Job 39:16

She also treats her young harshly, as though they were not hers (v.16). How unlike most mother birds or animals! Why is this so? "Because God deprived her of wisdom, and did not endow her with understanding" (v.17). Sad to say, some human mothers act like the ostrich in this matter, but it is abnormal. But Job was to learn from the ostrich that God does not do what man might naturally expect. He does not need to give us His reasons.

The ostrich, on the contrary, leaves its young to get through as best they can. She leaves her eggs out in the sand, to come to maturity there or to be destroyed. She does not care about them... And who is to dispute with God? God gives one bird its remarkable character of affection. From another bird He takes away the commonest sense — a bird of immense power and great swiftness, able to outrun a racehorse for a while.

The passage speaks of the ostrich leaving her eggs unprotected and hardening herself against her young. The ostrich leaves its eggs in the sand, well covered up. The sun keeps them warm by day, and the parent sits on them at night. She leaves other eggs unprotected nearby as food for the chicks when they hatch, and these may get trampled. As to the indifference of the parents to their young, reports say that when a hunter approaches, they leave their nests. Often they cannot find the place again in the wide desert. Yet people have found dead jackals near the nests, killed by the parent birds. Some suppose that Job 39:16 refers to other birds laying eggs in the ostrich's nest, so that the chicks which hatch are "not hers."

All things, however wild and senseless they seem, are His creatures, and He does not forget them... Here is a creature God Himself seems to have deprived of the ordinary mother's instincts. Yet some One — Who? — cares for the helpless brood.

No wonder the Chaldean enemy was bitter in reproach and cruel in punishment. But, sad to say, the chosen nation's cup of indignity was not full until they themselves turned the most bitter of all against their own kin, out of sheer want and misery. "Even jackals offer the breast; they nurse their young; but the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness."

But this is not without God. He takes in more than man can grasp, and it pleases Him, of His own will and wisdom, to deprive the ostrich of wisdom. Yet He has also given her a swiftness that mocks the swiftest horse with its rider. Let man then mark, learn, and worship, and not set himself up to judge God or to murmur. That would be folly more guilty than the desert racer's, as well as irreverence and rebellion.