When she rouses herself to flee, she laughs at the horse and his rider.
This verse ends God's picture of the ostrich — a bird with no ordinary sense, yet fast enough to outrun the best horse. Job had demanded answers from God, and God points him instead to a creature no man would have designed.
A bird built to run
These verses are hard to translate. A reference work explains what the last line records:
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe passage is obscure... Job 39:18 refers to the speed of the bird, which has often exceeded that of the best horses.
One writer describes the bird behind that speed:
Leslie M. GrantThe ostrich is another most interesting creature of God. It is a bird, but not a flying bird. It uses its wings only to help it run fast.
One thing withheld, another given
God has just said He took wisdom from her. Now He shows what He gave her instead. Where the ESV says she "laughs at" the horse, the older wording quoted below is "scorns."
William KellyThe ostrich, by contrast, leaves its young to get through as best they can. It leaves its eggs exposed in the sand, to grow or to be destroyed. She does not care about them... "because God has deprived her of wisdom." And who is to dispute with God? The God who gives one bird its remarkable affection takes the commonest sense away from another bird of immense power and great speed. So an ostrich could outrun a racehorse for a while — "she scorns the horse and his rider."
No reasons offered
Job wanted God to explain Himself. Here he gets a fact instead of a reason.
Leslie M. GrantBut Job was to learn from the ostrich that God does not do what man expects. God does not need to give us His reasons. The speed of the ostrich also is amazing, far exceeding the speed of a horse (v.18). Why? Because God chose to make it this way.
The brood that survives anyway
She leaves her eggs in the dust and treats her young as strangers.
Samuel RidoutHere is a creature that God Himself seems to have deprived of the ordinary instincts of a mother. Yet some One — Who? — cares for the helpless brood.
The same question runs through God's whole tour of the animals here.
Samuel RidoutDoes he see that prowling lioness? Who gives it food for its young? Who listens to the hungry croak of the raven? Who preserves the brilliant but stupid ostrich, the prancing battle-horse? Who guides the eagle, the king of birds, with its home high above? There is but one answer.
What Job is asked to do with it
The right response is not to analyse God but to worship Him.
William KellyBut this is not without God. He takes in more than man can grasp. Of His own will and wisdom, He is pleased to deprive the ostrich of wisdom. Yet He has also given her a swiftness which mocks the swiftest horse with its rider. Let man then mark, learn, and worship, and not set up to judge God or to murmur. This would be folly more guilty than that of the racer of the desert, as well as irreverence and rebellion.
From bird to battle horse
Speed is also the hinge to the next creature in the chapter.
Samuel RidoutThe swiftness of the ostrich leads naturally to the next creature. Jehovah passes to the horse — swiftness, strength and grace in one body — and above all to the war-horse... What part has Job had in designing and creating so remarkable a creature?
And the whole argument was never about birds.
William KellyIt was God showing His majesty, power, wisdom and goodness in outward things. If that were true of God, how much more in spiritual things? And this is the great lesson of the Book that Job had to apply.
Summary
- Withheld. God took wisdom from one bird, while giving another bird its remarkable affection.
- Given. In its place He put a speed that leaves the best horse and its rider behind, because He chose to make her that way.
- Unexplained. Job learns that God does not act as man expects and owes no reasons for how He shares out His gifts.
- Sustained. Even the brood left in the dust survives, because one Hand cares for what the parent neglects.
- Answered. God shows this power and care in outward things. Job can trust the same hands with his own soul, and worship instead of argue.