Pop Culture Matters: The Great Speckled Bird and Gospel Music with Martin Strong

Welcome to the seventh episode of Pop Culture Matters, The Great Speckled Bird and Gospel Music with Martin Strong, the ninth episode of season four. Martin is on fire in this episode, maybe due to the Louvin Brothers’ plywood Satan burning in the background, and I lower the temperature with a complicated examination of Jeremiah 12:7-13, with a focus on verse 9, where it is possible your translation mentions a Great Speckled Bird or not. If not, I dig into the Hebrew and the Greek, the Septuagint, to explain why you might find a hyena instead of a Great Speckled Bird, or at least hawk, or birds of prey, which I will discuss below.

Kevin Eng also offers his interpretation of the song the Great Speckled Bird, which he plays on the piano and sings in an old-timey Gospel manner, and which you will find interspersed throughout our discussion. Kevin recorded three verses of the song, but here is the link to the eight full verses of The Great Speckled Bird. 

1.What a beautiful thought I am thinking
Concerning a great speckled bird
Remember her name is recorded
On the pages of God's Holy Word.

 

2. All the other birds are flocking 'round her
And she is despised by the squad
But the great speckled bird in the Bible
Is one with the great church of God.

 

3. All the other churches are against her
They envy her glory and fame
They hate her because she is chosen
And has not denied Jesus' name.

 

4. Desiring to lower her standard
They watch every move that she makes
They long to find fault with her teachings
But really they find no mistake.

 

5. She is spreading her wings for a journey
She's going to leave by and by
When the trumpet shall sound in the morning
She'll rise and go up in the sky.

 

6. In the presence of all her despisers
With a song never uttered before
She will rise and be gone in a moment
Till the great tribulation is o'er.

 

7. I am glad I have learned of her meekness
I am proud that my name is on her book
For I want to be one never fearing
The face of my Savior to look.

 

8. When He cometh descending from heaven
On the cloud that He writes in His Word
I'll be joyfully carried to meet Him
On the wings of that great speckled bird. (Lyrics: Guy Martin Smith)

I want to offer some of the biblical background to this song, so get ready for a complex discussion:

The two Hebrew words that are the source of the translation trouble are ʿayiṭ ṣābûaʿ(tzbua): is this a speckled bird or birds of prey or a hawk or a hyena (or a hyena’s cave)? One thing I must mention is that the way the Great Speckled Bird is interpreted as the Church in this song is a common Christian way of adapting Jewish scriptures, but in the actual historical context of the prophet Jeremiah, who lived in the 600s BC, centuries before Jesus, the “heritage” that is destroyed refers to the kingdom of Judah. God has allowed all the wild animals to destroy Judah. My point here is that the song is based on particularly Christian readings that extract the passage from its historical Jewish context.  Below are few recent English versions:

Jeremiah 12:9: New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVUE - most current and academically sound translation)

Is the hawk hungry for my heritage?
    Are the vultures all around her?
Go, assemble all the wild animals;
    bring them to devour her.

Jeremiah 12:9: New Revised Standard Version (NRSV – up until a couple of years ago, the most up to date translation until NRSVUE, which is based on this translation)

Is the hyena greedy for my heritage at my command?
    Are the birds of prey all around her?
Go, assemble all the wild animals;
    bring them to devour her.

Jeremiah 12:9: King James Version (KJV – old-timey translation from 16^th century)

Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds round about are against her; come ye, assemble all the beasts of the field, come to devour.

Jeremiah is originally written in Hebrew. So, the Hebrew is the basis for all the translations. Translators clearly have been confused by how to translate the “ speckled bird,” but this might go back to ancient times, especially the word being translated as “speckled,” since it is a hapax legomenon, which means it only occurs once in the whole Bible, and the first translation of the Hebrew into Greek in the 3^rd century BC (more on that in a bit) translates ʿayiṭ ṣābûaʿas hyena. That's how the hyena gets in there.

The ancient Hebrew text (translating as literally as I can) is as follows:

Is my heritage to me an ʿayiṭ ṣābûaʿ?

Are the birds of prey circling round her?

Go, assemble all the wild animals;

bring them to devour her.

The Septuagint (LXX) translates the phrase ʿayiṭ ṣābûaʿ as a hyena's cave:

Surely my heritage is not a hyena's cave to me
or a cave all around her?
Go, assemble all the animals of the field, and let them come to eat her.

Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1–20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, vol. 21A, Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2008), 654 offers key insights for those who want to dig deeper. I will offer a long paragraph from his commentary here:

"Is my heritage to me a speckled bird of prey? Are the birds of prey circling round her? This bicolon is clear in the Hebrew except for one word, ṣābûaʿ, an OT hapax legomenon that is here translated “speckled.” The double rhetorical question plays on the collective noun, ʿayiṭ, meaning “bird(s) of prey” (like English “deer”). See Gen 15:11; Isa 18:6; 46:11; and Ezek 39:4. The first ʿayiṭ ̣is singular and is a metaphor for Judah; the second is a plural representing the nations round about. If ṣābûaʿ is left untranslated, the two questions would read: “Is my heritage to me a bird of prey? Are the birds of prey circling round her?” It is simply a matter then of finding an acceptable translation for ṣābûaʿ. Traditionally this term is taken to be the passive participle of ṣbʿ, meaning “to color” (Rudolph). Cognates are attested in Akkadian, Aramaic, and Arabic, and the verb means “to dye” in postbiblical Hebrew (Emerton 1969: 183). In Judg 5:30 the noun ṣebaʾ (plural ṣĕbāʿîm) translates as “dyed fabric(s)” (cf. BDB, 840). The expression ʿayiṭ ṣābûaʿ is then accordingly translated, “speckled bird of prey,” i.e., bird with variegated plumage. With support from Vg (discolor) and Rashi, this reading is adopted by Hitzig, Giesebrecht, Duhm, and numerous other commentators. The traditional interpretation then is basically sound, with the possible exception of the oft-repeated claim that birds of variegated plumage are commonly set upon by other birds—a variation of the “colored coat” episode involving Joseph and his brothers (Genesis 37). Color does make a bird more visible to predators, but in and of itself color is not known to provoke hostility in other birds. Hitzig cited Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny in support of his view, but these writers say nothing about birds warring with other birds of colored plumage. The same idea is found in Rashi, who gave as another possibility a bird stained with blood, around which other birds would gather. Similarly Kimḥi. The LXX translates ṣābûaʿ with hyainēs (“hyena”). The Hebrew has this meaning in Sir 13:17 [Eng 13:18] (Lévi 1904: 20) and in the Talmud (Dict Talm, 1257: “checkered leopard or striped hyena?”). There are also cognates in Arabic and Syriac (Emerton 1969: 184). “Hyena” is the definition given in KB, although the OThas no cognate term with this meaning. The problem, actually, is not the meaning of “(striped) hyena” for ṣābûaʿ, but an entire bicolon in the LXX which no modern Version translates. It reads: “Is not my inheritance to me a hyena’s lair, or a lair round about her?” Both occurrences of ʿayiṭ have been translated spēlaion (“lair”), for which a satisfactory explanation has yet to be given. The hybrid readings of NEB, NAB, and NJV are all unacceptable."

Bottom line: it could be a great speckled bird, but it's not certain!

In terms of the Gospel music genre to which the song belongs, it is suffused as you can see with biblical passages, as are all of the Top 5 that Martin chose. 

Here is a linked list of Martin's Top 5 Gospel songs, with his preferred versions, which he expanded to 7 and to which I added The Great Speckled Bird, which makes it 8:

1. Great Speckled Bird - Roy Acuff
2. I Saw the Light - Hank Williams
3. I'll Fly Away - Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch
4. Will the Circle Be Unbroken - The Staples Singers
5. Angel Band - The Stanley Brothers
6. The Christian Life - The Louvin Brothers
7. Just a Closer Walk with Thee - Patsy Cline
8. Milky White Way - Elvis Presley

And now some news on upcoming podcast episodes:

Coming up next, we will have the Ruth Braunstein episode on Christian nationalism and evangelicalism in the USA. Stay tuned. I found it a compelling and powerful episode. 

Let us know what movies you want to discuss on our next Pop Culture Matters episode, Christmas Movies, part 2. Listen to the first episode so you know what we have already discussed.

Follow us at our Instagram page, @stmarkscce or on our website Centre for Christian Engagement and drop us a line as to what you want to see or hear. Or email us with your suggestions to [e-mail] or [e-mail].

 Upcoming Events

The synodality series has started. I gave my lecture on November 20, The NT Origins of Synodality at St. Matthew's, Surrey and it was a great event. After the series is completed, we will be taping our lectures and putting them on our website for the CCE and our YouTube channel. Coming up!

-          December 13 - Dr. Fiona Li, Mary as a Model for a Synodal Church (St. Peter's, New Westminster); Fr. Nick Meisl, The OT Origins of Synodality (St. Peter's, New Westminster), 2:30 pm

-          January - Dr Nick Olkovich - The Synodal Parish: A Sign of Hope for a Broken World (St. Paul's, Richmond) TBD.

On February 20, 7 pm, Cathy Clifford from St. Paul’s University in Ottawa will wrap up the synodality series at St. Mark’s College. Her lecture is called, “Toward a Spirituality for a Synodal Church.”

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Thanks again for listening and remember pop culture matters. 

John W. Martens