Job - The Old Testament

¹ Do you know when mountain goats give birth? Have you ever watched deer in labour?

² Have you ever counted the months that they carry their young? Do you know when they give birth?

³ They crouch to drop their young, they get rid of their burdens

⁴ and the calves, having grown big and strong, go off into the desert and never come back to them.

⁵ Who has given the wild donkey his freedom, who has undone the harness of the brayer?

⁶ I have given him the wastelands as his home, the salt plain as his habitat.

⁷ He scorns the turmoil of the town, obeys no donkey-man's shouts.

⁸ The mountains are the pastures that he ranges in quest of anything green.

⁹ Is the wild ox willing to serve you or spend a night beside your manger?

¹⁰ If you tie a rope round his neck will he harrow the furrows for you?

¹¹ Can you rely on his massive strength and leave him to do your heavy work?

¹² Can you depend on him to come home and pile your grain on your threshing-floor?

¹³ Can the wing of the ostrich be compared with the plumage of stork or falcon?

¹⁴ She leaves her eggs on the ground with only earth to warm them;

¹⁵ forgetting that a foot may tread on them or a wild animal crush them.

¹⁶ Cruel to her chicks as if they were not hers, little she cares if her labour goes for nothing.

¹⁷ God, you see, has deprived her of wisdom and given her no share of intelligence.

¹⁸ Yet, if she bestirs herself to use her height, she can make fools of horse and rider too.

¹⁹ Are you the one who makes the horse so brave and covers his neck with flowing mane?

²⁰ Do you make him leap like a grasshopper? His haughty neighing inspires terror.

²¹ Exultantly he paws the soil of the valley, and charges the battle-line in all his strength.

²² He laughs at fear; he is afraid of nothing, he recoils before no sword.

²³ On his back the quiver rattles, the flashing spear and javelin.

²⁴ Trembling with impatience, he eats up the miles; when the trumpet sounds, there is no holding him.

²⁵ At each trumpet blast he neighs exultantly. He scents the battle from afar, the thundering of the commanders and the war cry.

²⁶ Is it your wisdom that sets the hawk flying when he spreads his wings to travel south?

²⁷ Does the eagle soar at your command to make her eyrie in the heights?

²⁸ She spends her nights among the crags with a needle of rock as her fortress,

²⁹ from which she watches for prey, fixing it with her far-ranging eye.

³⁰ Even her young drink blood; where anyone has been killed, she is there.