John Kitto Evening Bible Devotions: February 18

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John Kitto Evening Bible Devotions: February 18


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The War-Horse

Job_39:19-25

The description given of the war-horse in the early part of the Lord’s address, has been greatly admired, as far surpassing all others, even by those who are indifferent to the sacred claims of the blessed volume in which the poem containing it is found. It has attracted more attention, perhaps, than any of the other magnificent descriptions in these chapters, because it refers to an animal so well-known, that the force of every point in the description can be recognized, and which is so often described by poets that the materials for comparison are abundant.

The reader will, of course, peruse the passage in the authorized version; and, therefore, instead of copying it, we present one which we have constructed mainly out of the best parts of several modern versions—

Hast thou given the horse strength?

Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? Note: Noyes’ version of this line is an interpretation; and as such, is good,

“Hast thou clothed his neck with his quivering mane?”

Hast then taught him to bound like the locust? Note: Some make it “to leap like the locust;” others, “to rush on like the locust;” but those who have experience of locusts, will feel that “to bound like the locust,” is the term conveying the exact shade of meaning.

How terrible is the glory of his nostrils!

He paweth in the valley, and exulteth in his strength:

He rusheth forth to meet the armed host;

He laugheth at fear; he trembleth not,

Nor turneth he back from the sword.

Against him rattleth the quiver,

The glittering spear, and the lance.

In his rage and fury he devoureth the ground;

And will not tarry when the trumpet soundeth.

Among the trumpets he saith Aha! Aha! Note: That is, his impatient neighing mingles with the sound of the trumpet.

And snuffeth the battle afar off—

The thunder of the captains, and the war-shout.

Perhaps it is not quite fair to Homer to cite in comparison with this that which is rather an incidental figure than a description. It is, however, his best passage having reference to this animal—

“As some stalled horse, high-fed, his stable-cord

Snapt short, beats under foot the sounding plain,

Accustomed in smooth-gliding streams to lave,

Exulting; high he bears his head; his mane

Undulates o’er his shoulders; pleased he eyes

His glossy sides; and, borne on pliant knees,

Shoots to the meadow where his fellows graze.”

Iliad, vi. 506.—Cowper, 617.

But in Virgil there is a more studied and elaborate description, which is allowed on all hands to be the best that Pagan antiquity can offer. It occurs in the Georgics (lib. iii. 83); and for the more exact comparison, is also a description of the war-horse. Dryden’s translation is fine, but we prefer that of Sotheby as more literally exact—

“But at the clash of arms, his ear afar

Drinks the deep sound and vibrates to the war;

Flames from each nostril roll in gathered stream;

His quivering limbs with restless motion gleam;

O’er his right shoulder, floating free and fair,

Sweeps his thick mane, and spreads his pomp of hair;

Swift works his double spine; and earth around

Rings to the solid hoof that wears the ground.”

Blackmore, whom nobody now reads, being as much unduly depreciated in our own day as he was unduly exalted in his own, has some fine descriptions of the horse, which, however, were written with a manifest recollection of this one in Job. This is the best—

“Wanton with life, and bold with native heat,

With thundering feet he paws the trembling ground,

He strikes out fire, and spurns the sand around;

Does, with loud neighings, make the valleys ring;

And, with becoming pride, his foam around him fling;

So light he treads, he leaves no mark behind,

As if indeed descended from the wind;

And yet so strong, he does his rider bear,

As if he felt no burden but the air. #

A cloud of smoke from his wide nostrils flies,

And his hot spirits brighten in his eyes.

At the shrill trumpet’s sound he pricks his ears,

With brave delight surveys the glittering spears,

And covetous of war, upbraids the coward’s fears.

Still more spirited is the following by the same writer in another place—

“The trembling ground the outrageous coursers tear,

And, snorting, blow their foam into the air,

Their fervid nostrils breathe out clouds of smoke,

And flames of fire from their hot eye-balls broke;

With furious hoofs o’er slaughtered heaps they fly,

And dash up bloody main amidst the sky;

Reeking in sweat, and smeared with dust and gore,

They spurn the sand and through the battle roar.”

With the best of these, the following description of an Arabian horse, by a recent Scottish poet, sustains no disadvantageous comparison. Some of the touches are very fine indeed—

“‘Bring forth my battle horse,’ the chieftain cried;

High-towering, swelling in his large-souled pride,

Forth came the steed; from Araby a gift,

White as the snows, and as the breezes swift.

In youth on Yemen’s golden barley fed,

In size and beauty grew the desert-bred,

Fit present for Zemberbo. Ne’er at rest,

High beat the muscles of his groaning chest;

His thin red nostrils, as from scornful thought,

Restless dilate, and smoke like seething pot;

And, lo! as if he tarried at the wine,

His fierce eyes, like sun-kindled rubies, shine.”—Aird

Arabian descriptions of the horse would afford still more interesting parallels, not only from the proximity of language and country, but because there is no region in which the appreciation of the high qualities of the animal is so intense, nor any language in which the praise of its beauty, swiftness, strength, and pride, has been so frequently and earnestly set forth with all the force of a most noble language, and all the vigor of oriental imagination. In the Bedouin romance of Antar, the mare of Shedad is thus noticed—“Shedad’s mare was called Jirwet, whose like was unknown. Kings negotiated with him for her, but he would not part with her, and would accept no offer or bribe for her; and thus he used to talk of her in his verses—Seek not to purchase my horse, for Jirwet is not to be bought or borrowed. I am a strong castle on her back, and in her bound are glory and greatnesss. I would not part with her were strings of camels to come unto me with their drivers following them. She flies with the wind without wings, and tears up the waste and the desert. I will keep her for the day of calamities, and site will rescue me when the battle dust rises.” There are many touches in a similar spirit in the account of the horse Dakis, which was the occasion of a war among the Arabian tribes. At a great feast, when the conversation turned on celebrated horses, one said of Dakis—“He, startles every one that looks at him; he is the antidote to grief to every one that beholds him; and he is a strong tower to every one that mounts hirn.” Again—“He is a horse, when a night of dust sheds its obscurity, you may see his hoofs like a fire brand;” and finally, in a race between this horse and another—“They started forth like lightning when it blasts the sight with its flash; or a gust of wind when it becomes a hurricane in its course…. When they came to the mead, Dakis bounded forth like a giant when he stretches himself out, and he left his dust behind. He appeared as if without legs or feet, and in the twinkling of an eye he was ahead of Ghabara.”

A celebrated German commentator of the last century thinks that none but a military man can fully understand this description of the war horse, or thoroughly appreciate it. “I have myself,” he says, “perhaps rode more horses than many who have become authors and illustrators of the Bible; but one part of the description, namely, the behavior of the horse on the approach of a hostile army, I only understand rightly from what old officers have related to me; and as to the proper meaning of the two lines—‘Hast thou clothed his neck with fire?’ [with thunder in the Authorized Version,] and ‘The grandeur of his neighing is terror,’ [“The glory of his nostrils is terrible.”—Author. Vers.]—it had escaped me; indeed, the latter I had not understood until a person who had an opportunity of seeing several stallions together, instructed me, and then I recollected that in my eighteenth year I had seen their bristled-up necks, and heard their fierce cries when rushing to attack each other.”