Job 39:1-18 ▼

1 |Do you know when the mountain goat gives birth? Do you watch the doe as it calves its young?

2 Can you count the months of their gestation? Do you know the time when they give birth,

3 when they crouch down to give birth to their offspring, and let go of their birth pangs?

4 Their young are strong; they grow up in the open field; then they go off and don't return to them.|

5 |Who sets the wild donkey free? Who loosens the bonds of the wild donkey

6 to whom I've given the Arabah for a home; the salt plain for his dwelling place?

7 He despises city noises; he ignores the shouts of the driver.

8 He ranges the mountains that are his pasture to search for anything green.

9 Is the wild ox willing to serve you? Will he sleep at night near your feeding trough?

10 Can you bind the ox to plow a furrow with a rope? Will he harrow after you in the valley?

11 Will you trust him because of his great strength and entrust your labor to him?

12 Will you trust him that he'll bring in your grain, and gather it to your threshing floor?|

13 |The wings of the ostrich flap joyously, but aren't its pinions and feathers like the stork?

14 She abandons her eggs on the ground and lets them be warmed in the sand,

15 but she forgets that a foot might crush them or any wild animal might trample them.

16 She mistreats her young as though they're not hers, and she has no fear that her labor may be in vain,

17 because God didn't grant her wisdom and never gave her understanding.

18 And yet when she gets ready to run, she laughs at the horse and its rider.|