Job 39

1Do you know the season when the mountain goats give birth?Can you mark the time when the hinds calve?

2Can you count the months they must complete?Do you know the season they give birth,

3When they couch to bring forth their offspring,To deliver their young?

4Their young are healthy; they grow up in the open;They leave and return no more.

5Who sets the wild ass free?Who loosens the bonds of the onager,

6Whose home I have made the wilderness,The salt land its dwelling-place?

7It scoffs at the tumult of the city,Does not hear the shouts of the driver.

8It roams the hills for its pasture;It searches for any green thing.

9Would the wild ox agree to serve you?Would it spend the night at your crib?

10Can you hold the wild ox by ropes to the furrow?Would it plow up the valleys behind you?

11Would you rely on its great strengthAnd leave your toil to it?

12Would you trust the ox to bring in the seedAnd gather it in from your threshing floor?

13The wing of the ostrich beats joyously;Are its pinions and plumage like the stork’s?

14It leaves its eggs on the ground,Letting them warm in the dirt,

15Forgetting they may be crushed underfoot,Or trampled by a wild beast.

16Its young are cruelly abandoned as if they were not its own;Its labor is in vain for lack of concern.

17For God deprived it of wisdom,Gave it no share of understanding,

18Else it would soar on high,Scoffing at the horse and its rider.

19Do you give the horse its strength?Do you clothe its neck with a mane?

20Do you make it quiver like locusts,Its majestic snorting [spreading] terror?

21It paws with force, it runs with vigor,Charging into battle.

22It scoffs at fear; it cannot be frightened;It does not recoil from the sword.

23A quiverful of arrows whizzes by it,And the flashing spear and the javelin.

24Trembling with excitement, it swallows the land;It does not turn aside at the blast of the trumpet.

25As the trumpet sounds, it says, “Aha!”From afar it smells the battle,The roaring and shouting of the officers.

26Is it by your wisdom that the hawk grows pinions,Spreads its wings to the south?

27Does the eagle soar at your command,Building its nest high,

28Dwelling in the rock,Lodging upon the fastness of a jutting rock?

29From there it spies out its food;From afar its eyes see it.

30Its young gulp blood;Where the slain are, there it is.