the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Fowl
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or FOWL.—The word ‘fowl’ is now almost restricted to poultry, and especially to that familiar bird in a farmyard, the ‘barn-door fowl’; but it is used in the NT in a wider sense. The Gr. word πετεινά (lit. ‘flying things’) does not indeed signify, as its derivation might imply, all winged creatures—a meaning sometimes attached to ‘fowls’ in Old English (Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible, art. ‘Fowl’). It denotes ‘birds,’ of which there are many species in Palestine, including some which are only birds of passage with us. Quite arbitrarily Authorized Version renders πετεινά by ‘birds’ in Matthew 8:20; Matthew 13:32, Luke 9:58; and by ‘fowls’ in Matthew 6:26; Matthew 13:4, Mark 4:4; Mark 4:32, Luke 8:5; Luke 12:24; Luke 13:19. In every case in which πετεινά occurs in the Gospels Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 gives ‘birds.’
Borrowing so much as He did from outward nature, our Lord often employed birds to illustrate His teaching. Their nests are contrasted with His own pillowless conch (Matthew 8:20). In the parable of the Sower they devour the seed that falls by the wayside (Matthew 13:4); in that of the Mustard Seed they lodge under the shadow of the huge plant which grew out of such a tiny germ (Mark 4:32). Their free undistracted lives play an important part in that cumulative argument which Christ builds up in the Sermon on the Mount against the tyranny of care. They neither sow, reap, nor gather into barns, yet the heavenly Father feeds them (Matthew 6:26), i.e. they are inferior to man in two respects. For (1) they cannot anticipate and influence the future as man can by the exercise of his reason or the labour of his hands; (2) God is only their Creator, but He is man’s Father, and will not forget His child. Though the ‘fowls’ cannot foresee, or work, or trust, they have no care. Yet they are fed. How foolish of man, who can do all these things, to fall so far beneath the ‘fowls,’ and worry over food and drink, when his first duty is to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness!
D. A. Mackinnon.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Fowl'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/f/fowl.html. 1906-1918.
