Attempting to interpret and isolated chapter from a book or an isolated scene from a movie is not a recipe for success. Events viewed out of context are events without meaning. We are forced to read purpose into them based upon our own presuppositions, our own context. What was going through Noah's mind when he sent out the raven? Did the raven return? Was the raven sent first because it was unclean and therefore a less valuable animal to preserve for the new world? Or was it sent first because it was a stronger bird? Does the phrase "to and fro" suggest a single outward journey and return? Or did the bird not return, eating and resting upon floating corpses, as Luther suggests? All sorts of Jewish and Christian sources have been quoted, but it seems to me that everybody has missed the point. If we are open to the idea of one story being told over and over again in different ways, using different "raw materials," we are not left helpless in pondering Noah's possible thoughts. If the Spirit of God was work, it is likely Noah was thinking God's thoughts. How can we know God's thoughts? We can see the same action taking place in other places in the Bible, and the clue is not so much the raw materials as the structure, the "process" of God's work in the world. The chain of events in the Garden of Eden prefigures the annual feasts of Israel. This sevenfold pattern then becomes the first cycle in a history of seven cycles, taking us from Adam to Noah, from the beginning of the first world to the beginning of a new one. In Eden, the Day of Atonement was the Spirit of the Lord "moving to and fro" searching for Adam and Eve "in the Spirit of the Day." Blood was shed and the Land was rendered clean. Man moved from the Garden into the Land and began farming. In the greater pattern, the Day of Atonement is the flood. Once again blood was shed and the Land was rendered clean. This connection between eyes, ravens, obedience to God (Father) and in a Christian reading the Church (Mother), and His subsequent blessing upon the Land turns up in some strange places. Here's one that puts a Noahic spin on one of the Ten Commandments: *The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures.* (Proverbs 30:17) The High Priestly rite of atonement, introduced many centuries later, is the same process in miniature. The urim and thummim, a white stone and a black stone hidden in the ephod, communicated the mind of the Lord concerning the offering. A white stone meant that the offering had been accepted and the Land was once again considered clean by the Lord for another year. (It is interesting that the Talmud records that a black stone was drawn every year after the death of Jesus until the destruction of the Temple. [1]) In Hebrew, the word "redeemer" is two fold. It means both avenger <em>and</em> redeemer. The Lord destroys His enemies and rescues His people. So, the black bird is the eyes and mouth of the destroyer. He is unclean because he has the job of cleaning up the mess, eating death just like the serpent eats (Adamic) dust. The Covenant curse included being left unburied, left exposed to be eaten by birds and beasts. (Note that similar words from the mouth of Goliath were what filled David with righteous indignation. Goliath was cursing the children of Abraham.) As the black bird moved "to and fro" like the eyes of God, scanning the face of the waters, so the white bird searched for a holy remnant of the old world to save and carry into the new: "The Branch." To a Christian, not only can we read this dual act of blessing and cursing back into the history of Noah, we can read it forward in the book of Revelation, which takes just about every Covenant/festal cycle in the Bible and rolls them all together into an amazing tapestry of Israel's history, one shaped like a wheel full of eyes. Of course, the raven did return to his mate eventually. We still have ravens. And the Word of the Lord never returns to Him empty, even when that Word is a curse. ________________________________________________ [1] See <a href="http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2009/05/20/a-white-stone-3/">A White Stone - 3</a>.