ayyal

• Only the stag belongs to the food laws. It heads the list of wild animals Israel may eat, it is the animal named when permission is given to slaughter and eat game anywhere in the towns, and it is served at Solomon's table. The doe never appears in a list of what may be eaten.Deu 14:5Deu 12:15Deu 15:221Ki 4:23
• In the Song of Songs the stag is the woman's beloved himself. She sees him bounding over the hills, and twice she calls him to be like a young stag on the mountains, once toward her and once away.Sng 2:9Sng 2:17Sng 8:14
• The stag carries the pictures of straining thirst and sudden leaping: an animal panting for a stream of water, and a lame man springing up like a deer when God heals him.Psa 42:1Isa 35:6

• Both name the same wild deer of the hills and open country, an animal Israel knew running loose rather than kept in a fold, and both stand next to the gazelle in the same breath.Sng 2:17Sng 2:7
• Both give Scripture its picture of legs that carry a creature over rough, high ground, so both become images of God given strength to move where the footing is hard.Isa 35:6Psa 18:33
• Both appear in scenes of drought and ruin where the deer can find nothing to eat, and in both the failing animal pictures a people whose strength has run out: princes fleeing with no pasture, and a doe abandoning her newborn because there is no grass.Lam 1:6Jer 14:5

• The doe supplies the picture of sure footing on dangerous heights. Three times God is said to give a person feet like a doe's and to set him on the high places, and the stag is never used this way.2Sa 22:34Psa 18:33Hab 3:19
• Only the doe is watched giving birth. God asks Job whether he marks the month when she calves, and the thunder of God's voice is what sends her into labor.Job 39:1Psa 29:9
• The oath that runs twice through the Song of Songs is sworn by the does of the field, not by the stag. They are the witnesses the woman names when she charges the daughters of Jerusalem not to stir up love before it is ready.Sng 2:7Sng 3:5
• The doe stands for a woman and for a tribe pictured as one: a wife is "a lovely doe" whose grace should keep her husband captivated, and Naphtali is "a doe let loose" that bears beautiful fawns.Pro 5:19Gen 49:21
• One psalm heading takes its tune name from the doe, "the doe of the dawn", the only place either animal names a melody.Psa 22:0

• The hart is the picture of desperate thirst and longing, panting after streams of water.Psa 42:1
• It supplies images of the weak and worn: the lame leaping like a deer once healed, and starving princes fleeing without pasture.Isa 35:6Lam 1:6

• Both are wild, ceremonially clean game animals, listed side by side as permitted food and as fare at the king's table.Deu 14:51Ki 4:23
• Both serve as images of grace and swiftness in love poetry, the beloved likened to a bounding gazelle and a young hart on the hills.Sng 2:9Sng 2:17

• Far more often it is not an animal at all but beauty, splendor, or honor, the pride and glory of a nation or its people.2Sa 1:19Isa 13:19Isa 28:1
• In a fixed phrase it names the land of Israel itself as the glorious, prized land God gives his people.Jer 3:19Ezk 20:6Dan 11:16
• As an animal it is the gazelle, whose defining trait is sheer speed: being light and swift of foot.2Sa 2:181Ch 12:8Pro 6:5

• The deer is the standing example of ordinary meat that any Israelite may eat at home, away from the altar. Three times the law says a person may kill and eat freely "as one eats the gazelle and the deer", with clean and unclean at the same table. The roebuck never appears in that formula.Deu 12:15Deu 12:22Deu 15:22
• Only the deer becomes a picture of longing and exhaustion. It pants for streams of water as the soul pants for God, and Jerusalem's leaders are deer that find no pasture and stagger off with no strength left in them.Psa 42:1Lam 1:6
• Only the deer stands for speed and light-footed leaping. The lover bounds over the hills like a young stag, and in the promised healing the lame man leaps like a deer. The roebuck is never used to describe how anyone moves.Sng 2:9Sng 2:17Sng 8:14Isa 35:6

• Both name a clean wild animal Israel is allowed to eat. They stand side by side at the head of the short list of permitted game, the deer first and the roebuck third.Deu 14:5
• Both are game taken in the wild rather than raised in a pen, so both are counted separately from livestock. Solomon's daily provision lists his cattle and sheep first, then adds deer, gazelle and roebuck as a further class of meat.1Ki 4:23

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• This is the grown deer of the food laws and the royal kitchen, named alongside the gazelle as game an Israelite may hunt and eat.Deu 12:15Deu 14:51Ki 4:23
• It supplies pictures of an adult animal's need and vigor: the deer gasping for running water, and the healed man springing up as a deer springs.Psa 42:1Isa 35:6
• It can also picture that strength failing, when the animal finds no pasture and runs out of power in front of the hunter.Lam 1:6

• Both name the same wild deer, and the Song joins them into a single phrase, "a young deer," so the two words describe one animal together.Sng 2:9
• In that combined image both stand for swift, free movement over rough hill country, the way the woman pictures her beloved coming and going across the mountains.Sng 2:17Sng 8:14

• It names the young animal specifically, small enough to be imagined as one of a matched pair of twins still with its mother.Sng 4:5Sng 7:3
• On its own it belongs entirely to love poetry and to tender beauty, never to a food list, a hunt, or a lament.Sng 4:5Sng 7:3