איוב לט

Do you know the season when the mountain goats give birth?
Can you mark the time when the hinds calve?

Can you count the months they must complete?
Do you know the season they give birth,

When they couch to bring forth their offspring,
To deliver their young?

Their young are healthy; they grow up in the open;
They leave and return no more.

Who sets the wild ass free?
Who loosens the bonds of the onager,

Whose home I have made the wilderness,
The salt land its dwelling-place?

It scoffs at the tumult of the city,
Does not hear the shouts of the driver.

It roams the hills for its pasture;
It searches for any green thing.

Would the wild ox agree to serve you?
Would it spend the night at your crib?

Can you hold the wild ox by ropes to the furrow?
Would it plow up the valleys behind you?

Would you rely on its great strength
And leave your toil to it?

Would you trust the ox to bring in the seed
And gather it in from your threshing floor?

The wing of the ostrich beats joyously;
Are its pinions and plumage like the stork’s?

It leaves its eggs on the ground,
Letting them warm in the dirt,

Forgetting they may be crushed underfoot,
Or trampled by a wild beast.

Its young are cruelly abandoned as if they were not its own;
Its labor is in vain for lack of concern.

For God deprived it of wisdom,
Gave it no share of understanding,

Else it would soar on high,
Scoffing at the horse and its rider.

Do you give the horse its strength?
Do you clothe its neck with a mane?

Do you make it quiver like locusts,
Its majestic snorting [spreading] terror?

It paws with force, it runs with vigor,
Charging into battle.

It scoffs at fear; it cannot be frightened;
It does not recoil from the sword.

A quiverful of arrows whizzes by it,
And the flashing spear and the javelin.

Trembling with excitement, it swallows the land;
It does not turn aside at the blast of the trumpet.

As the trumpet sounds, it says, “Aha!”
From afar it smells the battle,
The roaring and shouting of the officers.

Is it by your wisdom that the hawk grows pinions,
Spreads its wings to the south?

Does the eagle soar at your command,
Building its nest high,

Dwelling in the rock,
Lodging upon the fastness of a jutting rock?

From there it spies out its food;
From afar its eyes see it.

Its young gulp blood;
Where the slain are, there it is.