Under the wings

Under the wings January 8, 2014

“Who are these who fly like a cloud, and like the doves to their windows?” someone asks in Isaiah 60:8. It’s a puzzling question in a context having to do with the assembling of Gentiles at Zion for worship (vv. 6-7, note gold, frankincense, flocks and rams that ascend on Yahweh’s altar and are accepted). What hath a cloud to do with Gentiles? What hath doves to do with worship?

The context gives us several possibilities. Perhaps “these” that fly like a cloud are the Gentile nations that move in a mass across the landscape, heading toward Zion, kicking up dust. Perhaps “these” are the flocks and rams that are turned to smoke to ascend from Yahweh’s altar to Yahweh.

Perhaps the “doves” (yonah) are also the Gentiles who find a place to roost in the house of God. Doves are, like flocks and rams, sacrificial animals (Leviticus 1:14; 5:7, 11; 12:6-8).

It’s an unusual image, but not unprecedented.

Psalm 84:3 says, “The bird also has found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young.” The place where the birds find refuge is “even thine altars, Yahweh of hosts,” the altars that are in the “dwelling places” and “courts of the Lord” for which the Psalmist yearns. He wants to be that dove, who can slip into God’s house and build a nest under the eaves. He wants to be as permanent resident of the temple as the dove.

The temple is a fitting home for birds, since it exists under the shadow of Yahweh’s wings. Yahweh brings Israel from Egypt like a great eagle, He appears in a cloud full of winged angels, and His ark-throne in the temple is constituted by the wings of the cherubim. Yahweh is pictured as a bird, Israel as the chicks that gather under her wings.

And then we are reminded of Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem: “How often have I longed to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not” (Matthew 23). Jesus identifies Himself with Yahweh, or, closely related, with the temple. To join with Jesus is to become a swallow in the house of God, sheltered under the wings.


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