Birds as moral examples and the fifth day command

But the vulture, they say, does not allow it to perish. It takes the chick up and rears it together with its own young. Such are those parents who expose their infants on the pretext of poverty, or who are most unfair to their offspring in the division of an inheritance. For it is right that, just as they have given each one a share in being equally, so they should provide the means for living to them equally and with equal honor. Do not imitate the cruelty of the birds with curved talons. When they see their young now daring to fly, they drive them out of the nest, striking them with their wings and pushing them, and they take no further care of them. The love of the crow for its young is praiseworthy: it accompanies them even when they are already flying, feeding them and rearing them for a very long time. Many kinds of birds need no intercourse with males for conception. In other birds the wind-eggs are infertile, but they say that vultures for the most part give birth without pairing, and these are very long-lived; their life extends for the most part to a hundred years. Keep this noted down for yourself from the study of birds, so that whenever you see people laughing at our mystery, as though it were impossible and outside nature for a virgin to give birth while her virginity remains undefiled, you may remember that the One who was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of the proclamation (1 Corinthians 1:21) prepared in advance countless starting points from nature for faith in things beyond expectation. "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls, and winged creatures flying upon the earth, across the firmament of heaven" (Genesis 1:20). They were commanded to fly upon the earth because food for all comes from the earth. And "across the firmament of heaven," as we have already explained, because the air is here called "heaven" from being seen, and "firmament" because the air above our heads is somehow denser in comparison with the ethereal body, and more compressed by the exhalations from below. You have, then, a heaven adorned, an earth beautified, a sea teeming with its own offspring, an air full of the birds that fly through it. All things were brought by the command of God from non-being into being. And whatever the discourse has now passed over, avoiding a longer dwelling on these matters so as not to seem to exceed its measure, you who love labor should reason out for yourself, learning the wisdom of God in all things, and never cease from wonder, nor from glorifying the Maker through all creation. You have in the darkness the night-roaming kinds of birds; in the light, those that go about by day. Bats, owls, and night-ravens are among the night-dwellers. So when sleep is not present at some time, it is enough for you to spend time on these things and to examine the properties they possess for the glorification of the Maker. How sleepless the nightingale is when she sits on her eggs, not ceasing from her song through the whole night. How the bat is at once four-footed and winged. How it alone among birds uses teeth, and gives birth to live young like four-footed animals, and floats upon the air, not lifted by a wing, but by a certain membrane of skin.