Reflections on Job 39

 Job 39 (Contemporary English Version)

1. When do mountain goats and deer give birth? Have you been there when their young are born?
   
2. How long are they pregnant
   
3. before they deliver?
   
4. Soon their young grow strong and then leave to be on their own.
   
5. Who set wild donkeys free?
   
6. I alone help them survive in salty desert sand.
   
7. They stay far from crowded cities and refuse to be tamed.
   
8. Instead, they roam the hills, searching for pastureland.
   
9. Would a wild ox agree to live in your barn and labor for you?
   
10. Could you force him to plow or to drag a heavy log to smooth out the soil?
    
11. Can you depend on him to use his great strength and do your heavy work?
    
12. Can you trust him to harvest your grain or take it to your barn from the threshing place?
    
13. An ostrich proudly flaps her wings, but not because she loves her young.
    
14. She abandons her eggs and lets the dusty ground keep them warm.
    
15. And she doesn't seem to worry that the feet of an animal could crush them all.
    
16. She treats her eggs as though they were not her own, unconcerned that her work might be for nothing.
    
17. I myself made her foolish and without common sense.
    
18. But once she starts running, she laughs at a rider on the fastest horse.
    
19. Did you give horses their strength and the flowing hair along their necks?
    
20. Did you make them able to jump like grasshoppers or to frighten people with their snorting?
    
21. Before horses are ridden into battle, they paw at the ground, proud of their strength.
    
22. Laughing at fear, they rush toward the fighting,
    
23. while the weapons of their riders rattle and flash in the sun.
    
24. Unable to stand still, they gallop eagerly into battle when trumpets blast.
    
25. Stirred by the distant smells and sounds of war, they snort in reply to the trumpet.
    
26. Did you teach hawks to fly south for the winter?
    
27. Did you train eagles to build
    
28. their nests on rocky cliffs,
    
29. where they can look down to spot their next meal?
    
30. Then their young gather to feast wherever the victim lies.

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God was now speaking to Job and his friends, though He was addressing Job. He had begun with a line of questioning to Job challenging his qualifications to question God's wisdom. God's questions began concerning the creation and control of the earth and then the stars and clouds, and was now concerning the animals of creation beginning with the lions and ravens.

In this chapter God asked Job about goats and deer, wild donkeys and wild oxen, ostriches, storks, war horses, and locusts, and hawks and eagles. Job had no part in making, sustaining, or controlling any of these animals or birds.

All of these questions served to remind Job of how small he was in the scheme of things, particularly compared to God. It also served to remind him of how great God is. But we also see in God's discussion of the various animals His pride and joy in the animals He has made. If He has such pride in the animals and provides for them in every detail, is He not more delighted with man, caring for him in every way?

Job's friends, as do so many, picture God as an angry God who must be appeased by man if man is to enjoy any happiness in life. But the reality is very different. For God takes pleasure in man and wants to have a loving relationship with each. It is man who turns away from God, not God from man. And it is God, not man, who provides a way to have a loving relationship with man.