Bible Commentaries
Job 39

Verses 1-30

And still the unveiling goes forward: the mystery of the begetting and birth of lower animals, with the sorrows of travail, and the finding of strength; the freedom and wildness and splendid untameableness of the wild ass, the uncontrolled strength of the wild ox; in all these things God reveals Himself as interested, and, moreover, as active. The differing manifestations of foolishness and power and wisdom, as they are evident among birds and beasts, are dealt with. The ostrich rejoicing in the power of her pinions and in her folly abandoning her eggs and her young, is described; and her very foolishness is accounted for by the act of God. He deprived her of wisdom.

There is nothing, then, that happens in these lower realms of life, apart from God's volition. The war horse with his might, but tameable so that he will serve man and come to rejoice amid strange and awful battle scenes and sounds, is yet not of man's creation. All his essential strength is divinely bestowed. The hawk, with wisdom directing it to the south land, and the eagle placing her nest on high, far from the possibility of intrusion, yet in such place of observation as enables her to feed her young, these also are God-guided. Even though in the great dispensation of His government God has committed dominion to man, it is dominion over facts and forces which he has not originated, nor does he sustain.