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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 39:13 - 39:13
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13 The wing of the ostrich vibrates joyously,
Is she pious, wing and feather?
14 No, she leaveth her eggs in the earth
And broodeth over the dust,
15 Forgetting that a foot may crush them,
And the beast of the field trample them.
16 She treateth her young ones harshly as if they were not hers;
In vain is her labour, without her being distressed.
17 For Eloah hath caused her to forget wisdom,
And gave her no share of understanding.
18 At the time when she lasheth herself aloft,
She derideth the horse and horseman.
As the wild ass and the ox-like oryx cannot be tamed by man, and employed in his service like the domestic ass and ox, so the ostrich, although resembling the stork in its stilt-like structure, the colour of its feathers, and its gregarious life, still has characteristics totally different from those one ought to look for according to this similarity. רְנָנִים, a wail, prop. a tremulous shrill sound (vid., Job 39:23), is a name of the female ostrich, whose peculiar cry is called in Arabic zimâr (זְמָר). נֶֽעֱלַס (from עָלַס, which in comparison with עָלַץ, עָלַז, rarely occurs) signifies to make gestures of joy. אִם, Job 39:13, is an interrogative an; חֲסִידָה, pia, is a play upon the name of the stork, which is so called: pia instar ciconiae (on this figure of speech, comp. Mehren's Rehtorik der Araber, S. 178). כִּי, Job 39:14, establishes the negation implied in the question, as e.g., Isa 28:28. The idea is not that the hen-ostrich abandons the hatching of her eggs to the earth (עָזַב לְ as Psa 16:10), and makes them “glow over the dust” (Schlottm.), for the maturing energy compensating for the sitting of the parent bird proceeds from the sun's heat, which ought to have been mentioned; one would also expect a Hiph. instead of the Piel תְּחַמֵּם, which can be understood only of hatching by her own warmth. The hen-ostrich also really broods herself, although from time to time she abandons the חַמֵּם to the sun.
(Note: It does, however, as it appears, actually occur, that the female leaves the work of hatching to the sun by day, and to the male at night, and does not sit at all herself; vid., Funke's Naturgeschichte, revised by Taschenberg (1864), S. 243f.)
That which contrasts with the φιλοστοργία of the stork, which is here made prominent, is that she lays here eggs in a hole in the ground, and partly, when the nest is full, above round about it, while חסידה ברושׁים ביתה, Psa 104:17. רננים is construed in accordance with its meaning as fem. sing., Ew. §318, a. Since she acts thus, what next happens consistently therewith is told by the not aoristic but only consecutive וַתִּשְׁכַּח: and so she forgets that the foot may crush (זוּר, to press together, break by pressure, as הַזּוּרֶה, Isa 59:5 = הַזּוּרָה, that which is crushed, comp. לָנֶה = לָֽנָה, Zec 5:4) them (i.e., the eggs, Ges. §146, 3), and the beast of the field may trample them down, crush them (דּוּשׁ as Arab. dâs, to crush by treading upon anything, to tread out).
Job 39:16
The difficulty of הִקְשִׁיחַ (from קָשַׁח, Arab. qsḥ, hardened from קָשָׁה, Arab. qsâ) being used of the hen-ostrich in the masc., may be removed by the pointing הַקְשֵׁיחַ (Ew.); but this alteration is unnecessary, since the Hebr. also uses the masc. for the fem. where it might be regarded as impossible (vid., Job 39:3, and comp. e.g., Isa 32:11.). Jer. translates correctly according to the sense: quasi non sint sui, but לְ is not directly equivalent to כְּ; what is meant is, that by the harshness of her conduct she treats her young as not belonging to her, so that they become strange to her, Ew. §217, d. In Job 39:16 the accentuation varies: in vain (לְרִיק with Rebia mugrasch) is her labour that is devoid of anxiety; or: in vain is her labour (לריק( ruobal r with Tarcha, יְגִיעָהּ with Munach vicarium) without anxiety (on her part); or: in vain is her labour (לריק with Mercha, יגיעה with Rebia mugrasch), yet she is without anxiety. The middle of these renderings (לְריק in all of them, like Isa 49:4 = לָריק, Isa 65:23 and freq.) seems to us the most pleasing: the labour of birth and of the brooding undertaken in places where the eggs are put beyond the danger of being crushed, is without result, without the want of success distressing her, since she does not anticipate it, and therefore also takes no measures to prevent it. The eggs that are only just covered with earth, or that lie round about the nest, actually become a prey to the jackals, wild-cats, and other animals; and men can get them for themselves one by one, if they only take care to prevent their footprints being recognised; for if the ostrich observes that its nest is discovered, it tramples upon its own eggs, and makes its nest elsewhere (Schlottm., according to Lichtenstein's Südafrik. Reise). That it thus abandons its eggs to the danger of being crushed and to plunder, arises, according to Job 39:17, from the fact that God has caused it to forget wisdom, i.e., as Job 39:17 explains, has extinguished in it, deprived it of, the share thereof (ב as Isa 53:12, lxx ἐν, as Act 8:21) which it might have had. It is only one of the stupidities of the ostrich that is made prominent here; the proverbial ahmaq min en-na‛âme, “more foolish than the ostrich,” has its origin in more such characteristics. But if the care with which other animals guard their young ones is denied to it, it has in its stead another remarkable characteristic: at the time when (כָּעֵת here followed by an elliptical relative clause, which is clearly possible, just as with בְּעֵת, Job 6:17) it stretches (itself) on high, i.e., it starts up with alacrity from its ease (on the radical signification of הִמְרִיא = הִמְרָה), and hurries forth with a powerful flapping of its wings, half running half flying, it derides the horse and its rider - they do not overtake it, it is the swiftest of all animals; wherefore Arab. '‛dâ mn 'l-dlı̂m ‛zalı̂m, equivalent to delı̂m according to a less exact pronunciation, supra, p. 582, note) and Arab. 'nfr mn 'l-n‛âmt, fleeter than the ostrich, is just as proverbial as the above Arab. 'ḥmq mn 'l-wa‛nat; and “on ostrich's wings” is equivalent to driving along with incomparable swiftness. Moreover, on תַּמְרִיא and תִּשְׂחַק, which refer to the female, it is to be observed that she is very anxious, and deserts everything in her fright, while the male ostrich does not forsake his young, and flees no danger.
(Note: We take this remark from Doumas, Horse of the Sahara. The following contribution from Wetzstein only came to hand after the exposition was completed: “The female ostriches are called רְנָנִים not from the whirring of their wings when flapped about, but from their piercing screeching cry when defending their eggs against beasts of prey (chiefly hyaenas), or when searching for the male bird. Now they are called rubd, from sing. rubda (instead of rabdâ), from the black colour of their long wing-feathers; for only the male, which is called חַיְק (pronounce hêtsh), has white. The ostrich-tribe has the name of בַּת יַֽעֲנָה bat (Arab. bdt 'l-wa‛nat), 'inhabitant of the desert,' because it is only at home in the most lonely parts of the steppe, in perfectly barren deserts. Neshwân the Himjarite, in his 'Shems el-'olûm' (MSS in the Royal Library at Berlin, sectio Wetzst. I No. 149, Bd. i.f. 110b), defines the word el-wa‛na by: ארץ ביצא לא תנבת שׁיא, a white (chalky or sandy) district, which brings forth nothing; and the Kâmûs explains it by אֹרץ צֻלְבָּה, a hard (unfruitful) district. In perfect analogy with the Hebr. the Arabic calls the ostrich abu (and umm) es-sahârâ, 'possessor of the sterile deserts.' The name יְעֵנִים, Lam 4:3, is perfectly correct, and corresponds to the form יְעֵלִים (steinbocks); the form פָעֵל (Arab. f‛l) is frequently the Nisbe of פַעַל and פַעֲלָה, according to which יָעֵן = בַּת הַיַֽעֲנָה and יָעֵל = בַּת הַיַּֽעֲלָה, 'inhabitant of the inaccessible rocks.' Hence, says Neshwân (against the non-Semite Firûzâbâdi), wa‛l (יַעַל and wa‛la) is exclusively the high place of the rocks, and wa‛il (יָעֵל exclusively the steinbock. The most common Arabic name of the ostrich is na‛âme, נְעָמָה, collective na‛âm, from the softness (nu‛ûma, נְעוּמָה) of its feathers, with which the Arab women (in Damascus frequently) stuff cushions and pillows. Umm thelâthin, 'mother of thirty,' is the name of the female ostrich, because as a rule she lays thirty eggs. The ostrich egg is called in the steppe dahwa, דַּחְוָה (coll. dahû), a word that is certainly very ancient. Nevertheless the Hauranites prefer the word medha, מַדְחָה. A place hollowed out in the ground serves as a nest, which the ostrich likes best to dig in the hot sand, on which account they are very common in the sandy tracts of Ard ed-Dehanâ (דַהֲנָא), between the Shemmar mountains and the Sawâd (Chaldaea). Thence at the end of April come the ostrich hunters with their spoil, the hides of the birds together with the feathers, to Syria. Such an unplucked hide is called gizze (גִזָּה). The hunters inform us that the female sits alone on the nest from early in the day until evening, and from evening until early in the morning with the male, which wanders about throughout the day. The statement that the ostrich does not sit on its eggs, is perhaps based on the fact that the female frequently, and always before the hunters, forsakes the eggs during the first period of brooding. Even. Job 39:14 and Job 39:15 do not say more than this. But when the time of hatching (called el-faqs, פֶקֶץ) is near, the hen no longer leaves the eggs. The same observation is also made with regard to the partridge of Palestine (el-hagel, חָגָל), which has many other characteristics in common with the ostrich.
That the ostrich is accounted stupid (Job 39:17) may arise from the fact, that when the female has been frightened from the eggs she always seeks out the male with a loud cry; she then, as the hunters unanimously assert, brings him forcibly back to the nest (hence its Arabic name zalı̂m, 'the violent one'). During the interval the hunter has buried himself in the sand, and on their arrival, by a good shot often kills both together in the nest. It may also be accounted as stupidity, that, when the wind is calm, instead of flying before the riding hunters, the bird tries to hide itself behind a mound or in the hollows of the ground. But that, when escape is impossible, it is said to try to hide its head in the sand, the hunters regard as an absurdity. If the wind aids it, the fleeing ostrich spreads out the feathers of its tail like a sail, and by constantly steering itself with its extended wings, it escapes its pursuers with ease. The word הִמְרִיא, Job 39:18, appears to be a hunting expression, and (without an accus. objecti) to describe this spreading out of the feathers, therefore to be perfectly synonymous with the תַעְרִישׁ (Arab. t'rı̂š) of the ostrich hunters of the present day. Thus sings the poet Râshid of the hunting race of the Sulubât: 'And the head (of the bride with its loosened locks) resembles the (soft and black) feathers of the ostrich-hen, when she spreads them out (‛arrashannâ). They saw the hunter coming upon them where there was no hiding-place, And stretched their legs as they fled.' The prohibition to eat the ostrich in the Thora (Lev 11:16; Deu 14:15) is perhaps based upon the cruelty of the hunt; for it is with the rarest exceptions always killed only on its eggs. The female, which, as has been said already, does not flee towards the end of the time of brooding, stoops on the approach of the hunter, inclines the head on one side and looks motionless at her enemy. Several Beduins have said to me, that a man must have a hard heart to fire under such circumstances. If the bird is killed, the hunter covers the blood with sand, puts the female again upon the eggs, buries himself at some distance in the sand, and waits till evening, when the male comes, which is now shot likewise, beside the female. The Mosaic law might accordingly have forbidden the hunting of the ostrich from the same feeling of humanity which unmistakeably regulated it in other decisions (as Exo 23:19; Deu 22:6., Lev 22:28, and freq.).)