Beetle

Scripture references: Leviticus 11:22; Psalm 22:6; Psalm 40:12; Isaiah 41:14

The clean list, Leviticus 11:22, When YHWH gives the dietary law to Israel at Sinai, most flying insects that crawl on all fours are declared unclean. The exceptions are the locust, the bald locust, the cricket, and the beetle, "these you may eat." The word translated "beetle" in the KJV is the Hebrew chagab (חָגָב), sometimes rendered "grasshopper" or "katydid," but the principle is the same: the category of winged crawling insects that leap is declared clean, while those that merely creep are unclean. The distinction turns on the creature's created design, its mode of movement in relation to the earth.

The worm and not a man, Psalm 22:6, The most theologically significant use of the crawling creature image in Scripture is in Psalm 22, the great lament psalm that the Gospels show Jesus reciting on the cross: "But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people." The word "worm" (tola'at, תּוֹלָע) is the same word used for the worm that produced the scarlet dye, a creature that clung to branches and was crushed to release its color. The psalmist borrows the image of the lowest creature, something that crawls, is trampled, and has no defense, to describe his condition before the mocking crowd. The New Testament application of this psalm to the crucifixion invests the crawling creature image with redemptive weight.

The worm that does not die, Mark 9:48, Jesus quotes Isaiah 66:24 when describing Gehenna: "where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched." The worm (skōlēx, σκώληξ) that consumes the dead is a creature of decay and judgment. The crawling creature occupies both registers in Scripture: the clean creature of Leviticus 11 and the creature of judgment and death in Isaiah and the Gospels.

Smallness as doctrine, Isaiah 41:14, "Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I am the one who helps you, declares the LORD; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel." YHWH addresses Israel with the image of a worm, small, vulnerable, easily crushed, not as an insult but as a declaration that YHWH's power is displayed most clearly through the creature that cannot protect itself. The smallness of the beetle and the worm is itself a theological category in Scripture: God defends what cannot defend itself.

The beetle and the worm occupy the lowest register of creation in Scripture, the creatures closest to the ground, the most vulnerable, the most easily overlooked. Yet Psalm 22 shows the psalmist borrowing the worm's image for the deepest cry of abandonment, the cry Jesus recited from the cross. The Sanctum holds the beetle as a witness to the theology of smallness: YHWH's protection of what cannot protect itself.