Partridge

The partridge appears twice in scripture, both times as a figure rather than a creature observed for its own sake. In the wilderness south of Judah it is an image of the hunted; in Jeremiah it is an image of fraud. The bird itself goes undescribed; what carries the picture in each case is the way it behaves under pressure or with eggs.

The Hunted Bird

David's protest from the rocks of the wilderness uses the partridge as the figure of his own situation. Saul has come down with three thousand chosen men, and David — having spared the king in the camp — calls out across the hill: "Now therefore, don't let my blood fall to the earth away from the presence [Speech] of Yahweh: for the king of Israel has come out to seek a flea, as when one hunts a partridge in the mountains" (1 Samuel 26:20). The simile turns on disproportion. The king of Israel has mustered his army not after a rival but after small game in rough country — a flea, a hill-partridge. The partridge in the mountains is a creature that flies short, runs, and is chased on foot through stone; it is the image of pursuit out of all scale to the prey.

The Brooding Bird

Jeremiah uses the partridge for a different observation: the bird that sits on eggs that are not hers. The image opens a proverb-form line on dishonest wealth: "As the partridge that sits on [eggs] which she has not laid, so is he who gets riches, and not by right; in the midst of his days they will leave him, and at his end he will be a fool" (Jeremiah 17:11). The figure is exact. A bird brooding a clutch she did not lay holds something that will not stay with her — it hatches and goes — and so does the man who gets riches by means that are not his right. The desertion is built into the act. The end of such a man is foolishness; what he gathered was never going to remain.