Job 39:18

18 But when they spread their feathers to run, they laugh at a horse and its 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 Ostriches are mean to their little ones. They treat them as if they did not belong to them. They do not care that their work was useless.
17 I did not provide ostriches with wisdom. I did not give them good sense.
18 But when they spread their feathers to run, they laugh at a horse and its rider.
19 "Job, do you give horses their strength? Do you put flowing manes on their necks?
20 Do you make them jump like locusts? They terrify others with their proud snorting.
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