Commentary - Job 39:5-8

Bird's-eye view

Here, in this whirlwind interrogation of Job, the Lord is not simply flexing His creative muscle. He is recalibrating Job's entire universe. The subject is the wild donkey, a creature defined by its untamable liberty. God is pressing a crucial point home to Job, and to us. The issue is not just that God created all things, but that He governs them all, sustains them all, and has a purpose for them all, even for those things that exist far outside the neat and tidy fences of human utility. The wild donkey doesn't pull a plow. He doesn't carry a burden for any man. His entire existence is a testimony to a wild, untamed sovereignty that does not answer to human committee meetings. This is a lesson in divine governance. God is not just the creator of the tame and the useful; He is the Lord of the wild and the free. And if He can manage the chaotic liberty of a wild donkey in the salt flats, He can certainly manage the afflictions of one man in the land of Uz.

The central thrust is to humble man by showing him a sliver of God's cosmic administrative portfolio. Job had been demanding a hearing, an explanation for his suffering. God answers, but not by handing him a spreadsheet. Instead, He takes him on a tour of the zoo, a zoo that He runs with meticulous and inscrutable wisdom. The wild donkey is Exhibit A in the case for trusting the God who is not, in the final analysis, obligated to explain Himself to the creatures He has made. His untamed creation is a living parable of His own untamable freedom.

Outline

Context In Job

We are at the climax of the book. After thirty-seven chapters of human reasoning, accusation, and defense, God finally speaks. But His answer is a cascade of questions. Job and his friends have been trying to fit God's providence into their theological boxes. They operated on the assumption that the moral order of the universe should be immediately and transparently obvious to them. If Job is righteous, he should prosper. If he is suffering, he must have sinned. It was a closed system.

God shatters this system by appealing to the wildness of His creation. The questions about the wild donkey come after questions about the foundations of the earth, the sea, the dawn, and the snow. God is systematically dismantling the anthropocentric worldview that places man and his understanding at the center of everything. The wild donkey serves as a perfect example of something that God made and loves, but which has no apparent direct service to man. It exists for God's good pleasure. This section forces Job to confront the reality that the world is much bigger, much wilder, and much more complexly governed than he had ever imagined. It is a necessary prelude to his repentance and restoration, which is not a repentance from gross sin, but a repentance from the intellectual pride that demanded a full accounting from the Almighty.

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 5 “Who sent out the wild donkey free? And who loosed the bonds of the swift donkey,

The question is rhetorical, and the answer is God. But we must not move on too quickly. The emphasis here is on freedom, on being "sent out." This is not an accidental liberty. This is a decreed, ordained, and established freedom. God didn't just create the wild donkey and then lose the leash. He intentionally "sent" him out, and He personally "loosed" his bonds. This is a picture of delegated and created freedom. The donkey is free because God willed it so. This is a direct challenge to Job's predicament. Job feels bound, trapped by his circumstances. God points to a creature He made and says, "Look, I am the one who gives freedom. I am the one who looses bonds." The implication is that God is sovereign over bondage and freedom alike. He is not a distant observer; He is the active agent. If the wild donkey's freedom is a direct result of God's decree, then Job's suffering is not outside that same sovereign decree. This is both a terrifying and a comforting thought. It is terrifying because it means God is responsible. It is comforting because it means God is in control.

v. 6 For whom I have set the desert plain as a home And the salt land as his dwelling place?

Here the Lord identifies Himself as the one who provides for this wild creature. And what a provision it is. The desert plain, the salt land. From a human perspective, this is a wasteland. It is unproductive, barren, and inhospitable. We would look at it and see lack. God looks at it and calls it a home, a dwelling place. He has "set" it for the donkey. This is an act of divine appointment. God is showing Job that His notions of provision and goodness are not limited to fertile pastures and quiet waters. God's economy includes the salt flats. He can make a home where man can only see desolation. This is a profound lesson. Job is in a spiritual salt land. Everything has been stripped away. And God is saying, "I am Lord even here. I can make this a dwelling place." Furthermore, the donkey is perfectly suited for this environment. God did not make a mistake. He did not equip the donkey for the meadow and then abandon him in the desert. The creature and his home are a perfect match, designed by the same hand. This is a picture of God's intricate wisdom in fitting His creatures to their circumstances, a wisdom that Job is being called to trust in his own life.

v. 7 He laughs at the tumult of the city; The shoutings of the driver he does not hear.

This verse contrasts the donkey's ordained freedom with the structures of human civilization. The "tumult of the city" represents all our noise, our busyness, our projects, our economies. The wild donkey "laughs" at it. This is not the laughter of arrogance, but the laughter of glorious indifference. He is not part of our system. He does not answer to our schedules. He is on God's time. And the shoutings of the driver, which the tame donkey knows all too well, mean nothing to him. He does not hear them. This is a creature that cannot be domesticated, cannot be harnessed for human purposes. God is making it plain that He has created things that are deliberately outside of man's dominion in that direct, utilitarian sense. Man was given dominion, yes, but that dominion is itself a delegated authority under God. There are realms where God has posted a "no trespassing" sign for human agendas. This is a humbling corrective. Job, and all of us, are tempted to think that if we cannot control something, or at least understand its utility for us, then it is out of control. God says, "Not so." The wild donkey's deafness to the driver is a sign of his obedience to a higher call, a wilder vocation assigned to him by his Creator.

v. 8 He explores the mountains for his pasture And searches after every green thing.

This final verse describes the donkey's daily life. He "explores" and "searches." He is not idle in his freedom. His liberty is not a liberty of laziness. It is a liberty to pursue the provision that God has made for him. Notice the active, searching nature of his existence. He is engaged in the task of living. And where does he find his pasture? In the mountains. Again, a place that is difficult and rugged from a human standpoint. He has to search for "every green thing." His food is not delivered to him in a trough. God's provision for him is provision to be sought. This is a beautiful picture of how God's sovereignty and the creature's responsibility work together. God has appointed the salt land for his home and the mountains for his pasture, but the donkey must still explore and search. God guides, provides, and sustains, but the creature lives. This is the life of faith in a nutshell. We are to trust that God has appointed our lot for us, and then we are to actively search out the green things, the signs of His grace and provision, even when we find ourselves in the rocky, mountainous places.

Application

The point of this passage is not to give us a biology lesson on the Asiatic wild ass. The point is to teach us theology proper, the doctrine of God. When we are in the midst of our own whirlwind, when our tidy systems of understanding the world have been blown apart, we must learn to do what Job was learning to do: look at the wild donkey and be quiet.

First, we must confess that God's world is not all about us. He has purposes and designs that are far beyond our pay grade. The freedom of the wild donkey, his utter uselessness to the machinery of human progress, is a glorious testimony to the fact that God is the center of all things, not man. He does things for His own good pleasure, and that is reason enough.

Second, we must learn to trust God's provision in the salt lands of our lives. When we find ourselves in barren places, spiritually, financially, or emotionally, we must remember that God is the one who appoints such places as a "dwelling." He knows how to sustain life there. He has not made a mistake. Our task is not to demand a transfer to the fertile plains, but to search for "every green thing" that He has provided, right where we are.

Finally, we must learn to laugh at the tumult of the city. We must cultivate a holy indifference to the demands and shouts of a world that wants to harness us for its own purposes. Like the wild donkey, we have been set free. We have been loosed from our bonds by a greater act of God than the one described here. In Christ, we have been set free from sin and death. We are no longer to answer to the shouts of the old driver. We are to live in the wild freedom of the sons of God, exploring the high places for the pasture He has provided, living for an audience of One.