Bat

The bat shows up in scripture in two settings: among the unclean flying creatures listed in the dietary laws, and among the dark, ruined places where idols are flung when the day of Yahweh comes upon the proud.

Listed among the unclean

Both lists of forbidden flying creatures end with the bat, set after the stork, heron, and hoopoe.

"and the stork, the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bat." (Le 11:19).

The Deuteronomy parallel repeats the same closing sequence:

"and the stork, and the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bat." (De 14:18).

In each catalogue the bat closes the list of detestable winged creatures that Israel is not to eat.

Idols cast to the bats

Isaiah's day-of-Yahweh oracle picks the bat up again, this time as the inhabitant of dark, abandoned places where men will throw their idols when terror falls on them:

"In that day man will cast away their idols of silver, and their idols of gold, which have been made for them to worship, to the moles and to the bats;" (Isa 2:20).

The pairing — moles and bats — gathers the silver and gold idols into the company of unclean creatures that haunt holes and twilight roosts. The verse is a reversal: things the people had bowed to are flung among the things they had been told not to touch.