The Old Testament writers use the mother bird metaphor for God. For me, it’s a new category of feminine imagery for God, as I don’t think of the winged creatures as female when I read the Old Testament.
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, in The Divine Feminine: Biblical Imagery of God as Female, says there are two mother-bird types of images in the Bible. One is the covering protection of the hen’s wings (Ruth 2:12; Ps. 17:8, 9; Psalm 57:1; Psalm 61:4; Psalm 91:4; Matt. 23:27/Luke 13:34). The other is the empowering, adult-making wings of the mother eagle (Ex. 19:4; Deut. 32:11-12; Is 40:31).
Ramey Mollenkott points out that the King James Version and a few other translations use feminine pronouns, but all the others use masculine or neuter pronouns.
Here is Deut. 32:11-12 in the KJV: “As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead Jacob….”
The birds in all the verses show the protecting, teaching behavior of the hens or mother eagles. They are not likely male birds.
This matters. It mattered, to Jesus, too, when he used hen imagery for Himself (Matt. 23:27/Luke 13:34). In fact, God used the eagle metaphor to speak to me about my blog before I knew that the eagles in the Bible are likely mothers.
Time to Travel
In August 2015, when The Mother God Experiment was still embryonic, we went to Siletz Bay, Oregon on vacation. We rented a house that only required a walk through the back yard to get to the bay. I wrote in my journal:
I was coming back (from a walk) and looked up to see a bald eagle landing on a branch above me. I heard my husband cry, ‘That’s a bald eagle!’ We gathered under the tree as it adjusted its wings in the wind and watched us and the land around us.
I took the eagle’s landing as a sign. Of what, I don’t know yet. Later, back at the house, thinking about the eagle I saw a sign that said “Endeavor” with a sailboat underneath. It seemed significant. I thought about my metaphor of discovering Mother God as safe harbor, a place to launch from, to go out and explore and take risks.
So, I know it’s time to move The Mother God Experiment to a new level. It has existed in my mind and on these notebook pages…but it’s time to move further into the ocean of people needing to know Mother is a fine metaphor for God, that it can lead to new heights of trust in God.
I hear the eagle’s high-pitched call now as I write.
It’s time to travel.
The Eagle Speaks
When I got home, I did a search for what eagles symbolize. I mostly read that eagles represent the stereotypical ideas we have when we see them: power, strength, domination, masculinity.
Perplexed, I didn’t think much more about our eagle-sighting or how important it seemed at the time. However, this week a friend pointed out to me a picture of a swan and cygnets with a wings-of-God verse underneath. She was surprised that the text used masculine pronouns. We both knew there was something to be explored here to reveal a different, feminine image of the eagle rather than the usual masculine stereotypes.
Eagle-Mothering
When Biblical writers used the eagle as a stand-in for God, or Her children, it was a symbol of nurturing empowerment.
It’s been said that an eagle mother actually drops her fledglings so they can learn to fly. If they flounder, she catches them on her wings. Those are the images we see in the Bible. But as this blogger writes, if you watch eaglets and their parents, you’ll see that eaglets who are big enough to fly are way too big to be dropped or caught.
In fact, the mother eagle nurtures her babies according to their needs. Some take a few weeks to fledge, others a few months. She simply stays with them as they practice hopping, flapping and landing. And she keeps feeding them even after they know how to hunt, as long as they are still in the nest.
Like Mother God, the mother eagle patiently teaches and waits. And the end goals are the same: competence and maturity.
The Eagle Empowers
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott notes that in this role, God (the eagle) is female and humanity (eaglets) is male, if given a sex (e.g. Is. 40:31-32 NIV). This reverses what women often hear, that women represent a feminine humanity that should submit to a masculine God, and so therefore, women should submit to their husbands.
And, says Ramey Mollenkott “…the mother eagle images depict a God who is actively trying to create equals by empowering the eaglets to take care of themselves. Hence these images do not encourage dominance and submission even in our relationship with our Creator, let alone our relationships with other human beings!”
So, when we need a non-human image of God that is both feminine and all about our growth and empowerment, we can look to the mother eagle. She will always be getting us ready to fly.
I read somewhere (I can’t remember the name of the book) that many of the “eagles” in the Hebrew Bible are incorrect translations and are actually vultures. A cultural difference where the scavenging vulture is not loathsome? I also recall vaguely a goddess in South America who consumes the detritus of our lives (sin, etc.) at death, so I suppose the person enters eternity without that baggage. A scavenging goddess?? Which leads to the question of pre-Columbian exchanges of ideas. Are pyramids of America related to those elsewhere? Why not. We hope that male-dominated, blood-atonement monotheism is but a brief aberration
I’ve never heard that re a mis-translation of eagles. It would be a hard mistake to make, I’d think. I know Jesus didn’t think much of vultures, metaphorically speaking anyway. It sounds like you have some interesting knowledge to add along the way; I hope you’ll keep commenting.