Job 39

¹“Do you know when the mountain goats bring forth?

Do you observe the calving of the hinds?

²Can you number the months that they fulfil,

and do you know the time when they bring forth,

³when they crouch, bring forth their offspring,

and are delivered of their young?

⁴Their young ones become strong, they grow up in the open;

they go forth, and do not return to them.

⁵“Who has let the wild ass go free?

Who has loosed the bonds of the swift ass,

⁶to whom I have given the steppe for his home,

and the salt land for his dwelling place?

⁷He scorns the tumult of the city;

he hears not the shouts of the driver.

⁸He ranges the mountains as his pasture,

and he searches after every green thing.

⁹“Is the wild ox willing to serve you?

Will he spend the night at your crib?

¹⁰Can you bind him in the furrow with ropes,

or will he harrow the valleys after you?

¹¹Will you depend on him because his strength is great,

and will you leave to him your labor?

¹²Do you have faith in him that he will return,

and bring your grain to your threshing floor?

¹³“The wings of the ostrich wave proudly;

but are they the pinions and plumage of love?

¹⁴For she leaves her eggs to the earth,

and lets them be warmed on the ground,

¹⁵forgetting that a foot may crush them,

and that the wild beast may trample them.

¹⁶She deals cruelly with her young, as if they were not hers;

though her labor be in vain, yet she has no fear;

¹⁷because God has made her forget wisdom,

and given her no share in understanding.

¹⁸When she rouses herself to flee,

she laughs at the horse and his rider.

¹⁹“Do you give the horse his might?

Do you clothe his neck with strength?

²⁰Do you make him leap like the locust?

His majestic snorting is terrible.

²¹He paws in the valley, and exults in his strength;

he goes out to meet the weapons.

²²He laughs at fear, and is not dismayed;

he does not turn back from the sword.

²³Upon him rattle the quiver,

the flashing spear and the javelin.

²⁴With fierceness and rage he swallows the ground;

he cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet.

²⁵When the trumpet sounds, he says ‘Aha!’

He smells the battle from afar,

the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

²⁶“Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars,

and spreads his wings toward the south?

²⁷Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up

and makes his nest on high?

²⁸On the rock he dwells and makes his home

in the fastness of the rocky crag.

²⁹Thence he spies out the prey;

his eyes behold it afar off.

³⁰His young ones suck up blood;

and where the slain are, there is he.”