The Bear
Bears once lived in the hills and forests of Israel, and Scripture remembers them as fierce and dangerous. David told Saul that he had rescued a lamb from both a lion and a bear, and drew courage from it to face Goliath. When a crowd of young people mocked Elisha on the road to Bethel, two she bears came out of the wood and mauled forty-two of them, a sobering account of contempt for God's prophet. In Daniel's vision a bear with three ribs in its mouth stands for the second of four kingdoms, and Isaiah foresees a day when 'the cow and the bear shall feed' together.
Key Passages
Elisha and the Two She Bears
2 Kings 2:23-24
The mocking of God's newly commissioned prophet is answered with severe judgment, showing that scorn for God's word is never a small thing.
23nd he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
The Bear with Three Ribs
Daniel 7:5
In Daniel's vision of four beasts, the bear pictures a powerful, devouring empire that rises after the first.
5nd behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.
Explore Related
Did You Know?
David killed both a lion and a bear while guarding his father's sheep.
The Hebrew words behind 'little children' in 2 Kings 2:23 can also describe youths or young men.
Proverbs says meeting 'a bear robbed of her whelps' is safer than meeting a fool in his folly.
Isaiah pictures the messianic kingdom as a time when 'the cow and the bear shall feed' together.