This morning I was reading Psalm 104 – a great creation Psalm in the New American Standard Bible. I reached verse 18 and read the word shephanim. Here was a word that required looking up. First the verse:
The high mountains are for the wild goats;The cliffs are a refuge for the shephanim.
This is where Google was helpful. One of the first search results brought up a rather, in my view, delightful devotional by Chuck Swindoll. When I was in my late teens I read a lot of his books which I loved with his wit, easy reading style and expounding of scripture. The article explained about the shephanim and is entitled Prudence. Chuck is basing his devotional on a few verses about wisdom from Proverbs 30 and what it says about the shephanim there which isn’t very much but it’s enough for us as we read it to consider them and what we can learn of them as we look at their lives.
There is a quote which really connected for me about the nature of the shephanim. But first you may be wondering if you haven’t read Chuck’s post what a shephanim is? Not to be confused with seraphim – the bronze winged serpent like creature, the heavenly throne guardian.
SERAPHIM (שׂרפים, srpym; “burning ones”). The six-winged heavenly beings that carry the live coals and guard the throne of Yahweh in Isa 6:2.
Stocker, Abigail, and John D. Barry. 2016. “Seraphim.” In The Lexham Bible Dictionary, edited by John D. Barry, David Bomar, Derek R. Brown, Rachel Klippenstein, Douglas Mangum, Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, Lazarus Wentz, Elliot Ritzema, and Wendy Widder. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
No! This is more humble than that. Shephanim is plural of shephan. It’s the Hebrew word for what has been translated in various Bible translations as badger, rock badger, Coney or hyrax (This link is very informative about them).
A team from our church, a few years ago visited Ruaha Game Park in Tanzania, where we managed to see a very similar animal if not the same one. They are very photogenic and obliging.
Back to the quote which really struck me in relation to aspirations of any Christian community:
Despite the fact that everything wants to eat them and they are hunted on the ground and from the sky, very few shephanim actually fall victim to their predators. That’s because they live in very secure refuges, remain close to home, and have a remarkably complex sentry system. The older adults usually take positions on prominent lookout spots and sound the alarm at the first sign of danger.
Wouldn’t it be great that we could say this as the church. When I say this I mean the parts I’ve highlighted in bold. We have God as our refuge as Psalm 46 states – something that the world needs right now. We are meant to demonstrate this as a body of believers. It’s good for us not to wander far from home as if we do we can be picked off by the enemy. We need each other for support. To have those who are older and supposedly wiser to watch out for those who are younger in the faith and point out graciously dangers which come along. Being a group together of people, the church will have many with varying gifts which when discovered and realised can be of support to one another. This is a challenge for me to exemplify personally but something for us a corporate entity to really pay attention to. There is a purpose that scripture has been recorded for us even the stranger bits. Let’s ask for wisdom generally but also specifically ask that we as the church would become more like these endearing creatures.