Resolute, and full of assurance that I would find femininity’s origins in the heart of God, I began pouring through Scripture in search of what Genesis claims. My eagerness waned as the hours passed. Most of the feminine imagery I found was in context of God being a female bird. So far this search was not going very well. There were some things to glean from these analogies, although they were not quite what I was looking for. Throughout Psalms, the writers reference the comfort and protection found under the shadow of God’s wings. God is described as a Mother Bear robbed of her cubs (Hosea 13:8) and a mothering hen in Matthew 23:37 with similar protection described in Ruth 2:12.
Deuteronomy 32:11-12 describes God as a mother eagle:
“Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
That hovers over its young,
He spread His wings and caught them,
He carried them on His pinions.
The LORD alone guided him,
And there was no foreign god with him.”
We know this verse is a reference to the female eagle because she is stronger and larger than her mate and is the one who bears the eaglets on her wings when they learn to fly. With unforeseen motion the eagle will plummet down and force them to fly alone. But just like our Father, the mother eagle is always near enough so she can ascend to just below them when they become too tired to go on. This verse is a captivating image of a God who supports the weak on wings that soar high while still pushing His children out of comfort zones. Moses uses the same imagery in Exodus 19:4 when he writes: “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself.”
What poetic images of a God who is tender and strong, and grows us up to be the same. In the next post I will cover Isaiah's discriptions of God in feminine terms.
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