The Divine Comedy of the Ostrich Text: Job 39:13-18
Introduction: God's Whirlwind Zoology
We come now to the portion of God's speech from the whirlwind where the modern, respectable Christian often begins to shuffle his feet. We are quite comfortable with a God who creates majestic lions and soaring eagles. We like a God whose handiwork can be neatly categorized, quantified, and used to prove His sagacity in a high school debate. But what are we to do with a God who seems to delight in making a creature that is, by all human standards, a feathery buffoon? What do we do with the ostrich?
Job has been demanding an audience with God. He has been challenging the Almighty to a court case, convinced that if he could just get a hearing, he could vindicate his own righteousness. He has, in essence, accused God of cosmic mismanagement. And so God finally answers, not with a legal brief, but with a storm. And from the storm, He doesn't give Job a systematic theology; He gives him a zoo. God puts Job in his place by pointing to the wild donkey, the mountain goat, the untamable ox, and now, the ridiculous ostrich.
Our secular age, of course, has a tidy explanation for the ostrich. It is a product of blind, purposeless evolution. It is a transitional form, a quirky accident of mutation and natural selection, a bundle of survival instincts that just happen to work, however bizarre they appear. Its apparent foolishness is just an anthropomorphic projection. There is no mind behind it, so there can be no folly in it. But the Christian must not take refuge in such sterile nonsense. God is not just claiming authorship of the sensible parts of creation; He is claiming authorship of the parts that make us scratch our heads. He is taking full credit for the ostrich, in all her glorious absurdity.
This passage is a direct assault on human pride. It is God employing a kind of divine, serrated-edge humor to dismantle Job's pretensions. Job wanted to understand the ways of God in the moral universe, and God responds by showing him a bird that can't even keep track of her own eggs. The point is this: if you cannot grasp the mind of God in the simple, observable world of ornithology, what makes you think you are qualified to audit His sovereign decrees concerning justice and suffering? If the ostrich is beyond your pay grade, then the problem of evil most certainly is.
The Text
The ostriches' wings flap joyously, But are they the pinion and plumage of a stork? 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. She treats her children cruelly, as if they were not hers; Though her labor be empty, she is without dread, Because God has made her forget wisdom, And has not given her a share of understanding. When she raises herself up high, She laughs at the horse and his rider.
(Job 39:13-18 LSB)
A Useless Majesty (v. 13)
God begins His description with a picture of pointless splendor.
"The ostriches' wings flap joyously, But are they the pinion and plumage of a stork?" (Job 39:13)
The ostrich has wings. They are large, they are showy, and she flaps them around with great enthusiasm. But what are they for? Not for flying. God immediately draws a contrast with the stork, a bird known for its powerful flight and its tender care for its young. The stork's wings have a noble purpose. The ostrich's wings are like a sports car with no engine. It is all for show. She has the apparatus of flight but none of the aptitude.
This is a direct jab at a certain kind of human religiosity. How many people flap their wings joyously in church on Sunday? They have the plumage of piety. They have the vocabulary of the faithful. They make a great show of their spiritual endowments. But when it comes time to actually soar, to rise above their circumstances in faith, to perform the basic duties of Christian love and wisdom, they are utterly earthbound. Their wings are for flapping, not for flying. It is a useless majesty, a joyous but fruitless display. God is the one who designed this bird, and He is pointing out the disconnect between her appearance and her function as a way of holding up a mirror to man.
A Callous Incompetence (v. 14-16)
Next, God moves from her useless wings to her bafflingly negligent parenting.
"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. She treats her children cruelly, as if they were not hers; Though her labor be empty, she is without dread." (Job 39:14-16 LSB)
Here is a portrait of what can only be described as profound maternal stupidity. She lays her eggs right on the ground and then wanders off. She seems to have a complete mental disconnect. She "forgets" that her eggs are fragile and that the world is full of things that crush and trample. The text is blunt: she treats her children cruelly. There is no sentimentality here. This is not a PETA-approved description of animal behavior. This is God describing His creature as a bad mother.
She is "without dread." The normal, God-given instinct to protect one's own offspring is entirely absent. Her labor in laying the eggs is all for nothing, but she is not worried about it in the slightest. She is a picture of serene and cheerful incompetence. She is a walking, flapping contradiction to every sentimental nature documentary that wants to portray the animal kingdom as a realm of noble, instinct-driven wisdom.
This is a profound theological statement. Why would God make a creature like this? To show us that the world does not run on the rails of human sentiment or utilitarian logic. God's creation is wilder, stranger, and more varied than our tidy philosophies will allow. He is not bound to make every creature a model of efficiency. He is an artist, and sometimes an artist paints with jarring colors and unsettling designs to make a point.
Sovereignly Ordained Folly (v. 17)
And here is the theological linchpin of the entire passage. Why is the ostrich so foolish? Was it a cosmic accident? A genetic misfire? No.
"Because God has made her forget wisdom, And has not given her a share of understanding." (Job 39:17 LSB)
Let that sink in. The ostrich's foolishness is not her fault; it is her design. God Himself claims responsibility for her lack of wisdom. He is the one who deprived her of understanding. This verse is a cannonball fired into the hull of every worldview that tries to make God into a predictable, domesticated deity who only operates according to our standards of good sense.
This is pure, unadulterated Calvinism in the beak of a bird. God sovereignly distributes and withholds wisdom as He sees fit. He gives cunning to the fox, industry to the ant, and a complete lack of common sense to the ostrich. And He does it for His own glory. He is showing Job, and us, that He is God. He does not owe wisdom to any of His creatures. If He gives it, it is grace. If He withholds it, He is still just and glorious. We are the creatures; we do not get to critique the Creator's design choices.
The naturalist has to look at the ostrich and say, "What a marvelous adaptation for survival in its ecological niche." The Bible looks at the ostrich and says, "God made her that way to make a point." The point is that God is sovereign, and man is not. Man thinks in terms of cause and effect, of wisdom and consequence. God shows him a creature where the normal consequences of foolishness, total extinction, are somehow held at bay by the same sovereign power that ordained the foolishness in the first place.
A Sudden, Laughing Glory (v. 18)
But just when we have written the ostrich off as a complete failure, God reveals another side to her design.
"When she raises herself up high, She laughs at the horse and his rider." (Job 39:18 LSB)
This foolish, flightless, feckless mother has one thing going for her. She can run. When she "raises herself up high," stretching out her long legs, she is transformed. All her awkwardness vanishes, and she becomes a blur of speed and power. The horse, the ancient world's symbol of military might and swiftness, is nothing to her. She doesn't just outrun the horse and his rider; she "laughs" at them. It is a picture of effortless, joyful superiority.
This is the punchline of God's joke. The creature that is a complete failure by every standard of wisdom and parental responsibility is, in this one area, utterly supreme. God has designed her to be a paradox. She is a walking, running embodiment of the principle that God's strength is made perfect in weakness. He takes the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.
The horse and rider represent man's best attempt at power, speed, and dominion. They represent human technology, military strategy, and cultivated strength. And this divinely-ordained silly bird leaves them in the dust, kicking sand in their faces with a laugh. This is God's message to Job in a nutshell. "Job, you and your friends, with all your wisdom and your arguments, are like the horse and rider. You are impressive by human standards. But my purposes, my designs, even those that appear foolish and weak to you, will outrun you and have the last laugh."
Conclusion: The Wisdom of a Foolish God
So what is the takeaway for us? The ostrich is a gospel creature. She is a living parable of God's ways with man. In our natural state, we are just like her. We have wings of religious pretension that cannot get us off the ground. We are foolish, leaving our souls to be warmed in the dust of this world, forgetting the dangers that can crush us. We are cruel to ourselves and to our own, and we do it all without dread, serene in our incompetence.
Why? Because in our fallenness, God has let us have the foolishness we desired. He has given us over to a debased mind. But the story does not end there.
The apostle Paul tells us that "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Corinthians 1:25). The central message of our faith is the cross of Jesus Christ, which to the world is the ultimate foolishness. A God who dies? A king who is crucified? A savior who doesn't save Himself? It is as absurd as an ostrich leaving her eggs in the dust.
But when God "raises up" His Son from the dead, that foolishness laughs at the horse and his rider. It laughs at the power of Rome, the wisdom of the Sanhedrin, and the finality of the grave. The resurrection outruns all human power and pretension. God takes the foolish thing, the crucified Nazarene, and makes Him the wisdom and power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
When you are tempted to despair, when you look at your life and see only foolishness and failure, remember the ostrich. Remember that God delights in using the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are. Trust in the foolishness of the cross. For it is only when we abandon our own pretensions to wisdom and cast ourselves upon the absurd grace of God that we, too, will be raised up to laugh at the horse and his rider, outrunning sin and death forever.