Identify five key lessons about rejection from the Ancient Writings (Old Testament) and the truth to make you free.
As revealed throughout the 10 passages about “ostriches” throughout the Bible, we can observe what the ostrich has to teach us about rejection and how it operates.
Ostrich lesson #1: Don’t chew or ruminate on thoughts of rejection. Don’t let rejection become a part of your spiritual DNA (identity, attitude, physiology, life, and/or biology).
“every raven after its kind, 16 the ostrich, the short-eared owl, the sea gull, and the hawk after its kind; 17 the little owl, the fisher owl, and the screech owl;”
–Leviticus 11:15-17 NKJV [emphasis mine]
“All clean birds you may eat. 12 But these you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the buzzard, 13 the red kite, the falcon, and the kite after their kinds; 14 every raven after its kind; 15 the ostrich, the short-eared owl, the sea gull, and the hawk after their kinds;”
–Deuteronomy 14:11-15 NKJV [emphasis mine]
The first time that ostriches are mentioned in the Bible, they are described as unclean birds. At that time, God’s chosen people were not permitted to take such meat into their bodies. In the Old Covenant, the Israelites were prohibited from consuming various kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and creeping things. Many of the Old Covenant laws had spiritual lessons attached to them. Such lessons are meant to be applied in the New Covenant (a person’s relationship with God through Jesus Christ).
For example, Paul writes that the Mosaic law to not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain. This ancient law was meant to carry a New Testament application: help meet the material needs of your pastors (see Deuteronomy 25:4; 1 Corinthians 9:9-10; 1 Timothy 5:17-18).
Oxen represent spiritual leaders who serve others in order to reap a spiritual harvest. In the same way, the other animals of the Old Testament also carry significant meaning with lessons for us to apply to our everyday lives.
Not only were God’s people forbidden to eat certain “unclean” animals in the Old Testament for mere hygienic reasons. In addition, the purpose of such prohibitions was also to inform believers in the New Covenant about how to walk in discernment.
Identifying wrong thoughts or ideas helps us to grow in spiritual maturity. This occurs as we experience God’s love and put it into practice. Wisdom and discernment is available for any believer in Jesus who will grow in spiritual maturity by yielding in submission to God’s leadership. (See Hebrews 5:12-14; Proverbs 2; James 1:2-5).
The deeper we increase in our level of trust and obedience to God’s Word, the more we become like Jesus. The more we think and become like God, the more freedom, peace, and joy we get to experience. The purpose of discernment is to identify anything in our lives that is not of God (anything that hinders love). Then we may get rid of anything in our lives, thoughts and actions that is contrary to God’s character or nature.
“Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” –2 Corinthians 7:1 NKJV
Ostrich lesson #2: Rejection can be a strong coping mechanism used to numb a person’s pain. As a defense mechanism, it can pretend to be a “good friend.” Don’t adopt a rejection mindset.
“I go about mourning, but not in the sun; I stand up in the assembly and cry out for help. 29 I am a brother of jackals, and a companion of ostriches. 30 My skin grows black and falls from me; my bones burn with fever.”
–Job 30:28-30 NKJV [emphasis mine]
Job suffered terrible trauma at the loss of his property, children, reputation, and health. After losing his joy and hope, he wallowed in self-pity and depression. In Job 30, he identified himself as “a brother of jackals and a companion of ostriches.”
Job’s hope and joy was stolen from him due to what He believed about God through the lens of his painful circumstances. Job had a “rejection mindset” when he believed that God was unfairly afflicting him for His own mysterious, sovereign purposes. He believed that God was capricious or arbitrary in letting bad things happen in Job’s life for no good reason.
Job believed lies about who God was and what God was up to. Consequently, he was filled with anxiety, despair, bitterness, depression, and hopelessness. However, when God rebuked Job for embracing a proud, rejection mindset (which God likened to a spiritual entity called “Leviathan…king over all the sons of pride”), Job repented.
In other words, Job changed the way he thought about God. After Job humbled himself and trembled at God’s word, then Job knew the truth, and the truth made him free (see Job 41-42; Isaiah 66:2; John 8:31-32; James 4:6-7).
Finally, in Job 42, Job chose to believe that God is completely good, powerful, loving, and just. Job realized that God is fair, non-arbitrary, and perfect in all His decisions and nature. Job recognized that no matter what trauma he experienced, God was not responsible. He recognized that no matter what difficult pain he went through, God was not blameworthy.
Only then Job could finally be filled with God’s love, joy, and peace. No longer did Job have to live with anxiety and fear concerning bad things that happen after He understood the nature of God. He humbled himself and chose to believe that all things work together for the good of those who love God, obey Him, and who let His words transform them from the inside-out.
"Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons." (1 Corinthians 10:20 NKJV)
Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers that he did not want them to have fellowship with demons. According to Paul, it is possible for a believer in Jesus to “have fellowship with demons.” Such “fellowship” was not something that Paul did not want the Corinthians to do. In his writings to the Ephesian church, Paul told believers not to “give the devil a foothold.” He also told them to stand their ground as they wrestled with invisible satanic entities (see Ephesians 4:27; 6:10-12).
Rather than assuming that believers in Jesus are unconditionally immune to demonic oppression, influence, deception, temptation, attack, and/or fellowship, Paul and the other apostles tell believers just the opposite. See 1 Corinthians 5:5; 7:5; 2 Corinthians 2:11; 11:14: 12:7; 1 Thessalonians 2:18; 1 Timothy 1:20; 3:6-7; 4:1; 5:15; 2 Timothy 2:26; James 1:12-17; 3:15; 4:7; 1 Peter 5:8. These Scriptural references are found by using the BibleGateWay.com search engine for the terms “satan,” “devil,” and “demon.”
Believers can patiently increase their immunity or resilience to demonic oppression, influence, deception, temptation, attack, or fellowship. This happens to the degree that they fellowship with God, love God, think the way He thinks, and do what He says.
The deeper one connects with God and becomes more like Jesus, the greater the level of victory that a believer will experience against the demonic. This increases one’s freedom from deception, lies, guilt, shame, fear, condemnation, envy, addiction, anxiety, depression, etc. By knowledge the just shall be delivered, and the truth shall make one free. Such freedom is a byproduct of abiding in Jesus’ words (see Proverbs 11:9; John 8:31-32).
Ostrich lesson #3: A rejection mindset lacks understanding, and it treats a person harshly. It can crush a person’s spirit as early as the womb.
“The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, but are her wings and pinions like the kindly stork’s? 14 For she leaves her eggs on the ground, and warms them in the dust; 15 she forgets that a foot may crush them, or that a wild beast may break them. 16 She treats her young harshly, as though they were not hers; her labor is in vain, without concern,17 because God deprived her of wisdom, and did not endow her with understanding.18 When she lifts herself on high, she scorns the horse and its rider.
–Job 39:13-18 NKJV [emphasis mine]
In this chapter, God rebukes and teaches Job about the reality of Job’s situation. Just as Jesus used parables (many involving animals) to uncover spiritual truth, God does the same with Job. Just as Jesus Himself used the “birds of the air” as a metaphor for demons (or “Satan,” see Mark 4:4,15), God teaches Job about the characteristics of various “birds of the air,” “beasts of the field,” and other creatures (see Job 38:39-41:34).
The author of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 classifies “the ostrich” as a “bird of the air.” Just as the ostrich is the world’s largest bird in the animal kingdom today, the spirit of rejection is among the most influential and destructive entities in Satan’s invisible kingdom of darkness. What spiritual lesson does God want to teach his people through this “mystery of the ostrich?:” Don’t be like Job was in Job 30:29; don’t fellowship with spirits of rejection. In other words, don’t adopt a “rejection mindset”).
God often uses spiritual categories throughout the Bible in describing the “beasts of the field,” “birds of the air,” “fish of the sea,” “creeping things,” etc. Bats can represent spirits of blindness, ostriches can represent spirits of rejection, and the other birds represent other kinds of spirits. Their physical and behavioral characteristics have spiritual parallels to how other invisible entities operate and exist.
To list just a few other ways that the Bible personifies animals,
- Pigs represent “scoffers” (or proud, intellectual know-it-alls). (1)
- A “dog” represents somebody who lacks self-control (or greedy, lustful, carnal “fools” who follow their own appetites without self-restraint). (2)
- Foxes represent sly, cunning, scheming, sneaky, politically-maneuvering people who try to manipulate others to get what they want while seeking to appear innocent.
- Wolves represent [religious] hypocrites, people who may appear innocent [when disguised in sheeps’ clothing] yet are very judgmental and will not hesitate to tear others to shreds when their opportunity finally arises.
- Poisonous snakes (vipers, adders, cobras, and/or asps) represent personalities who are filled with envy and bitterness. (3)
- Camels can represent rich, affluent, wealthy, successful people who put their security in their material possessions rather than in God. (4)
- Crocodiles and/or sea serpents represent how pride operates. (5)
- Sheep represent disciples (teachable students) who follow Jesus, or the people who submit to God’s loving leadership.
Job identified himself as a companion of ostriches, and God later instructed Job about the nature of ostriches. What was God teaching Job through His lesson about ostriches? God described ostriches as creatures who abandon their young, neglect to care and nurture them, treat them cruelly, and who leave them vulnerable to all kinds of external threats. God deprived the ostrich of wisdom and understanding in order to provide Job (and us) with a visual illustration about how the invisible spirit of rejection operates.
Why would Job consider himself to be a friend or companion of ostriches? Why would anybody want to make close friends with a cruel person who abandons his/her children? In our human brokenness, we may choose to fellowship with people and personalities that may be to our-long term detriment.
An old saying goes “birds of a feather flock together.” For instance, gossipers will find and attract other gossipers, and successful people will attract and find other successful people. As the idiom “misery loves company” implies, people with a rejection mindset may attract others with a similar mindset.
Ostrich Lesson #4: A rejection mindset will isolate a person and cut them off from resources and relationships that are vital for health and longevity.
It will never be inhabited, nor will it be settled from generation to generation; nor will the Arabian pitch tents there, nor will the shepherds make their sheepfolds there. 21 But wild beasts of the desert will lie there, and their houses will be full of owls; ostriches will dwell there, and wild goats will caper there. 22 The hyenas will howl in their citadels, and jackals in their pleasant palaces. Her time is near to come, and her days will not be prolonged.”
–Isaiah 13:20-22 NKJV [emphasis mine]
Ostriches are among the creatures that inhabit the city of Babylon when it is destroyed. Such a land lies desolate and rejected as a habitation by people. As they did in Job 30:29, jackals and ostriches show up in all the same passages from Isaiah 13:21-22 onward. Ostriches and owls show up together in the Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 passages, just as they did in Isaiah 13:21. Owls can represent “human wisdom,” which God rejects as futile and worthless when it contradicts reality. (6)
Ostrich Lesson #5: A rejection mindset can produce premature death.
The final five passages in the Bible about “ostriches” below describe them co-existing with “jackals:”
They shall call its nobles to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all its princes shall be nothing. 13 And thorns shall come up in its palaces, nettles and brambles in its fortresses; it shall be a habitation of jackals, a courtyard for ostriches.
–Isaiah 34:12-13 NKJV [emphasis mine]
The beast of the field will honor Me, the jackals and the ostriches, because I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to My people, My chosen.
–Isaiah 43:20 NKJV [emphasis mine]
“Therefore the wild desert beasts shall dwell there with the jackals, and the ostriches shall dwell in it. It shall be inhabited no more forever, nor shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation.
–Jeremiah 50:39 NKJV [emphasis mine]
Even the jackals present their breasts to nurse their young; but the daughter of my people is cruel, like ostriches in the wilderness.
–Lamentations 4:3 NKJV [emphasis mine]
Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked; I will make a wailing like the jackals and a mourning like the ostriches, 9 for her wounds are incurable. For it has come to Judah; it has come to the gate of My people—to Jerusalem.
–Micah 1:8-9 NKJV [emphasis mine]
Seven of the ten passages of the Bible which mention “ostriches” also mention “jackals” within the same verse or the next verse. Dogs and pigs show up together in some of the same passages, for the personalities whom “dogs” and “pigs” represent have a lot in common.
Serpents and scorpions likewise appear together in a few passages, so that God may teach us a lesson about the close relationship between sin and sickness in many cases. (7) What is the spiritual or practical significance of “ostriches” and “jackals” appearing together so frequently? If “ostriches” represent [spirits of] rejection, then “jackals” represent [spirits of] death. (8)
What is a “spirit of death?” It is an invisible entity, personality, mindset, belief system, and/or attitude that constantly and expectantly awaits death to come upon a person. To see a biblical example of such a mindset, read the words of Job in chapters 3, 14, 16-17, 30, etc.
As Job bemoans his dismal circumstances throughout the book, he manifests hopelessness, “bitterness of soul,” depression, and self-pity. Job waits in expectation for death to free him from the pain and sorrow of his earthly life. At the same time, Job bemoans how he has been rejected, abandoned, and attacked by God and the other people in his life.
A rejection mindset may be accompanied by a greater preoccupation with death. Are not suicides often attempted by people who are seeking relief from the tormenting pain of rejection? Survey statistics have shown that the “fear of public speaking” has ranked higher or more frequently than the “fear of death.” (9)
Could this be because the “fear of public speaking” is rooted in the “fear of rejection” [by one’s audience]? A person struggling with [grief, sadness, and anxiety from] rejection is inundated with a flood of hormones (cortisol and adrenaline), which long-term (if left unaddressed) could manifest in depression, sickness, and disease. (10)
Ostriches have the ability to disembowel a man or to kill a lion with a single kick. (11) Likewise, a rejection mindset will release a flood of cortisol and adrenaline into a person’s bloodstream when a person perpetually believes that s/he is rejected, unsafe, unloved, unacceptable, and abandoned. (12) Long-term, those hormones can bring disease and premature death to a person whose immune system becomes compromised by that unregulated flood of cortisol and adrenaline.
Having discussed five lessons about how rejection operates from Bible passages about “the ostrich,” how can we overcome the pain of rejection?
For Part 2, see “Four Spiritual Laws about God’s Acceptance.”
- To learn 75 characteristics of a “fool,” see “The Fool Detector Test.”
- See “Dog.”
- See “Envy is Like a Viper.”
- See “Intro to Meditation and Prosperity.”
- See “Detecting the Dragon of Self-pity.”
- For more information about what owls represent biblically, see Spiritual Zoology 101: The Great [Horned] Owl.
- For more information, see Spiritual Zoology 101: Serpents and Scorpions.
- That jackals represent [the spirit of] death I first heard from a YouTube video by John Eckhardt. Other animal comparisons have come predominantly from my own biblical observations.
- http://juliapardo.com/fear-public-speaking/ Accessed 1-15-2023.
- For more information, see “Exploring Questions about Anxiety and Depression.”
- https://wildexplained.com/are-ostriches-dangerous/ Accessed 1-15-2023.
- https://www.symmetrycounseling.com/therapy-chicago/romantic-rejection-the-aftermath-and-how-to-heal/#:~:text=Cortisol%20and%20adrenaline%20are%20released,muscles%20can%20cause%20physical%20pain. Accessed 1/17/2023.
If you found this content to be helpful for you and would like more information on spiritual warfare, trusting God, and overcoming shame, consider checking out my eBook “Spiritual Leopard Hunting: Overcome Self-hatred through a Relationship with God.”