I'm just starting the research, as of yesterday. What I have so far is that the bird is a "taloned" "swooper" which is speckled... these are the word pictures folded up in the Hebrew words used in the verse in Jeremiah. The Jeremiah passage, however, does not fully support all of the verses of the song. That will take some more digging, trhrough the prophets as well as the New testament. What will be interesting about that is that the language shifts from one testment to the next-- Hebrew for OT, Greek for NT. The sense of the word pictures shifts accordingly.

We need to do this research so that when we introduce the piece in our church, we can say how it fits with what they already understand. Classical seminary for Hardi did not happen to include a course on Great Speckled Birds!

I'd love to hear from anyone else who knows how to do Bible research-- most of the things that have been said so far are small slices of the whole bird and little servings of the stuffing, when compared to the treasures of the whole dish the hymnmaker has cooked up and served for our nourishment. Let's see if we can get the whole picture though before slinging around parodies and cute comments. Or the only thing speckled and avian around here will be the mutant crow shreds hanging outta some of our mouths! Nothing great about that!

~Susan