Job 39

Mountain goat and doe

1 Do you know when mountain goats give birth; do you observe the birthing of does?

2 Can you count the months of pregnancy; do you know when they give birth?

3 They crouch, split open for their young, send forth their offspring.

4 Their young are healthy; they grow up in the open country, leave and never return.

Wild donkey

5 Who freed the wild donkey, loosed the ropes of the onager

6 to whom I gave the desert as home, his dwelling place in the salt flats?

7 He laughs at the clamor of the town, doesn't hear the driver's shout,

8 searches the hills for food and seeks any green sprout.

Wild ox

9 Will the wild ox agree to be your slave, or will it spend the night in your crib?

10 Can you bind it with a rope to a plowed row; will it plow the valley behind you?

11 Will you trust it because its strength is great so that you can leave your work to it?

12 Can you rely on it to bring back your grain to gather into your threshing floor?

Ostrich

13 The ostrich's wings flap joyously, but her wings and plumage are like a stork.

14 She leaves her eggs on the earth, lets them warm in the dust,

15 then forgets that a foot may crush them or a wild animal trample them.

16 She treats her young harshly as if they were not hers, without worrying that her labor might be in vain;

17 God didn't endow her with sense, didn't give her some good sense.

18 When she flaps her wings high, she laughs at horse and rider.

Horse

19 Did you give strength to the horse, clothe his neck with a mane,

20 cause him to leap like a locust, his majestic snorting, a fright?

21 He paws in the valley, prances proudly, charges at battle weapons,

22 laughs at fear, unafraid. He doesn't turn away from the sword;

23 a quiver of arrows flies by him, flashing spear and dagger.

24 Excitedly, trembling, he swallows the ground; can't stand still at a trumpet's blast.

25 At a trumpet's sound, he says, "Aha!" smells the battle from afar, hears officers' shouting and the battle cry.

Hawk and eagle

26 Is it due to your understanding that the hawk flies, spreading its wings to the south?

27 Or at your command does the eagle soar, the vulture build a nest on high?

28 They dwell on an outcropping of rock, their fortress on rock's edge.

29 From there they search for food; their eyes notice it from afar,

30 and their young lap up blood; where carcasses lie, there they are.

Job 39 Commentary

Chapter 39

God inquires of Job concerning several animals.

- In these questions the Lord continued to humble Job. In this chapter several animals are spoken of, whose nature or situation particularly show the power, wisdom, and manifold works of God. The wild ass. It is better to labour and be good for something, than to ramble and be good for nothing. From the untameableness of this and other creatures, we may see, how unfit we are to give law to Providence, who cannot give law even to a wild ass's colt. The unicorn, a strong, stately, proud creature. He is able to serve, but not willing; and God challenges Job to force him to it. It is a great mercy if, where God gives strength for service, he gives a heart; it is what we should pray for, and reason ourselves into, which the brutes cannot do. Those gifts are not always the most valuable that make the finest show. Who would not rather have the voice of the nightingale, than the tail of the peacock; the eye of the eagle and her soaring wing, and the natural affection of the stork, than the beautiful feathers of the ostrich, which can never rise above the earth, and is without natural affection? The description of the war-horse helps to explain the character of presumptuous sinners. Every one turneth to his course, as the horse rushes into the battle. When a man's heart is fully set in him to do evil, and he is carried on in a wicked way, by the violence of his appetites and passions, there is no making him fear the wrath of God, and the fatal consequences of sin. Secure sinners think themselves as safe in their sins as the eagle in her nest on high, in the clefts of the rocks; but I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord, ( Jeremiah 49:16 ) . All these beautiful references to the works of nature, should teach us a right view of the riches of the wisdom of Him who made and sustains all things. The want of right views concerning the wisdom of God, which is ever present in all things, led Job to think and speak unworthily of Providence.

Footnotes

• [a]. Or they
• [b]. Heb lacks hears.

Chapter Summary

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 39

This chapter treats of various creatures, beasts and birds, which Job had little knowledge of, had no concern in the making of them, and scarcely any power over them; as of the goats and hinds, Job 39:1-4; of the wild ass, Job 39:5-8; of the unicorn, Job 39:9-12; of the peacock and ostrich, Job 39:13-18; of the horse, Job 39:19-25; and of the hawk and eagle, Job 39:26-30.