What does a dove represent in the Bible?

The raven is well known for its restlessness and its appetite, as the dove is for its harmlessness and its expression of love; the one was forbidden to the Israelite, while the other was expressly fit, not only for food, but as a burnt sacrifice to be offered to the LORD, and in certain cases as a sin offering too. It is surely not far-fetched to notice how the unclean nature finds its satisfaction outside, where death reigns, while the clean bird returns to the shelter of the ark.

A beautiful emblem of the renewed mind, which, in the middle of all the desolation, seeks and finds its rest and portion in Christ; and not only that, but also takes hold of the pledge of the inheritance, and gives the blessed proof that judgment has passed away and a renewed earth is coming into view. The mind of the flesh, by contrast, can rest in anything and everything except Christ. It can feed on all uncleanness. The olive leaf has no attraction for it.

The dove is a clean bird. Genesis 8 shows that, unlike the raven, the dove was not at home in surroundings marked by death and uncleanness, and so it returned to Noah's ark until the waters went down. But the Spirit could remain on the Lord because He was sinless. The Spirit is pure and holy.

The dove symbol, the bird of peace, shows that there was nothing in our Lord contrary to the Holy Spirit, and so the Spirit could come upon Him in that way… Sinful man could only receive the Holy Spirit on the ground of the atoning sacrifice of our Lord. But in the case of believers on the day of Pentecost we read of "divided tongues as of fire" coming on them.

The dove, the bird of heaven, the bird instantly recognised as the bird of love and as the bird of sorrow — a bird Scripture speaks of in this double character — is so plainly the representative of Christ Himself, the Man of sorrows (sorrows that flowed from love, and into which love brought Him down), that this application is just as clear as the other. The symbol is necessarily a double one: the dove could only come and rest on Him because here was a home suited to it.

Someone unable to bring a lamb was allowed to bring two turtledoves or two young pigeons as a sacrifice. This pictures a person who is poor in his grasp of the value of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus as fully atoning for sin. At least he recognises that the Lord Jesus is from heaven (pictured by the birds), and therefore above him; and though his understanding is weak, God receives his offering.

The dove mourns and pines when it is separated from its mate. Hezekiah could say in his illness, "I moan like a dove." The dove has no eye for anything but the one it loves; and it is those who have one object before them — and that object Christ — of whom He can say, "You have doves' eyes."

You want the combination. It is a sad thing to have only the prudence, and a very weak thing to have only the guilelessness. I suppose that being wise as serpents would save them from rashness, from running into danger; but on the other hand they were not to injure others. We should never give people any just cause to charge us with anything unseemly.