A World That Does Not Wait for Human Permission

The wild goat is the ya'el, the Nubian ibex; David hid from Saul upon “the rocks of the wild goats” near En-gedi (1 Samuel 24:2). The hinds are does. Psalm 29:9 says “The voice of the LORD maketh the hinds to calve”, the same birth God asks Job to time.

“The months that they fulfil” is the language used of human pregnancy, as when Rebekah's “days to be delivered were fulfilled” (Genesis 25:24). Out on the cliffs, pregnancies begin and complete their months with no midwife and no calendar kept by anyone but God.

“Bow themselves” is the verb used of the wife of Phinehas, who “bowed herself and travailed” (1 Samuel 4:19): the crouch of labour. “Cast out their sorrows” uses chevel, birth pangs, so the young are delivered as the pangs themselves are expelled.

“In good liking” is 1611 English for in good condition, sleek and healthy, as in Daniel 1:15. “With corn” renders bar, which here probably means the open field rather than grain. The kids grow strong in the open and leave for good.

Two words are used for the wild ass, pere and 'arod, the second more at home in Aramaic. The angel told Hagar that Ishmael would be “a wild man” (Genesis 16:12), literally a wild ass of a man, a creature no one would ever tame.

“The barren land” is melechah, salt land, the flats where nothing grows; Jeremiah 17:6 describes “a salt land and not inhabited”. God says he made this his house. What is a wasteland to farmers is a home that God chose for this animal.

“The driver” is noges, the taskmaster, the word for Pharaoh's taskmasters in Exodus 5:6. In 3:18 Job envied the dead in the grave, who “hear not the voice of the oppressor”, using the same word. The wild ass has in life the freedom Job looked for in death.

“Searcheth” is darash, to seek diligently, the verb used for seeking God. The wild ass is a thorough explorer, ranging over mountain country and hunting for every scrap of green, a life of constant roaming rather than a stall and a feed trough.

The King James “unicorn” followed the Greek translation monokeros, one-horned. The Hebrew re'em is the aurochs, the huge wild ox now extinct; Deuteronomy 33:17 speaks of “the horns of unicorns”, in the plural, which already shows a two-horned animal.

A band is the rope or harness that keeps a draught animal in the furrow. Harrowing broke up the clods after ploughing (Isaiah 28:24). “After thee” pictures the beast plodding meekly behind the farmer, exactly what an aurochs will never do.

“Trust” is batach, the root of the word Job used in 31:24, when he denied saying to gold, “Thou art my confidence.” Great strength invites reliance, but reliance needs a will that cooperates. Job would be handing his whole year's labour to an animal that answers to no one.

The harvest had to be carried from the field to the threshing floor, which is what “barn” means here. “Believe him” is the verb for relying on someone as firm and dependable. It returns in verse 24, where the warhorse cannot stand firm when the trumpet sounds.

The King James “peacocks” translates renanim, which probably means shrill criers and refers to the ostrich itself. Peacocks were brought by Solomon's ships (1 Kings 10:22) under a different name. The comparison of wings is uncertain in detail.

Ostriches lay in shallow scrapes in the sand, and the sun-warmed ground does part of the incubating. To a watcher it looks as though the mother has left her eggs to the dust, and the next verse draws the conclusion that she is careless of them.

“Forgetteth” is shakach, the verb Job used in 19:14 when he said “my familiar friends have forgotten me.” Eggs lie in the open where a traveller's foot or a jackal's jaws can reach them. The mother seems to forget, and no one objects on the eggs' behalf.

“As though they were not hers” is literally “not hers”. Her “labour is in vain”, riq, empty, and she is “without fear”, feeling no anxiety about the loss. The poem describes how the bird appears to a human observer, as the next verse makes plain.

Here the LORD, speaking in the first person, refers to himself in the third, as Eloah, “God”. He is named as the one who withheld wisdom from this bird. It is the only creature in the divine speeches said to lack understanding, and it lacks it by design.

The ostrich cannot fly. Its wings serve for balance and display, and when it “lifteth up herself”, rousing to run, it covers the ground faster than a mounted rider. The bird that could not guard its eggs leaves cavalry behind.

The word the King James renders “thunder”, ra'mah, is related to thunder but may mean the quivering mane or the power that makes the neck tremble. The Greek read “terror”. Either way, God asks who dressed the horse in it.

“Make him afraid as a grasshopper” is better “make him leap like a locust”: Joel 2:4 compares a locust swarm to horses, “as the appearance of horses”. “The glory of his nostrils” is the snort, the blast of breath a charger makes before a charge.

“Rejoiceth” is the verb Psalm 19:5 uses of the sun, which “rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.” The horse paws the valley floor, eager to be off, and heads straight for the armed ranks that any sensible creature would run from.

“Mocketh” is sachaq, to laugh at, and it threads through these animal portraits: the wild ass laughs at the city (verse 7), the ostrich at the horse (verse 18), the horse at fear, and in 41:29 leviathan “laugheth at the shaking of a spear.” Each laughs at something humans dread.

“The glittering spear” is literally the flame of the spear, the blade flashing in the sun. The last weapon, kidon, is a javelin, the weapon Goliath carried slung between his shoulders (1 Samuel 17:6, “a target of brass”). The whole armoury clatters about the horse.

“Neither believeth he” uses the same verb as verse 12, to stand firm: when the trumpet sounds he cannot stand still. The trumpet is the shofar, the ram's horn that signalled battle, as when Gideon's men blew theirs around the Midianite camp (Judges 7:18–20).

“Among the trumpets” means as often as the horn sounds. The horse smells the battle before he sees it, the dust and sweat and smoke, and hears the officers' shouted orders. The commands meant for men are the music that sends the horse forward.

Migration is the wonder here: the hawk turns south at the right season with no one directing it. Jeremiah 8:7 makes the same observation: “the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming.”

The nesher may be the griffon vulture as well as the eagle. Obadiah 4 and Jeremiah 49:16 warn Edom, “though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence.” In the Edomite country of Job, eagles nesting on the cliffs were a familiar sight.

“The crag of the rock” is literally the tooth of the rock, a jagged pinnacle. “The strong place” is metsudah, a fortress, the word David uses of God in Psalm 18:2. The eagle's nest is a castle no army could take.

“Afar off” is the word Elihu used in 36:3 when he promised to fetch his knowledge from afar. The long view that a human speaker claimed for himself is the eagle's ordinary equipment, and she uses it to spot her next meal.

“Suck up” is a rare verb for gulping. Jesus takes up this image in Matthew 24:28: “wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.” God's first speech ends not with a lesson drawn but with a bird at a battlefield.