Job 39:18

18 When she is shaking her wings on high, she makes sport of the horse and of him who is seated on him.

Job 39:18 Meaning and Commentary

Job 39:18

What time she lifted up herself on high
It is sometimes eight foot high F12; when alarmed with approaching danger she raises up herself, being sitting on the ground, and erects her wings for flight, or rather running;

she scorneth the horse and his rider;
being then, as Pliny F13 says, higher than a man on horseback, and superior to a horse in swiftness; and though horsemen have been able to take wild asses and goats, very swift creatures, yet never ostriches, as Xenophon relates F14 of those in Arabia; and this creature has another method, when pursued, by which it defies and despises, as well as hurts and incommodes its pursuers, which is by casting stones backward at them with its feet as out of a sling F15.


FOOTNOTES:

F12 Philosoph. Transact. abridged, vol. 2. p. 360.
F13 Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 10. c. 1.
F14 De Expedit. Cyri, l. 1.
F15 Plin. ut supra. (Nat. Hist. l. 10. c. 1.) Aelian. de Animal. l. 4. c. 37.

Job 39:18 In-Context

16 She is cruel to her young ones, as if they were not hers; her work is to no purpose; she has no fear.
17 For God has taken wisdom from her mind, and given her no measure of knowledge.
18 When she is shaking her wings on high, she makes sport of the horse and of him who is seated on him.
19 Do you give strength to the horse? is it by your hand that his neck is clothed with power?
20 Is it through you that he is shaking like a locust, in the pride of his loud-sounding breath?
The Bible in Basic English is in the public domain.