Owl

The owl appears in the UPDV at two registers: as a named member of the unclean-bird roster in the dietary code, and as a marker of desolation in the prophetic ruin-oracles. In several passages where older English versions read "owl," the UPDV (following the Revised Version tradition) reads "ostrich" — so a reader tracing the owl through scripture will find the bird present by name in the law and in one Edom-oracle line, but elsewhere meets ostriches, jackals, and wild beasts of the desert in the same desolation catalogs traditionally filed under owl.

In the Dietary Code

The Levitical and Deuteronomic catalogs of birds-not-to-be-eaten name owls explicitly. Leviticus opens the bird-list with the rubric "you⁺ will detest among the birds; they will not be eaten, they are detestable: the eagle, and the gier-eagle, and the osprey" (Lev 11:13), then continues "and the kite, and the falcon after its kind" (Lev 11:14), "and the ostrich, and the nighthawk, and the seamew, and the hawk after its kind" (Lev 11:16), "and the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl" (Lev 11:17), "and the horned owl, and the pelican, and the vulture" (Lev 11:18), and "and the stork, the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bat" (Lev 11:19). The owl appears here in three named species — little owl, great owl, and horned owl — bracketed across two adjacent verses with the cormorant interleaved, so the owl-family enters the catalog as a triplet of kinds rather than a single entry.

The Deuteronomic parallel, set against its opening allowance "Of all clean birds you⁺ may eat" (Deut 14:11), gives the owl-list as a tighter block: after "and the glede, and the falcon, and the kite after its kind" (Deut 14:13), "and every raven after its kind" (Deut 14:14), and "and the ostrich, and the nighthawk, and the sea-mew, and the hawk after its kind" (Deut 14:15), it continues "the little owl, and the great owl, and the horned owl" (Deut 14:16), then "and the pelican, and the vulture, and the cormorant" (Deut 14:17). Here the three owl-kinds are gathered into one verse, a same-family bloc entered whole into the unclean catalog. Both passages place the owl alongside the other night-hunters and carrion-feeders, set apart from the eatable birds without further comment.

The Owl in the Ruin-Oracle

In Isaiah's oracle against Edom, the owl is one of the named occupants of the ruined land: "But the pelican and the porcupine will possess it; and the owl and the raven will stay in it: and he will stretch over it the line of confusion, and the plummet of emptiness" (Isa 34:11). The pairing is paradigmatic — the night-hunting bird and the carrion-bird together are the diagnostic mark of a place under the divine "line of confusion" verdict. The same chapter continues the catalog with other wilderness creatures: "And the wild beasts of the desert will meet with the wolves, and the wild goat will cry to his companion; yes, the night-monster will settle there, and will find her a place of rest" (Isa 34:14); "There will the dart-snake make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shade; yes, there will the kites be gathered, every one with her mate" (Isa 34:15). The owl belongs to this whole ecology of post-judgment occupants — pelican, porcupine, raven, wolves, wild goat, night-monster, dart-snake, kite — that fill the place humans have abandoned.

Where UPDV Reads Ostrich

A cluster of passages that older English Bibles classed under "owl" the UPDV renders with "ostriches." These are the same ruin-oracle and lament passages traditionally filed under owl, but with a different bird occupying the named slot. Their content is unchanged in shape — the desolation-catalog and the lament-companion image both still operate — only the species named has shifted.

In Job's lament over his social abandonment, the bird-comparison reads: "I am a brother to jackals, / And a companion to ostriches" (Job 30:29). The companion-pair is jackal and ostrich, fixing the speaker's solitude by association with the desert's outcast creatures.

The Babylon-ruin oracle of Isaiah 13 names the same kind of desert occupants: "But wild beasts of the desert will lie there; and their houses will be full of doleful creatures; and ostriches will stay there, and wild goats will dance there" (Isa 13:21). The ostrich is one of four — wild beasts, doleful creatures, ostriches, wild goats — that make Babylon's ruined houses their habitation.

A second Isaianic Edom verse continues the Edom-ruin catalog in the same idiom as the chapter's earlier owl-line: "And thorns will come up in its palaces, nettles and thistles in its fortresses; and it will be a habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches" (Isa 34:13). Palaces gone to thorn, fortresses gone to thistle, courts gone to ostrich — the ostrich here marks the inversion of royal architecture into wildlife habitat.

In a positive register, the wilderness-creature pair returns under Yahweh's voice in the wilderness-rivers oracle: "The beasts of the field will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen" (Isa 43:20). The same jackal-and-ostrich pairing that elsewhere marks ruin here marks praise — the desert creatures honor Yahweh for the water given to his people.

The Babylon-doom oracle in Jeremiah repeats Isaiah's ruin-roster: "Therefore the wild beasts of the desert with the wolves will dwell there, and the ostriches will dwell in it: and it will be inhabited no more forever; neither will it be stayed in from generation to generation" (Jer 50:39). Wild beasts, wolves, and ostriches together compose the dwelling-population of an inhabited-no-more place.

In Micah's prophetic lament, the bird-comparison drives the wail itself: "For this I will lament and wail; I will go stripped and naked; I will make a wailing like the jackals, and a lamentation like the ostriches" (Mic 1:8). The wailing is jackal-like and the lamentation is ostrich-like — the prophet's grief borrows the voices of the desert creatures.

Across these six passages the UPDV reads "ostriches" or, in the lament-pair, "the ostriches" — never "owls." So the reader who follows the traditional owl-thread into the prophets and Job will find, in UPDV, that the named bird at the relevant verse is the ostrich, not the owl. The owl by name remains in the dietary code of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and in the single Edom-line of Isa 34:11.