ChristStory Bestiary

BEAR

Licked Into Shape - The Wrath of God

Like many hibernating creatures, the bear was seen as an emblem of the resurection when he emerged in the spring. At other times, he represented positive qualities such as bravery, strength, determination, and negative traits such as greed, bad temper, crudeness, brutality, and evil. He occasionally represents the devil and evil leaders - "Like a roaring lion and a charging bear is a wicked ruler over poor people" (Prov. 28:15).

The New Jerusalem is represented by the image of a cow and her calves grazing peacefully alongside a bear and her cubs (Is 11:7).

The phrase "licked into shape" came from the belief that bear cubs were born without any form and were shaped by their mother's tongue after birth. Because of this belief, the bear became a symbol of missions - the missionary licking new Christians into shape with the word of God. Along this same line, the bear is most often seen in the Bible as the arm of God's wrath (or fierce licking). When some youths mocked Elisha the Prophet, he cursed them in the name of the Lord and two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths (2 Ki 2:23-24). The kingdom of Persia (represented by a bear in Dan. 7:5) was allowed to destroy many nations as the arm of God's wrath before it was destroyed.

In Amos, God rebukes the wicked who did not even have the sense to fear His millenial coming. He warns, "Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD! For what good is the day of the LORD to you? It will be darkness, and not light. It will be as though a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him!" (Amos 5:18-19).

God, Himself is represented as a mother bear fiercely defending her cubs, the Israelites from their own errors. "I [God] will meet them [Israel] like a bear deprived of her cubs; I will tear open their rib cage...O Israel, you are destroyed, But your help is from Me. (Hosea 13:8-9).

In Lamentations, man's inability to understand the "licking" of God is aptly worded: "He [God] has been to me a bear lying in wait... He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces; He has made me desolate" (Lam. 3:10-11).

All scripture quotes are from the NKJV Bible.