Job 39:27

Jehovah has shown the wonders of the lifeless creation above, beneath, and around. Now He turns to the animal kingdom. The lion, the raven, the wild goat or ibex, the wild ass, the wild ox, the ostrich, the horse, the hawk, and the eagle appear one after another. They convince the man who dares to sit in judgment on God's doings that he is ignorant and powerless.

God tells Job to consider the eagle too. Did Job command it to rise in flight to the tremendous heights of the mountains? In fact, if man, when he was created, had never seen a bird, would it even enter his mind to create such a creature?

To understand the Bible's references to things like eagles, we have to remember that these were days before modern rock-climbing equipment. In every eagle story, the idea is never far away that the eagle belongs to a region beyond the reach of all natural powers.

But what is the aim of the Lord in putting these questions? To show that God is greater than man, and to humble man. To bring Job to the true knowledge of himself that he needed, and to free him from the pride of his heart.

He does not content Himself with showing man's littleness by what is vast. He takes up what we might think are smaller things... So it matters little whether we gaze at the greatest of God's works or look into the least. Everywhere we meet what is entirely beyond man's understanding... Job had even pretended to judge God's moral depths. But he could not face what God is in the least part of His universe, and he had no adequate idea of it.

What He dwells on are two things in particular — His supremacy, and His power joined with the most tender care. That care is not only for harmless animals such as sheep and lambs, but for lions and lionesses, which are certainly formidable. And the eagle — an object of special interest to God... Was it you, Job, who managed all these things? Was it you who cared for them all, provided for them all?

"Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions, the LORD alone guided him" (Deuteronomy 32:11-12)... On the crag of rock, out of man's reach, she builds her nest and rears her young. The time comes when she would teach her young ones to gaze at the sun and soar from the rock themselves.

It is Jehovah-God, then, who alone orders and alone knows. His kind wisdom takes in every creature, and not least those clearly outside all the care or even the knowledge of man. Is he then to contend with God, or, if he is so presumptuous, can he pretend to instruct God? Job feels and owns his vileness; he goes no further down that road.