Job 39:18

18 But when the ostrich gets up to run, it is so fast that it laughs at the 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.

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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 The ostrich is cruel to its young, as if they were not even its own. It does not care that its work is for nothing,

17 because God did not give the ostrich wisdom; God did not give it a share of good sense.

18 But when the ostrich gets up to run, it is so fast that it laughs at the horse and its rider.

19 "Job, are you the one who gives the horse its strength or puts a flowing mane on its neck?

20 Do you make the horse jump like a locust? It scares people with its proud snorting.