Yahweh’s Challenge Continues

• Do you observe the doe deer’s giving birth?
• 2 Can you number the months they fulfill, and do you know the time of its giving birth?
• 3 When they crouch, they bring forth their young ones; they get rid of their labor pains.[fn]
• 4 Their young ones grow strong; they grow up in the open; they go forth and do not return to them.
• 5 “Who has sent forth the wild ass free? And who has released the wild donkey’s bonds,
• 6 to which I have given the wilderness as its house and the salt flat as its dwelling place?
• 7 It scorns the city’s turmoil; it does not hear the driver’s shouts.
• 8 It explores the mountains as its pasture and searches after every kind of green plant.
• 9 “Is the wild ox willing to serve you, or will he spend the night at your feeding trough?
• 10 Can you tie the wild ox with its rope to a furrow, or will it harrow the valleys after you?
• 11 Can you trust it because its strength is great, or will you hand your labor over to it?
• 12 Can you rely on it that it will return your grain and that it will gather it to your threshing floor?
• 13 “ The wings[fn] of the female ostrich flap[fn]— are they[fn] the pinions of the stork or[fn] the falcon?
• 14 Indeed, it leaves its eggs to the earth, and it lets them be warmed on the ground,
• 15 and it forgets that a foot might crush an egg,[fn] and a wild animal[fn] might trample it.[fn]
• 16 It deals cruelly with its young ones, as if they were not its own, as if without fear that its labor were in vain,
• 17 because God made it forget wisdom, and he did not give it a share in understanding.
• 18 When it spreads its wings aloft ,[fn] it laughs at the horse and its rider.
• 19 “Do you give power to the horse? Do you clothe its neck with a mane?
• 20 Do you make it leap like the locust? The majesty of its snorting is terrifying.
• 21 They paw in the valley, and it exults with strength; it goes out to meet the battle.
• 22 It laughs at danger and is not dismayed, and it does not turn back from before[fn] the sword.
• 23 Upon it the quiver rattles along with the flash of the spear and the short sword.
• 24 With roar and rage it races over the ground ,[fn] and it cannot stand still at the sound of the horn.
• 25 Whenever[fn] a horn sounds, it says, ‘Aha!’ And it smells the battle from a distance—
• the thunder of the commanders and the war cry.
• 26 “Does the hawk soar by your wisdom? Does it spread its wings to the south?
• 27 Or does the eagle fly high at your command and construct its nest high?
• 28 It lives on the rock and spends the night on the rock point and the mountain stronghold .[fn]
• 29 From there it spies out the prey; its eyes look from far away.
• 30 And its young ones lick blood greedily, and where the dead carcasses are, there they are.”