The Untamable Wisdom of God Text: Job 39:26-30
Introduction: The Divine Cross-Examination
We come now to the heart of the matter. For thirty-seven chapters, we have listened to Job and his friends attempt to unscrew the inscrutable. They have philosophized, theologized, accused, and defended. They have tried to fit the wild and terrible providence of God into their tidy doctrinal boxes. Job, to his credit, has maintained his integrity, but he has also done so with a rising tide of self-justification, demanding an audience with the Almighty to present his case. And now, God has answered him. But He does not answer from a witness stand; He answers from a whirlwind. He does not submit His resume for Job's approval; He puts Job on trial.
The entire speech of God, from chapter 38 onward, is a grand exercise in divine irony. It is a cross-examination designed not to extract information, but to reveal the profound, bottomless ignorance of the one being questioned. God does not explain to Job the secret reason for his suffering. He does not give him a peek behind the curtain at the conversation with the Accuser. Instead, He takes Job on a tour of the created order. He points to the foundations of the earth, the storehouses of the snow, the birthing of the mountain goats, and the untamable spirit of the wild donkey. The point of this zoological and meteorological catechism is singular: to crush human pride.
The modern world, much like Job's friends, thinks wisdom is a matter of information management. We believe that if we can just gather enough data, run enough models, and sequence enough genomes, we can ascend to the throne of God and manage the universe ourselves. We think we can fix our broken world by our own ingenuity. But God's questions to Job are designed to show that man cannot even manage a wild goat, let alone the cosmos. You think you can advise God on how to run His universe? You cannot even explain how a hawk knows when to migrate.
This is not anti-intellectual. It is the foundation of all true intellect. It establishes the Creator/creature distinction, which is the bedrock of sanity. God is God, and we are not. Until that is settled, all our other thoughts are disordered nonsense. In our text today, God brings His case to a sharp point by focusing on two birds of prey, the hawk and the eagle. These are not sentimental creatures. They are majestic, fierce, and utterly indifferent to human control. And in them, God reveals something of His own untamable wisdom and sovereignty.
The Text
Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars, Stretching his wings toward the south?
Is it at your command that the eagle goes on high And raises his nest high?
On the cliff he dwells and lodges, Upon the rocky crag, a fortress.
From there he spies out food; His eyes see it from afar.
His young ones also suck up blood; And where the slain are, there is he.
(Job 39:26-30 LSB)
The Instinct of the Hawk (v. 26)
God begins with the hawk.
"Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars, Stretching his wings toward the south?" (Job 39:26)
The question is direct and devastating. "Is it by your understanding?" The Hebrew word for understanding here is binah. It means discernment, comprehension, knowledge. God is asking Job, "Did you design this? Do you grasp the internal wiring of this bird? Is the migratory instinct of the hawk a product of your graduate thesis?" The obvious answer is no. Job had nothing to do with it. Modern science can describe the phenomenon. We can track the birds, study their navigational methods using the earth's magnetic field, and observe their patterns. But description is not explanation, and it is certainly not creation.
For a man to be able to describe a process does not grant him ownership of that process. I can describe how my computer works, more or less, but I am not Bill Gates. Job can watch a hawk fly south for the winter, but he cannot impart that instinct to a single sparrow. This knowledge, this intricate programming, is a direct result of God's wisdom. It is not a product of blind, evolutionary chance, which is simply a secular way of deifying our own ignorance. It is designed. And the designer is God.
The question forces Job to confront the vastness of a wisdom that operates entirely outside of his control and comprehension. Every autumn, millions of hawks embark on a journey of thousands of miles with a precision that baffles our most advanced technology. They do this without a committee meeting, without a GPS, and without asking Job for directions. They are obeying a law written into their very being by their Creator. And if God's wisdom is so profoundly embedded in a creature as common as a hawk, how much more is His wisdom at work in the providential ordering of Job's own life, however painful and mysterious it may seem?
The Sovereignty of the Eagle (v. 27-28)
From the hawk, God moves to the even more majestic eagle.
"Is it at your command that the eagle goes on high And raises his nest high? On the cliff he dwells and lodges, Upon the rocky crag, a fortress." (Job 39:27-28 LSB)
The question shifts from understanding to authority. "Is it at your command?" Does the eagle check in with you, Job, before it ascends? Do you issue its flight plan? The eagle is a biblical symbol of loftiness, power, and sovereignty. It is utterly untamable. It does not ask for permission. It soars in the high places, far above the reach of man.
And where does it make its home? "Upon the rocky crag, a fortress." The eagle's dwelling is a picture of glorious, unassailable security. It builds its nest where no predator can reach and where it has a commanding view of all below. This is a direct challenge to Job's predicament. Job, in his suffering, feels exposed, vulnerable, and torn down. But God directs his attention to a creature that embodies strength and security. The point is not to mock Job's weakness, but to point him to the source of all true strength and security.
The eagle's fortress is a gift from its Creator. Its high-flying nature is not its own invention. It is living out the script God wrote for it. God is the one who commands the eagle to mount up. He is the one who established it in its fortress. The unspoken lesson for Job is this: the same God who provides this inaccessible security for a mere bird is the God who is sovereign over your life. Your true fortress is not your health, your wealth, or your reputation. Your true fortress is the character of the God who commands the eagle.
The Fierce Provision (v. 29-30)
God concludes this section by describing the eagle's fierce and bloody nature.
"From there he spies out food; His eyes see it from afar. His young ones also suck up blood; And where the slain are, there is he." (Job 39:29-30 LSB)
The eagle's vision is legendary. From its high fortress, it can spot the smallest movement on the ground miles away. This is another aspect of God's intricate design. He has equipped the creature perfectly for its assigned role in the world. This is not random; it is purposeful.
But notice what the eagle sees. It sees food. It sees prey. And the description is not sanitized for our delicate sensibilities. "His young ones also suck up blood." This is not a pretty picture. It is a picture of death. The life of the eagle and its young is sustained by the death of other creatures. This is a hard reality of the fallen world, but it is a reality over which God is entirely sovereign. God is not squeamish. He presides over a world that is beautiful and brutal, a world of soaring eagles and slain prey.
The final line is stark: "And where the slain are, there is he." Jesus quotes this very concept in Matthew 24:28, referring to the swiftness and certainty of God's judgment. Here, in Job, it serves as a final reminder that God's sovereignty extends over life and death. The world is not a safe, tidy garden. It is a wild and dangerous place. And God is in charge of all of it. He is not just the God of the lambs, but also the God of the eagles. He is not just the God of your prosperity, Job, but also the God of your calamity. And true wisdom does not consist in demanding that God conform to our expectations of what is nice, but in bowing before the God who is.
Conclusion: From the Eagle to the Cross
So what is the takeaway for Job, and for us? It is first a profound lesson in humility. Our wisdom is nothing. Our command is nothing. We are creatures. We are dust. We are not qualified to serve as God's performance reviewers. The beginning of wisdom is not acquiring more data, but acquiring a profound sense of our own finitude and foolishness before an infinitely wise God. Job's problem was not that he suffered, but that he began to believe his suffering gave him the moral high ground from which to question God. God's speech from the whirlwind demolishes that high ground entirely.
But this is not meant to leave us in despair. It is meant to drive us out of ourselves and to the only true source of wisdom. The God who designed the hawk and commands the eagle is not a distant, impersonal force. He is a personal God who speaks. And the ultimate expression of His speech is not in the whirlwind, but in His Son.
The Apostle Paul tells us that Christ is the "wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:24). All the intricate design we see in the hawk's migration and the eagle's eye is just a faint echo of the infinite wisdom that resides in Jesus Christ, "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3). The untamable eagle, dwelling in its rocky fortress, is a picture of Christ, our Rock and our Fortress. He is the one who ascended on high, far above all principalities and powers.
And what of that final, bloody scene? "Where the slain are, there is he." This points us to the cross. On the cross, the Son of God was Himself made to be the slain one. He became the prey so that we, who were spiritually dead, might "suck up blood" not as predators, but as redeemed children. We feast on His sacrifice. His death gives us life. The fierce, bloody provision of the eagle for its young is a dark shadow of the fierce, bloody, loving provision of the Father for His children, accomplished through the death of His Son.
Job was being called to stop trusting in his own understanding and to trust in the character of the God who speaks from the whirlwind. We are called to do the same, but we have an even clearer revelation. We look not to the hawk or the eagle, but to Jesus Christ. He is the final answer to the problem of suffering. He is the ultimate display of God's wild, untamable, and saving wisdom.