BEAR
The Syrian brown bear is the animal formerly encountered in Palestine, and is still found in N Syria, NW Iran and S Turkey. It is most often light brown in color and averages about three hundred pounds (136 kilograms) in weight. Despite seeming awkwardness, the bear can move with great rapidity even over rough ground, some varieties attaining a speed of nearly thirty miles (48 kilometers) an hour for a short distance. Bears are also good swimmers, and most of them can climb.
The idea that bears hug or squeeze their victims to death is not borne out by the facts. When engaged in a struggle, the bear strikes with its huge paws, and its powerful, heavy arms drive the nonretractile claws deep into the body of its opponent. A single blow may be sufficient to kill an animal such as a deer. Most appropriately, therefore, the Scriptures allude to the bear’s dangerousness in parallel with that of the lion. (Amos 5:19; Lam. 3:10) Naturalists, in fact, consider the bear to be even more dangerous than the large cats. Usually, however, the bear, like other animals, does not molest humans but avoids them, although it may attack when provoked or surprised.
The ferocity of the female bear when its young are lost or endangered is mentioned several times in the Scriptures. (2 Sam. 17:8; Prov. 17:12; Hos. 13:8) Bears, on one occasion, served as God’s executioners against the delinquent youths who mocked the prophet Elisha.—2 Ki. 2:24.
Bears subsist on a varied diet, feeding on leaves and roots of plants, fruits, berries nuts, eggs, insects, fish, rodents and the like, and have a special fondness for honey. Although there are exceptions, bears seem to prefer a vegetarian diet. Nonetheless, in ancient Israel, in the season when fruits and other nonflesh items of the bear’s diet were scarce, herders of sheep and goats had to be on guard against the depredations of bears. In his youth David had to brave the attack of a bear in order to protect his father’s flock.—1 Sam. 17:34-37.
When bears are hungry, and get the scent of prey, they are known to make an impatient groaning sound. So the prophet Isaiah describes the Israelites as ‘groaning like bears’ in expectation of justice and salvation, only to be disappointed repeatedly. (Isa. 59:11) An onrushing bear is also fittingly likened to a wicked ruler who harries and oppresses his lowly subjects.—Prov. 28:15.
In Daniel’s vision of terrible beasts symbolizing mighty ruling dynasties of earth, the bear represented the Medo-Persian dynasty and its greed for territorial conquest and pillage. (Dan. 7:5, 17) Rapacious like this, the wild beast out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, is seen in John’s vision to have feet “as those of a bear.” (Rev. 13:2) Suitably, then, the peacefulness among Jehovah’s regathered people, under Messiah’s rule, is indicated by the prophecy that the bear will feed with the cow.—Isa. 11:7.
[Picture on page 197]
Syrian bear