Tag Archives: Insect

ant

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ants have a prudent habit of providing for the future, they are industrious, doing very hard work as encouraging us to always work hard.

Bible occurrences: Pro 6:6; 30:25

Ant – DCox

The notable character of the ant is its prudent habit of providing for the future. The ant’s industry as a worker, doing very hard work is what the ant would represent to us as an encouragement to always work hard.

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 – Cook

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.

Moth

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Moth. Moths are mentioned several times in the Bible as a symbol of destructiveness and the perishable nature of all earthly goods. In (Hosea 5:12), God says, “I will be to Ephraim like a moth.” Just as the damage caused by moths takes place slowly and undetected, so God would quietly, but inevitably, bring judgment upon His backsliding people.

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Wasp

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Wasp.

These overgrown relatives of bees are known for their painful sting. Wasps are common throughout the Holy Land. Hornets are a large species of wasp. So savage were these insects when disturbed that Egyptian soldiers used hornets as a symbol of their military might. When the people of Israel were marching toward the Promised Land, God promised He would send hornets before them to drive the Canaanites out of the land (Ex. 23:28). Ancient writers claim that entire tribes were sometimes driven out of a country by wasps or hornets.

Source: [Anon-Animals]

Spider

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Spider.

Hundreds of different species of spiders are found in the Holy Land. A spider’s skill at spinning threads into a web is one of nature’s miracles. The fragile web of a spider is used to demonstrate the folly of placing confidence in something other than the stable, dependable God (Job 8:14).

Spiders trap their victims in their webs and dissolve them with pre-digestive juices so they can be eaten. Oil on the spider’s body keeps it from being entangled in its own web.

Source: [Anon-Animals]

Snail

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Snail.

These are small, slow-crawling animals with a soft body protected by a coiled shell. They move with wave-like motions of their single foot, secreting a slime as they go to make their travel easier. The psalmist may have had this peculiar motion in mind when he spoke of the snail “which melts away as it goes” (Ps. 58:8).

The snail_ in (Leviticus 11:30) (KJV ) is probably a skink, a type of sand lizard.

Source: [Anon-Animals] Continue reading →

Scorpion

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Scorpion.

The scorpion is a small crawling animal that looks like a flat lobster. A member of the spider family, it has eight legs, two sets of pincers, and a tail with a poisonous stinger. A scorpion feeds on spiders and insects, which it rips apart with its claws. It uses its poisonous sting only when threatened or when it attacks large prey. This sting is seldom fatal, but it can be very painful (Rev. 9:5).

During the day, scorpions escape the desert heat by hiding under rocks. They come out at night to hunt and eat. Inhabitants of Bible lands feared scorpions. These animals were an ever-present danger when Moses led the children of Israel through the hot, rocky wilderness (Deut. 8:15).

Jesus’ words in (Luke 11:12) about giving a person a scorpion instead of an egg may refer to a light-colored scorpion, which could be mistaken for an egg when in a coiled position. The prophet Ezekiel was told by God not to be afraid of his enemies, who were referred to symbolically as scorpions (Ezek. 2:6). King Rehoboam’s threat did not mean he would use scorpions as whips (1 Kin. 12:14). In those days a barbed whip or scourge was called a “scorpion.”

Source: [Anon-Animals]

The Scorpion.

This frightful creature is several times mentioned in the Bible. It is the largest among insects, and more dangerous than any of them. It is sometimes found in Europe, and is there about four inches long; but those of hot countries are sometimes more than a foot in length.

The scorpion is very easily made angry, and then its sting is terrible; it very often causes death, but not always. In Revelation, 9:5, 6, we read, “And their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man; and in those days shall men seek death and shall not find it: and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.” This shows that the pain caused by their sting is very great. When a person has been stung by a scorpion, the part around the wound swells and becomes very painful, the hands and feet become cold, the skin is pale, and there is a feeling as though there were needles in every part of it. This pain often increases and rages until the person dies in great suffering.

It is well for man that scorpions destroy each other as readily as they do animals of a different kind. It is said that a hundred were once put together under a glass, where they immediately began to attack and kill each other; so that in a few days only fourteen were left alive. I have heard that if a circle of alcohol or spirit of any sort, is set on fire, and a scorpion placed within it so that he cannot get out on any side, he will sting himself so as to cause his death. I am not certain that this is true, and it would be a very cruel thing to try it even upon so dangerous an animal as the scorpion.

It seems that this creature was sometimes seen in the wilderness through which the children of Israel passed. When they had nearly reached the end of their journey, Moses reminded them to praise God for having kept them safely in so many dangers, while passing through “that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions and drought; where there was no water.”

Our Savior asks, “If a son shall ask of his father an egg, will he give him a scorpion?” The scorpions in that country are about as large as an egg, and when rolled up look a little like one. Yet no father would be so wicked as to give one to his child instead of the egg which he needed for food.

Christ once said to his disciples, when they were going out to preach and to heal the diseases of the people, “Behold I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” This was a very wonderful power; and whoever should see one of those disciples tread on the terrible scorpion without being hurt, would know that Christ was surely with him to take care of him.

[Cook, Scripture Alphabet of Animals]

Locust

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Locust (see Grasshopper).

Source: [Anon-Animals]

* Attacus (Leviticus 11:22). — Instead of this Latin word, the A.V. reads bald-locust. According to the tradition enshrined in the Talmud, the common truxalis, a locust with a very long smooth head is probably signified.

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

The Locust.

The locust is called an insect, as well as the ant and the bee, but instead of being harmless, as they usually are, it does a great deal of injury. It is also much larger than they; for it is generally three inches long, and sometimes as much as four or five. The plague of the locusts was the eighth that God sent upon the Egyptians, because they would not let the children of Israel go, as he commanded; and it was a very terrible one indeed. The Bible says, “They covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left; and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field through all the land of Egypt.” This is the way they often do in those countries, though perhaps it is not common for so many to come at once.

They fly in companies of thousands together, and so close that they look like a great black cloud. When they alight on the ground they all come down in a body, and immediately begin to devour the grass and grain; they also eat the leaves of the trees, and every green thing they can find. The people dread them more than they do the most terrible fire or storm; because though they are so small, they destroy all the food, and leave the people ready to starve. When the inhabitants see them coming over their fields, they try to drive them away by making loud noises or by kindling fires; but this does little good.

It is said that a great army of locusts came over the northern part of Africa about a hundred years before the birth of Christ. They consumed every blade of grass wherever they alighted; also the roots, and bark, and even the hard wood of the trees. After they had thus eaten up every thing, a strong wind arose, and after tossing them about awhile, it blew them over the sea, and great numbers of them were drowned. Then the waves threw them back upon the land, all along the sea-coast, and their dead bodies made the air so unwholesome that a frightful pestilence commenced, and great numbers of men and animals died.

Many travellers have seen these great clouds of locusts, and describe them in their books. One says that he saw a company consisting of so many that they were an hour in passing over the place where he was. They seemed to extend a mile in length and half a mile in width. When he first noticed them, they looked like a black cloud rising in the east; and when they came over head, they shut out the light of the sun, and made a noise with their wings like the rushing of a water-fall. Another swarm is mentioned which took four hours to pass over one spot; and they made the sky so dark that one person could not see another at twenty steps off.

You can now understand two or three passages from the Bible which I will mention. David says in the 23d verse of the 109th Psalm, “I am tossed up and down as the locust;” that is, as the clouds of locusts are tossed about by the wind. In the first chapters of Joel God threatens to send the locust among the people, because of their wickedness; and he says of them, “Before their faces the people shall be much pained; all faces shall gather blackness. They (the locusts,) shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall; they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief.” An English clergyman who visited countries where the locusts are found, a few years ago, says that these verses describe them exactly as he has himself seen them.

Locusts are sometimes used for food. The Arabs boil them with salt, and then add a little oil or butter; sometimes they toast them by the fire before eating them. A traveller speaks of seeing the Arab women employed in filling bags with locusts, which were to be used for food. You know it is said in the New Testament that John the Baptist “did eat locusts and wild honey,” but it is not quite certain that this insect was meant; perhaps it was the fruit of the locust-tree that he ate.

[Cook, Scripture Alphabet of Animals]