RAVEN (עֹרֵב֒, H6854; κόραξ, G3165. All Eng. VSS). This tr. is not in doubt and it is amply confirmed by several contexts; e.g. the color: Song of Solomon 5:11, “black as a raven”; a typical habit; Proverbs 30:17, “The eye...will be picked out by the ravens.” Palestine has six members of the crow family—raven, fantailed raven, hooded crow, and jay, which are all resident; and rook and jackdaw, which are winter visitors, though a colony of the latter stays to nest in a partly man-made cave in the S Judean hills. The Eng. practice is to use crow as a general word for the family, but in particular for the (carrion) crow. This principle seems to apply also to these Heb. and Gr. words, though the brightly colored jay is so different that this is prob. excepted. The true raven is found in suitable places over the northern half of the northern hemisphere. It is a heavy, powerful bird about twenty-five inches long with a massive three-inch beak that could easily knock an eye out. The large, untidy nest is usually placed on a rock ledge but sometimes in a tree. The fan-tailed raven, of the rocky gorges, has a shorter tail and is about eighteen inches long, i.e., about the same as the hooded crow. Almost any animal food, dead, dying or weak, is acceptable, which explains why the raven that Noah released had no need to return to the ark (Gen 8:7). The raven family is logically included in the lists of unclean food (G. R. Driver, PEQ [1955] pp. 5-20). Yet God used some of them, perhaps hooded crows which are fond of storing food, to bring supplies to Elijah (1 Kings 17).

The raven is often seen and its deep “pruk pruk” heard, but the commonest of the crows today is the hooded, which haunts roadsides, waiting to pick any small animals knocked down or run over by cars. The only variation between the VSS is in Zephaniah 2:14, where RSV reads Heb. עֹרֵב֒, H6854, raven, while KJV has חֹ֣רֶב, desolation.

Bibliography Peterson, Mountford and Hollom, Field Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe (1954); A. Parmelee, All the Birds of the Bible (1959); J. G. Williams, Field Guide to Birds of East and Central Africa (1963).