Commentary on Job, part 17

The Armenian version of Job 28:7 contains a variant of the Armenian word for 'vulture': անգեղ (which also means 'without beauty, ugly') rather than the standard անգղ to render the Greek γύψ. Perhaps this is the result of a folk etymology based on the negative characteristics associated with the scavenger bird. The comprehensive etymological dictionary of Adjarian connects անգղ to a Scythian word alleged by the lexicographer Hesychius to mean 'swan' and rendered in Greek as ἄγλυ. Adjarian also lists the Arabic ‘anqā ('phoenix') and the Laz anke ('a species of bird with the color of vultures that catches and eats flies and butterflies').

“There is a path, the bird has not known it, and the eye of the vulture has not seen it.” (28:7)

The aerial demon of principalities did not know the divine economy of our Savior. Neither did the aerial demon of dominions, as the sacrament of the Church was hidden from them according to the wise one: “the way of a snake on a stone or a ship on the sea or an eagle in the sky is not traced” (Proverbs 30:19).