Fox Meaning in the Bible

Fox is an English surname and nature name, from Old English fox, given as a nickname for someone red-haired or thought to be cunning. As a first name it belongs to the modern taste for short, hard-edged animal names — Wren, Bear, Wolf, Lark — rather than to any older naming tradition.

The Bible uses the fox pointedly, and rarely kindly. Solomon asks for the 'little foxes, that spoil the vines' to be taken (Song of Solomon 2:15), a picture of small damage doing real harm. Samson catches three hundred foxes and turns them loose in the Philistine corn (Judges 15:4). Nehemiah's mockers say a fox could break down the wall Israel is building (Nehemiah 4:3).

Its sharpest use is from Jesus. Warned that Herod wants to kill him, he answers: 'Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow' (Luke 13:32). And describing his own homelessness: 'The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head' (Matthew 8:20).

The name's strongest Christian association is not scriptural but historical: George Fox, founder of the Quakers, and John Foxe, whose Book of Martyrs shaped English Protestant memory for three centuries. That is the real reason Fox turns up on Christian name lists, and it is worth knowing that it is a surname legacy rather than a biblical one.