London historian, Geoff Parnell, believes that this is actually a romantic Victorian invention. In fact, the Tower has lacked ravens for long periods in the past; however, the government now maintains several birds on the grounds of the Tower.

As in traditional mythology and folklore, the Common Raven features frequently in more modern writings such as the works of William Shakespeare, and, perhaps most famously, in the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. Ravens have appeared in the works of Charles Dickens, J. R. R. Tolkien, Stephen King, and Joan Aiken among others.

It is interesting to me, that this same bird that is so ill thought of, is used by God several times in the scriptures.

We first see the raven used by Noah as the first sent out to check the levels of the water after the flood.

Gen 8:5  And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth [month], on the first [day] of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.

It’s interesting that this overflow of water decreased continually until specifically the tenth month. When I looked up tenth here, it indicated tithe. It wasn’t until the tenth month that one could see the tops, or see above the water. It’s an interesting analogy coinciding with the tithe, in that they couldn’t begin to see their way clear until after a symbolic tithe.