Leopard

The leopard (Hebrew namer) was native to ancient Palestine and appears in biblical literature as an image of speed, power, and entrenched habit. Jeremiah's rhetorical question — "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" (Jer. 13:23) — makes the animal an emblem of the fixedness of ingrained evil. In Daniel's vision, the third great empire (generally identified with Greece under Alexander) is represented by a four-winged, four-headed leopard (Dan. 7:6), signifying extraordinary swiftness and dominion. Isaiah's peaceable kingdom envisions the leopard lying down with the young goat (Isa. 11:6), a reversal of nature symbolizing eschatological harmony.