Job 39

¹ Do you know how mountain goats give birth, or have you ever watched the hinds in labour?

² How many months do they carry their young? At what time do they give birth?

³ They crouch to drop their young, and let their burdens fall in the open desert;

⁴ and when the calves have grown and gathered strength they leave them, never to return.

⁵ Who gave the wild donkey his freedom, and untied the rope from his proud neck?

⁶ I have given him the desert as a home, the salt plains as his own habitat.

⁷ He scorns the turmoil of the town there are no shouts from a driver for him to listen for.

⁸ The mountains are the pastures that he ranges in quest of any type of green blade or leaf.

⁹ Is the wild ox willing to serve you or spend a night beside your manger?

¹⁰ If you tie a rope round his neck will he harrow the furrows for you?

¹¹ Can you rely on his massive strength and leave him to do your heavy work?

¹² Can you depend on him to come home carrying your grain to your threshing-floor?

¹³ Can the wing of the ostrich be compared with the plumage of the stork or falcon?

¹⁴ She leaves her eggs on the ground with only earth to warm them;

¹⁵ forgetting that a foot may tread on them or a wild beast may crush them.

¹⁶ Cruel to her chicks as if they were not hers, little she cares if her labour goes for nothing.

¹⁷ God, you see, has made her unwise, and given her no share of common sense.

¹⁸ Yet, if she bestirs herself to use her height, she can make fools of horse and rider too.

¹⁹ Are you the one who makes the horse so brave and covers his neck with flowing hair?

²⁰ Do you make him leap like a grasshopper? His proud neighing spreads terror far and wide.

²¹ Exultantly he paws the soil of the valley, and prances eagerly to meet the clash of arms.

²² He laughs at fear; he is afraid of nothing, he recoils before no sword.

²³ On his back the quiver rattles, the flashing spear and javelin.

²⁴ Quivering with impatience, he eats up the miles; when the trumpet sounds, there is no holding him.

²⁵ At each trumpet blast he shouts ‘Hurrah!’ He scents the battle from afar, hearing the thundering of chiefs, the shouting.

²⁶ Does the hawk take flight on your advice when he spreads his wings to travel south?

²⁷ Does the eagle soar at your command to make her eyrie in the heights?

²⁸ She spends her nights among the crags with an unclimbed peak as her redoubt

²⁹ from which she watches for prey, fixing it with her far-ranging eye.

³⁰ She feeds her young on blood: wherever men fall dying, there she is.