Job 39:18

18 cum tempus fuerit in altum alas erigit deridet equitem et ascensorem eius

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 duratur ad filios suos quasi non sint sui frustra laboravit nullo timore cogente
17 privavit enim eam Deus sapientia nec dedit illi intellegentiam
18 cum tempus fuerit in altum alas erigit deridet equitem et ascensorem eius
19 numquid praebebis equo fortitudinem aut circumdabis collo eius hinnitum
20 numquid suscitabis eum quasi lucustas gloria narium eius terror
The Latin Vulgate is in the public domain.