“You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself” (Exodus 19:4).

“As an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spread out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings, so the LORD alone led him, and there was no foreign god with him” (Deuteronomy 32:11-12).

These passages speak of God’s protection and tender care of Israel in the Exodus.  He brought them out of Egypt.  He cared for them.

These passages describe God as a parent eagle caring for its young.  Many commented on the eagle’s behavior.  James Burton Coffman commented, “When the eaglets have reached a time when they should fly, the old eagle stirs up the nest and forces them to begin the experience, supporting their first attempts by flying under them when they are about to fail, thus bearing them upward and enabling their first flight!  What a beautiful picture of the way God supported and helped Israel during those terrible days of their infancy as a nation!” (Comments on Exodus 19:4). 

But do eagles really do this?  Some critics claim that they do not.  One person wrote, “Sometimes the adult bird hovered over their fledgling and fluttered encouragingly around and under them.  At a distance the eaglets appear to be carried at times on their parent’s wings, but this is not the case.  Although grebes, swans, and some other birds paddle through the water with their young ones nestled on their backs, there is no reliable report of any bird actually flying with a smaller bird on its back” (Alice Parmeke, All the Birds of the Bible, 1959). 

However, others claim to have seen this behavior.  “We noticed a golden eagle teaching its young one to fly… The mother started from the nest in the crags, and roughly handling the young, she allowed him to drop, I should say about ninety feet, then she would swoop down under him, wing spread, and he would alight on her back.  She would soar to the top of the range with him and repeat the process” (Account told in Arthur Cleveland Bent’s Life Histories of North American Birds of Prey, Part 1; Moses and the Eagle by Frederic and George Howe, Science in Christian Perspective). 

There are a few of other things to note.  (1) The Hebrew word, nesher, is probably used more generally in the Bible than we use the word “eagle.”  (2) “Most ornithologists have stated that they have never witnessed this… Note the most long-term fieldwork on eagle nesting and fledgling behavior has been carried out in North and South America and Europe with little study on eagles native to the Middle East” (Does an Eagle Carry Its Young on Its Wings? By Troy Lacey, answeringgenesis.org).  (3) The bird in the passage may not even exist in our day. 

The message is not unclear.  God protected and cared for Israel.

He did this not only for Israel but for the well-being of humanity.  He wanted to bless us by bringing a Savior into the world (Genesis 12:1-3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14-15 cf. Acts 3:25-26).