The Devourer

The smallest animal in the world also has the biggest appetite—the mouse-like shrew. One variety in northern Europe, called the “least” shrew, which is rarely longer than an inch-and-a-half, can consume the equivalent of its own weight every three hours. In fact, the appetite of the shrew is so voracious and its metabolism so fast that if they do not eat for two hours, they might starve to death.

Shrews have small eyes and usually poor eyesight but are very active animals, because each day a shrew must consume 80 to 90 percent of its body weight to survive. In its desperate quest to feed its ravenous hunger, the little shrew will attack and eat almost anything that moves—including creatures twice its size! Their fierce reputation is probably one reason it symbolizes feistiness in literature, such as in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew.

The Bible speaks of a feisty creature much larger than the shrew. It was a beast that came up out of the sea. In vision, Daniel describes it: “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth; it was devouring” (Daniel 7:7). Later in the chapter it says, “The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all other kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth” (v. 23).

More ferocious than a giant shrew, this beast devours whatever is in its path. Out of its head grew ten horns, then from among them one horn that “was making war against the saints, and prevailing against them” (v. 21). So thank God for the next verse: “Until the Ancient of Days came, and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High” (v. 22).

Key Bible Texts

But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. (Daniel 7:26 KJV)