Morning Bible Study: Job 39:1-30

39:1 Do you know when mountain goats give birth?
Have you watched the deer in labor?
2 Can you count the months they are pregnant
so you can know the time they give birth?
3 They crouch down to give birth to their young;
they deliver their newborn.
4 Their offspring are healthy and grow up in the open field.
They leave and do not return.

5 Who set the wild donkey free?
Who released the swift donkey from its harness?
6 I made the desert its home,
and the salty wasteland its dwelling.
7 It scoffs at the noise of the village
and never hears the shouts of a driver.
8 It roams the mountains for its pastureland,
searching for anything green.

9 Would the wild ox be willing to serve you?
Would it spend the night by your feeding trough?
10 Can you hold the wild ox to a furrow by its harness?
Will it plow the valleys behind you?
11 Can you depend on it because its strength is great?
Would you leave it to do your hard work?
12 Can you trust the wild ox to harvest your grain
and bring it to your threshing floor?

13 The wings of the ostrich flap joyfully,
but are her feathers and plumage like the stork’s?
14 She abandons her eggs on the ground
and lets them be warmed in the sand.
15 She forgets that a foot may crush them
or that some wild animal may trample them.
16 She treats her young harshly, as if they were not her own,
with no fear that her labor may have been in vain.
17 For God has deprived her of wisdom;
he has not endowed her with understanding.
18 When she proudly spreads her wings,
she laughs at the horse and its rider.

19 Do you give strength to the horse?
Do you adorn his neck with a mane?
20 Do you make him leap like a locust?
His proud snorting fills one with terror.
21 He paws in the valley and rejoices in his strength;
he charges into battle.
22 He laughs at fear, since he is afraid of nothing;
he does not run from the sword.
23 A quiver rattles at his side,
along with a flashing spear and a javelin.
24 He charges ahead with trembling rage;
he cannot stand still at the sound of the ram’s horn.
25 When the ram’s horn blasts, he snorts defiantly.
He smells the battle from a distance;
he hears the officers’ shouts and the battle cry.

26 Does the hawk take flight by your understanding
and spread its wings to the south?
27 Does the eagle soar at your command
and make its nest on high?
28 It lives on a cliff where it spends the night;
its stronghold is on a rocky crag.
29 From there it searches for prey;
its eyes penetrate the distance.
30 Its brood gulps down blood,
and where the slain are, it is there.

Commentary
(the following is from Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, 1706 -- www.christianity.com)

"God inquires of Job concerning several animals.

In these questions the Lord continued to humble Job. In this chapter several animals are spoken of, whose nature or situation particularly show the power, wisdom, and manifold works of God. 

The wild donkey. It is better to labor and be good for something, than to ramble and be good for nothing.  

The wild ox, a strong, stately, proud creature. He is able to serve, but not willing; and God challenges Job to force him to it. It is a great mercy if, where God gives strength for service, he gives a heart; it is what we should pray for, and reason ourselves into, which the brutes cannot do. 

Those gifts are not always the most valuable that make the finest show. Who would not rather have the voice of the nightingale, than the tail of the peacock; the eye of the eagle and her soaring wing, and the natural affection of the stork, than the beautiful feathers of the ostrich, which can never rise above the earth, and is without natural affection? 

The description of the war-horse helps to explain the character of presumptuous sinners. Every one turns to his course, as the horse rushes into the battle. When a man's heart is fully set in him to do evil, and he is carried on in a wicked way, by the violence of his appetites and passions, there is no making him fear the wrath of God, and the fatal consequences of sin. 

Secure sinners think themselves as safe in their sins as the eagle in her nest on high, in the clefts of the rocks; but I will bring thee down from that place, says the Lord, Jeremiah 49:16. 

All these beautiful references to the works of nature, should teach us a right view of the riches of the wisdom of Him who made and sustains all things. The want of right views concerning the wisdom of God, which is ever present in all things, led Job to think and speak unworthily of Providence."

Jeremiah 49:16

As to the terror you cause,
your arrogant heart has deceived you.
You who live in the clefts of the rock,
you who occupy the mountain summit,
though you elevate your nest like the eagles,
even from there I will bring you down.
This is the Lord’s declaration.