Peacock

The peacock (Hebrew tuk, apparently borrowed from the Tamil tokei) is mentioned twice in the Old Testament as one of the exotic imports brought to Solomon by his fleet from Ophir (1 Kings 10:22; 2 Chronicles 9:21). Every three years the king's ships of Tarshish returned bearing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks — a list suggesting distant tropical trade, possibly with India or the Horn of Africa, where peacocks were indigenous.

A separate Hebrew word (renanim) in Job 39:13 is translated peacock in the Authorized Version, though modern translators more often render it ostrich, since the context describes a bird that abandons its eggs on the ground. The peacock's stunning plumage made it a prized luxury commodity in the ancient Near East, symbolic of the extraordinary wealth and cosmopolitan reach of Solomon's commercial empire. The bird does not carry theological symbolism in Scripture beyond this association with royal magnificence.