The Liberty of the Wild Donkey Text: Job 39:5-8
Introduction: The Untamable God
We come now to that point in the book of Job where God finally answers. And His answer is not at all what modern sensibilities would expect or demand. Job has been through the meat grinder. He has lost everything. He has been accused unjustly by his friends, who operated on a tidy but false theological system where every calamity is the direct result of a specific, corresponding sin. Job has maintained his integrity, but in his anguish, he has called God to the witness stand. He has demanded an explanation. He wants the Almighty to show His work, to justify His ways.
And when God shows up in the whirlwind, He does not offer a detailed accounting of the cosmic legal battle that we, the readers, are privy to. He does not give Job a syllabus on the problem of evil. He does not soothe him with therapeutic affirmations. Instead, God puts Job on trial. He cross-examines Job with a blistering series of questions about the created order. The questions are designed to do one thing: to demonstrate the infinite chasm between the Creator and the creature. They are designed to humble Job, and through him, to humble us.
Our generation despises this kind of answer. We want a God who is manageable, a God who fits into our spreadsheets, a God who can be summoned to our therapeutic couches to explain Himself. We want a God who is, in a word, tame. But the God of the Bible is not a tame lion. The point of this whole magnificent display of creation is to show Job that the God who presides over a universe filled with untamable things is Himself untamable. You cannot put a leash on the God who makes the wild donkey.
The modern evangelical project, in many quarters, has been an attempt to domesticate God. We want His blessings without His sovereignty. We want His comfort without His authority. We want a God who will eat out of our hand. But God's response to Job is a declaration of His absolute, untamed freedom. And in our text today, He uses the wild donkey as exhibit A. This is not a random zoology lesson. This is theology proper, taught with teeth and hooves.
The Text
"Who sent out the wild donkey free? And who loosed the bonds of the swift donkey, For whom I have set the desert plain as a home And the salt land as his dwelling place? He laughs at the tumult of the city; The shoutings of the driver he does not hear. He explores the mountains for his pasture And searches after every green thing."
(Job 39:5-8 LSB)
The Divine Emancipation Proclamation (v. 5)
God begins His interrogation concerning this creature with two rhetorical questions that drive to the heart of the matter: who is in charge here?
"Who sent out the wild donkey free? And who loosed the bonds of the swift donkey," (Job 39:5 LSB)
The answer, of course, is God. The wild donkey is not an accident of evolution, a feral escapee from some primordial farm. His liberty is not a bug; it is a feature. God Himself "sent him out free." God Himself "loosed his bonds." This is a direct, divine decree of freedom. This creature's nature is to be wild, untamable, and unbound, and it is this way because God ordained it to be this way.
This is a profound statement about divine sovereignty. We tend to think of God's control only in terms of order, neatness, and straight lines. We think of the orbits of the planets or the structure of a snowflake. But God is also sovereign over the wildness. He is the author of the bucking bronco, the roaring lion, and the free-roaming donkey. His sovereignty is not a cosmic straightjacket; it is the very foundation of all liberty, including the liberty of this stubborn creature.
Notice the contrast with its domesticated cousin. The tame donkey is a byword for servitude and labor. It is bound, burdened, and driven. But God wants Job to consider the wild one. Why? To show him that the categories man uses to organize his world, tame and wild, useful and useless, are not God's ultimate categories. God has purposes for the wild donkey that have nothing to do with whether it can carry a sack of grain for Job. Its purpose is to be what God made it to be, a living testament to a freedom that comes from God alone.
A Home in Hostility (v. 6)
Next, God describes the habitat He has assigned to this free creature.
"For whom I have set the desert plain as a home And the salt land as his dwelling place?" (Job 39:6 LSB)
God did not just set the donkey free; He provided for it. But look at the provision. It is the wilderness, the salt land. These are places hostile to man and to his agricultural endeavors. They are places that man would call barren or useless. But God calls it a "home," a "dwelling place." God has perfectly equipped this creature to not just survive, but to thrive in an environment where a domesticated animal, or a man for that matter, would quickly perish.
This is a direct rebuke to Job's limited perspective. Job is looking at his life, which has become a barren wasteland, and concluding that God's provision has failed. God answers by pointing to the donkey and saying, in effect, "You see a wasteland. I see a home. Your definition of a hospitable environment is not the only one. I know how to make life flourish in the salt land."
This is a hard lesson, but a necessary one. We are tempted to believe that God's blessing is only found in the lush pastures and beside the still waters. But God is sovereign over the desert plain as well. He can sustain His purposes and His creatures in the salt land. He is teaching Job that what looks like abandonment from a human perspective is, from a divine perspective, a carefully appointed dwelling place. God's provision is not limited to our comfort zones.
Contempt for Civilization (v. 7)
The donkey's character is defined by its relationship, or lack thereof, to human society.
"He laughs at the tumult of the city; The shoutings of the driver he does not hear." (Job 39:7 LSB)
This is a magnificent piece of poetry. The wild donkey "laughs" at the hustle and bustle of the city. All the noise, the commerce, the politics, the things that men consider so important, are a joke to him. He is utterly unimpressed by human civilization. Why? Because he is free from it. He doesn't need its markets, its walls, or its supposed security.
More than that, "the shoutings of the driver he does not hear." The driver represents human authority, control, and coercion. The tame donkey knows this shouting all too well. It is the voice of its master, directing its every move. But the wild donkey is deaf to it. It is not that he is disobedient in a moral sense; he is in a different jurisdiction altogether. He answers to a different authority. His ears are tuned to the commands of his Creator, not the shouts of a human driver.
This is a picture of a creature that cannot be manipulated, coerced, or controlled by man. And God is asking Job, "Can you do this? Can you make a creature that is utterly indifferent to your authority?" The point is to show Job how small his own sphere of influence really is. Job cannot even control a donkey, yet he presumes to understand and judge the God who governs the cosmos. The laughter of the wild donkey is the laughter of God at the pretensions of proud men.
The Unfettered Search (v. 8)
The chapter concludes with a description of the donkey's daily life, a life of free exploration.
"He explores the mountains for his pasture And searches after every green thing." (Job 39:8 LSB)
His life is not one of lazy inactivity. His freedom is not a freedom from effort, but a freedom of effort. He is not fed from a trough by a master. He "explores" and "searches." His pasture is not a fenced-in field but the "range of the mountains." He is on a constant quest, driven by the appetite that God gave him, to find the provision that God has scattered for him.
This is a picture of dependence, but it is a dependence on God alone. The tame donkey depends on his master for his daily portion. The wild donkey depends on the direct providence of God. He trusts that the God who made him wild has also made provision for him in that wildness. He searches, and God provides.
This whole portrait is designed to recalibrate Job's understanding of God. Job, you feel like your life is out of control. You feel like you are in a barren wilderness. You feel that you are outside the normal structures of blessing and society. Look at the wild donkey. I made him that way on purpose. His freedom, his wilderness home, his contempt for human control, and his daily search for My provision are all part of My grand, untamable design. Are you willing to trust that the God who masterfully governs the life of this wild creature is also masterfully governing yours?
The Gospel for Wild Donkeys
This passage is not just about humbling Job. It is a signpost pointing to a deeper reality. In our natural state, we are like this wild donkey. The Scriptures even use this very image for rebellious man. Ishmael was to be "a wild donkey of a man" (Gen. 16:12). Ephraim is a "wild donkey wandering alone" (Hos. 8:9). Unregenerate man is born "a wild donkey's colt" (Job 11:12).
We are born with a desire to be free from God's law. We want to be "sent out free." We want our "bonds loosed." We laugh at the tumult of the holy city, the New Jerusalem. We refuse to hear the shoutings of the Divine Driver. We want to be our own masters, exploring the mountains of our own ambition, searching after every green thing our lusts can imagine.
But this is a damnable freedom. It is a freedom that leads to the salt land of eternal death. The liberty of the sinner is the liberty of a runaway slave who is starving in the wilderness, all the while boasting that he has no master.
What is the solution? It is not for God to simply tame us, to break our will and put us in a harness. No, the gospel is something far more glorious. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the one who truly fulfills the picture of the wild donkey in a righteous way. He was sent by the Father, truly free. He lived in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. He laughed at the tumult of the earthly city, Jerusalem, which was in bondage. He did not listen to the shoutings of the drivers, the Pharisees and rulers who tried to control Him. He alone was truly free.
And what did He do with this freedom? He willingly went to the place of the tame donkey. He took the yoke upon Himself. He who loosed the bonds of the wild ass allowed Himself to be bound. He who knew no driver submitted to the whips of evil men. He entered the city not laughing, but weeping. He came to Jerusalem, not on a wild donkey, but on a domesticated colt, a beast of burden, in utter humility (Zech. 9:9).
He took our rebellious wildness upon Himself and nailed it to the cross. He took the bonds of a slave so that we might be granted the true freedom of sons. The gospel is not about God breaking you like a wild animal. It is about God, in Christ, taking your place, and then giving you a new heart, a heart that wants to obey, a heart that finds true liberty not in the salt land of sin, but in the green pastures of His law. He makes us free, not to wander alone, but to joyfully follow the voice of the Good Shepherd.