But a stupid man will get understanding when a wild donkey's colt is born a man!
Zophar, one of Job's three friends, ends his first speech with a proverb about human nature. He says an empty man reaches for wisdom while being born as untamed as a wild donkey's colt — a saying true in itself, but fired at a sufferer it did not fit.
Zophar's Target
Older translations read the second half of the verse differently: "Vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild donkey's colt." That is the wording most of the writers below comment on. Either way, the line is no calm remark about people in general. Zophar had one man in view, and he meant it to sting.
Leslie M. GrantIt is true that senseless men will assert themselves boldly, even though their nature is the same rebellion you see in a wild donkey's colt. But Zophar did not mean this as a general observation. He saw Job as a senseless man acting stubbornly, a man who did not recognise the greatness of God's glory.
Even so, the words themselves stand. One writer notes that the empty man's search for God really does fail, and that Zophar never saw how the words fit himself.
F. B. HoleIt is indeed true that man cannot find out God by searching. It is just as true that man, being sinful, is "vain," or "empty," or "senseless," and is born like "a wild donkey's colt." Zophar felt that Job needed to see these things, with little sense of how they applied to himself. If people today saw them, it would puncture their inflated pride. They may find ways to destroy human lives by the hundred thousand, but they cannot find out God. They find Him only in Christ, who has revealed Him.
Why a Wild Donkey
Scripture does not use the donkey only as a picture of dullness. The animal also stands for self-will, which puts the verse beside the Bible's definition of sin.
W. W. FeredayIn the Word of God the donkey is not only pictured as unclean. It is also the very synonym for self-will. Read the LORD's own account of this animal, where He reasons with His servant in Job 39:5-8. And what is sin? The Revised Version of 1 John 3:4 defines it correctly: "sin is lawlessness." In other words, sin is doing our own will and neglecting the will of God. Who can claim to be an exception? Who among us does not love to have his own way, whatever it costs?
A Description of Fallen Man
Commentators accept the picture and reject the use Zophar made of it. The comparison to a beast is not exaggeration. It describes what man became through the fall.
William Kelly"For vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild donkey's colt." Well, no doubt. Through the fall, that is man's condition now. Sometimes his acts can only be compared to those of a beast — out of control, like a wild donkey. Sometimes they match a savage beast that devours and destroys everything in its path, like a lion or a bear. Man is capable of doing all these things. But Zophar's notion was all wrong.
Another writer aims the verse at people who object to God's mysteries.
PhilpotWhat finite intelligence can grasp infinity? May we not then truly add, with Zophar, about those who object to divine mysteries because they seem to contradict human reason: "For vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild donkey's colt"?
What the Colt Needs
The problem starts at birth, so the cure must be a second birth.
Samuel RidoutWe can only bow to the truth that God searches hearts, and that nothing can escape His all-seeing eye. He knows the empty vanity of the natural man's heart. By birth that man is like a wild donkey's colt, and he needs to be born again before he can have any true knowledge of God.
The same unclean animal appears in a law about firstborn animals, where a lamb could take its place.
Leslie M. GrantA donkey is mentioned in the law of the firstborn. Its owner could redeem it by sacrificing a lamb, but if he would not redeem it, he had to break its neck. What a striking picture of man's need of redemption! Sin makes man unclean, and Job 11:12 compares him to the colt of a wild donkey. If no one redeems him, then his neck — that is, his stubborn resistance — must be broken.
Summary
- Born wild. The verse traces the trouble not to what a man does but to what he is from birth — untamed, unwilling to be bridled.
- Wild means self-willed. The donkey stands for lawlessness: doing our own will and ignoring God's.
- Wild cannot find God. An empty man searching on his own never reaches God. Christ has revealed Him, and there alone we find Him.
- Wild must be redeemed. A lamb died in place of the unclean colt, or its neck was broken. Only a new birth gives a man real knowledge of God.
- True words, wrong aim. Zophar said something accurate about man. He then fired it at the one man it least fitted. Commentators call the saying sound and the use of it wrong.