Commentary - Job 39:13-18

Bird's-eye view

Here in the thirty-ninth chapter of Job, God continues His cross-examination of His servant Job, and He does so from the whirlwind. This is not a gentle Socratic dialogue. This is God dismantling the plaintiff’s case by revealing the utter majesty and meticulous sovereignty of the One being charged. Job, in his suffering, had demanded a hearing, and now he has one. But God does not answer Job’s questions directly. Instead, He poses His own questions, a torrent of them, all designed to highlight the infinite chasm between the Creator and the creature. The point is not to give Job an education in zoology, but to give him a lesson in theology proper. The subject is God Himself.

In this particular section, verses 13-18, the Lord brings the ostrich into the courtroom. And what a witness she is. She is a picture of apparent absurdity, a feathered contradiction. She has wings but cannot fly. She is a mother who is shockingly negligent. She is a powerful runner who laughs at the war horse. Every detail of her strange existence is a testament to the fact that God’s designs are not constrained by what makes sense to us. The ostrich is a living, breathing sermon on divine prerogative. God does what He pleases, and He does not need our approval or understanding. This is a hard lesson, but for a man like Job, sitting on an ash heap and scraping his sores, it is the beginning of wisdom.

Outline

Context In Job

This passage is a crucial part of God's second speech to Job. Up to this point, Job has endured the loss of his children, his wealth, and his health. He has also endured the counsel of his friends, who operated on a tidy but false premise: that all suffering is a direct and immediate consequence of specific sin. Job knew he wasn’t guilty in the way they alleged, and this led him to question God’s justice. He wanted his day in court. Now, God has shown up, and instead of answering Job's "why," He is overwhelming Job with His "who."

The examples from the animal kingdom, the lion, the raven, the mountain goat, the wild donkey, and now the ostrich, are not random trivia. Each one illustrates a facet of God’s untamable wisdom and power. Man cannot command the wild donkey or domesticate the wild ox. And here, man cannot make sense of the ostrich. She is a paradox. This serves to humble Job, and by extension, all of us. If we cannot grasp the "why" behind the ostrich, how can we possibly presume to stand in judgment over the God who governs all things, including our own perplexing trials?

Key Issues

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 13 “The ostriches’ wings flap joyously But are they the pinion and plumage of a stork?

The Lord begins with a picture of what appears to be pure, unadulterated joy. The ostrich flaps her wings with exuberance. There is a glory in it, a kind of pointless splendor. But God immediately introduces a qualification, a divine "but." Her wings are not like the stork's. The stork is known for its powerful flight and its tender care for its young, it is a picture of functional, nurturing design. The ostrich, by contrast, has wings that are, for all practical purposes, useless for flight. They are for show. This is the first jab at human utilitarianism. We tend to think that everything must have a purpose we can readily identify. God begins by showing us a creature full of joyous, flightless wings, and dares us to ask what the "point" is. The point is that God made her that way, and she rejoices in what He made her to be.

v. 14-15 For she leaves her eggs to the earth And warms them in the dust, And she forgets that a foot may crush them, Or that a beast of the field may trample them.

Now the indictment gets more severe. This flightless bird is also a feckless mother. She lays her eggs on the ground, not in a protected nest high in a tree, but right there in the dust. The sun and the sand do the work of incubation. But notice the language: she "forgets." This is not a calculated risk; it is an absence of mind. She is oblivious to the dangers. A foot could crush them. A wild animal could trample them. From our perspective, this is appalling negligence. Where is the maternal instinct? Where is the wisdom? This is precisely the point. God is presenting Job with a creature that defies all our cherished notions of what a "good" creature ought to be and do. He is forcing Job to confront a world that does not revolve around human sensibilities.

v. 16 She treats her children cruelly, as if they were not hers; Though her labor be empty, she is without dread,

The language intensifies. It is not just forgetfulness; it is cruelty. She is "hardened against her young ones." It is as though they do not belong to her. And the most staggering part? She is "without dread." Her labor might come to nothing, her entire clutch of eggs destroyed, and it doesn't seem to bother her. She feels no anxiety, no fear, no sense of loss. This is utterly alien to us. We are creatures who dread, who fear, who grieve loss. God is showing Job an animal that He designed to be free from this kind of care. This is a profound challenge to Job's entire predicament. Job is consumed with his loss, with the seeming vanity of his life's labor. God shows him a creature for whom "labor in vain" is just another Tuesday, and she is not troubled by it in the least.

v. 17 Because God has made her forget wisdom, And has not given her a share of understanding.

Here is the theological linchpin of the entire passage. Why is the ostrich this way? Is it a genetic fluke? A mistake in the design? No. The reason is stated plainly: "Because God has made her forget wisdom." God did this. He actively, purposefully, withheld understanding from her. This is a staggering claim. We think of wisdom and understanding as unalloyed goods, things God distributes freely. But here, God says that He sovereignly withholds them according to His own purposes. He is the one who determines the measure of wisdom given to each creature. He is not just the giver of wisdom; He is the giver of the lack of wisdom. This must have landed on Job with the force of a thunderclap. Job has been seeking understanding, demanding a rational explanation for his suffering. And God responds by pointing to a creature He deliberately made foolish, and asks Job, in effect, "Are you going to charge me for that too?"

v. 18 When she raises herself up high, She laughs at the horse and his rider.

And then comes the glorious, confounding conclusion. This foolish, cruel, flightless bird has another side. When she gets up to run, she is magnificent. She "raises herself up high," and in her speed and power, she scorns the very epitome of military might, the horse and his rider. The war horse, which God will describe in stunning detail just a few verses later, is a symbol of strength and courage. And this silly bird laughs at it. She can outrun it. So the same creature that is deprived of wisdom in one area is gifted with breathtaking power in another. She is a bundle of divine contradictions. God has made her foolish in motherhood but glorious in motion. He has made her an object lesson in His absolute freedom. He distributes His gifts as He sees fit, and the results are often baffling to us, but they are never outside His perfect plan. He can make a creature that is simultaneously a bad mother and a world-class sprinter, and He is glorified in both.

Application

The application for Job, and for us, is as straightforward as it is humbling. We are not God. Our understanding is laughably finite. When we face trials that seem as senseless as the ostrich's parenting methods, our first duty is not to demand an explanation from God, but to bow before the God who needs no explanation from us. Our suffering does not give us a platform from which to judge God; it gives us a classroom in which to learn of Him.

The ostrich teaches us that God’s wisdom is not always, or even usually, our wisdom. He is glorified in ways we cannot begin to comprehend. He can purposefully withhold understanding from a creature for His own glory. He can create what appears to us to be a "flawed" design, and then gift that same creature with a speed that laughs at a cavalry charge. What does this mean for us? It means that when our lives feel like a series of contradictions, when our labor seems in vain, when we cannot see the wisdom in our circumstances, we are to remember the ostrich. We are to remember that the God who made her is the same God who governs our lives. He has not forgotten wisdom; He is wisdom. And our part is not to understand, but to trust. The fear of the Lord, not the full comprehension of His ways, is the beginning of wisdom.