When you visit the Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, you envision seeing lots of wildlife...bears, moose, eagles, elk, bison, wolves, deer, etc...yesterday, we rounded out with all them...even though the bears and wolves were in captivity, it was still exciting to see them..they were "caged" in the open with free range of the area they lived...
So it was interesting to find references in the Bible about some of the animals we encountered....
-He causes us to stand on heights
-longing for God
-putting our hope helps us soar, not grow weary, not grow faint
-watch for the false prophets who would scatter the flock....
-strength/faith of a shepherd joy who led a nation and followed after God's heart
So again, pictures in everyday life lead back to the Word...He even causes nature, which He created to lead toward pictures and thoughts of Himself...that longing to be closer to Him....in all things..
thank YOU for the nature You have created for us to enjoy ....to see the soaring, to stand on heights, to long for You as the deer, to see the faith of a boy, and be watchful of those people who lead us astray ....
Psalm 18:33 He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he causes me to stand on the heights.
Psalm 42:1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.
Isaiah 40:31 but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Habakkuk 3:19 The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.
John 10:12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it.
Matthew 7:15 "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
"Most probably, the Eurasian Brown Bear
1 Samuel Chapter 17:32
And David said to Saul: 'Let no man's heart fail within him; thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine.'
33
And Saul said to David: 'Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.'
34
And David said unto Saul: 'Thy servant kept his father's sheep; and when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock,
35
I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth; and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him.
36
Thy servant smote both the lion and the bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath taunted the armies of the living God.
37
And David said: 'The HaShem that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.' And Saul said unto David: 'Go, and HaShem shall be with thee.'
38
And Saul clad David with his apparel, and he put a helmet of brass upon his head, and he clad him with a coat of mail.
39
And David girded his sword upon his apparel, and he essayed to go ,but could not; for he had not tried it. And David said unto Saul: 'I cannot go with these; for I have not tried them.' And David put them off him.
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There are a couple ways to read this. You can read this literally, in which case it implies David killed at least one lion and at least one bear single handedly in fulfilling his duties as shepherd. By the way, it does not imply he killed the bear with his bare hands (no pun intended). He could have used a sling and a knife. The end of the passage I shared seems to imply he was not familiar with the extant tools of the soldier--sword and mail. So he probably was not accustomed to using a sword. If you choose to read this literally, any youth willing to stand up to the Philistines with a sling must have been pretty darned good with that sling, leading me to reason, he could have used the sling to temporarily knock out the bear before slitting its throat. By the way, in case you are a linguistic purist, the Biblical Hebrew words used here for lion and bear are the same as those conventionally used for lion and bear today. Bear = dov; so, this is not an instance of David killing some other animal which perhaps translators interpreted as a bear.
David dates to around 1,000 BC/BCE. This is way too "modern" to have seen Cave Bears, despite the numerous caves that dot the terrain in which David lived.
While lions are known to have ranged northwards from Africa. The Eurasian Brown Bear extended south from Eurasia--probably from the Urals down into Romania and Asia Minor and quite possibly this part of the Middle East. We will not bother with the Scandinavian and Spanish "cousins" as it is unlikely that the bear David encountered was a "Viking Bear" or from the Pyrenees. Bears have a symbiotic relationship with human populations. Where humans are found, food is to be found. So, some Eurasian bears may have extended far south during drought years, staying close to places of human habitation."
Sources: http://www.hareidi.org/bible/1_Samuel17.htm#34 ; http://www.grizzlybear.org/gbstatus/griznum.htm ; http://cryptozoology.suite101.com/article.cfm/africas_cryptoid_bear ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_brown_bear ; http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/1999/2/bearconservationworld.cfm
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