Job 39:18

18 When the time comes, it flaps its wings, scorning both horse and rider.

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 It treats its chicks heartlessly, as if they were not its own; even if her labor is in vain, it really doesn't care;
17 because God has deprived it of wisdom and given it no share in understanding.
18 When the time comes, it flaps its wings, scorning both horse and rider.
19 "Did you give the horse its strength? Did you clothe its neck with a mane?
20 Did you make him able to leap like a locust? Its majestic snorting is frightening!
Complete Jewish Bible Copyright 1998 by David H. Stern. Published by Jewish New Testament Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.