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Summary
- Elephants are not named anywhere in the Bible. Some older translations rendered a creature in Job as an elephant, but the Hebrew is uncertain and modern versions do not.
- Ivory is there repeatedly. Solomon’s fleet brought back “gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons” every three years (1 Kings 10:22), and he made a great ivory throne.
- In the prophets, ivory is always the material of people with more than they need. Amos denounces those who lie on beds inlaid with it.
- His charge is not the ivory but the clause that follows: they “do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph” (Amos 6:4-6). The comfort had stopped reaching them.
- Scripture describes the temple’s gold and cedar without guilt. What Amos attacks is luxury alongside a ruin nobody is grieving.
Bibliography (Click to show)
Sources: Scripture quotations from the NIV via BibleGateway (1 Kings 10:18-22; 1 Kings 22:39; Amos 6:4-6; Psalm 24:1; Psalm 50:10; Proverbs 12:10). The identity of the creature in Job 40:15-24 is disputed; “elephant” appears in some older renderings but not in modern translations.
