The Bible Says
Job 39:5-12 Meaning

In Job 39:5-12, God continues His “zoo tour,” creating a contrast for Job between God’s infinite perspective and Job’s minuscule field of view. God moves on from His illustration concerning wild deer and turns to the wild donkey and ox. He introduces the next creature: Who sent out the wild donkey free, And who loosed the bonds of the swift donkey” (v. 5).

He points to an animal famous in the ancient Near East for stubborn freedom. The wild donkey won’t take a halter and won’t live in a barn. Yet its freedom isn’t random; it is granted. God sent out the wild donkey free and loosed its bonds. God writes the permissions for creation; it is His design. God created and manages intricate details Job hasn’t even pondered.

If God cares for the wild donkey, surely He cares for humans, whom He created in His own image (Genesis 1:26), in this case particularly for the person He most favors (Job 1:8). God’s authority is complete; as Jesus told the Roman governor Pilate, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11).

The wild donkey’s freedom and Pilate’s authority share the same source: God. So it is with all things, including Job’s circumstances. God took responsibility for Job’s ruin in Job 2:3, even though it was Satan’s doing, because God removed protection from Job and allowed it. Job is being completely disavowed of his belief that his suffering was a result of God lacking perspective (Job 23:4). God not only knows fully about Job, He knows fully about all creation. As Colossians tells us, He actually holds all things together (Colossians 1:17).

We can make an application from the wild donkey that God has built freedom into His creative design. Freedom is the ability to make one’s own choices. Galatians 5:1 tells us “It was for freedom that Christ set us free.” It is the human tendency to try to control what God made free—people, outcomes, even God Himself. This often feels like futility because we try to control things over which we have not been granted stewardship—God, for instance.

But God’s design is for humans to make choices. God gave Adam permission to make any choice to steward the garden with only one limitation—to not eat of a tree that provided him knowledge apart from God. God invites us to choose wisely and trust Him, adopt His perspectives, which are true and reliable, then to take actions in keeping with what is true and real.

The Lord next comments further regarding the wild donkey that to whom I gave the wilderness for a home And the salt land for his dwelling place (v.6).

Desert flats and salty plains look useless to city-dwellers, but God calls them home for the wild donkey. The Hebrew word translated salt land can also be rendered “barren.” The wild donkey lives in places that appear to us as unlivable, yet God gave the barren wilderness to the wild donkey to be his home.

If God can assign a harsh landscape as home and sustain life in it, He can meet us in our deserts too. Job’s ash heap felt like a salt land (Job 2:8). The Lord is showing him: “I have creatures thriving where you think nothing can.” It is the Lord’s hand, and the wild donkey thrives in what we consider harsh. The picture painted is that God does all things for a purpose, and can sustain His people in any circumstance. Paul reflects this sentiment when he says, “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am” (Philippians 4:11-13).

About the donkey, God notes that it scorns the tumult of the city, The shoutings of the driver he does not hear (v. 7).

The wild donkey avoids the places where humans thrive. The shoutings of the driver refers to a human driving a cart that might be pulled by the donkey, were he in the city. But the wild donkey does not hear any human telling him what to do. He does what he wants to do. Why? God gave him that freedom. He is not controlled by humans. Neither is hardly anything else.

The vast majority of creation, of which God here provides a brief survey, is unaffected by human hands. But it is all within God’s design and is managed by Him to His own ends. We can acknowledge that the creation is fallen, and currently not functioning fully according to God’s original design. But God is still sovereign, and all will be restored in His good time (Romans 8:20-22, 2 Peter 3:13).

We can make an application that wisdom begins with the knowledge of the Lord. We benefit when we allow God’s perspective to define reality rather than noise from the world. We can listen to and obey our Shepherd’s voice and receive His guidance to make choices that actually serve our true self-interest (John 10:27-28). The Lord adds that the wild donkey explores the mountains for his pasture And searches after every green thing (v. 8).

The wild donkey uses his freedom for his sustenance. He explores the mountains to look for a place to graze (his pasture). He doesn’t wait for feed to be delivered; he ranges far, reading the land, locating pockets of green in a dry world. He applies his wiles to seek feed, and searches after every green thing.

In none of this does he need to be trained by a human. The wild donkey needs no keeper; God gave him the capacity to fend for himself. If God has provided this detail for the wild donkey, how much more for Job, the man in whom He takes great delight?

God next turns to the wild ox in this cosmic “zoo tour.”  He asks, “Will the wild ox consent to serve you, Or will he spend the night at your manger?” (v. 9).

This is a rhetorical question with “No” as the expected answer. The wild ox is not domesticated. Job can’t hire it, stable it, or schedule it. The manger is the feeding trough for domestic animals. The wild ox is not going to spend the night at your manger; he is not going to abide being corralled or managed. The wild ox is not going consent to serve you by pulling your plow. The Lord continues, “Can you bind the wild ox in a furrow with ropes, Or will he harrow the valleys after you?” (v. 10).

Again the expected answer to this rhetorical question is “No, you cannot bind the wild ox.” A furrow is made by a plow. To harrow the valleys is to plow the fertile land in the valleys (as opposed to the rocky hilltops). The point is that no farmer is going to succeed in putting a wild ox under a yoke and harnessing it to a plow. The wild ox has plenty of strength. But the wild ox is going to do what it wants to do, not what any human tells it to do. The point seems to be “Job, you can’t control this beast” naturally inferring a related question, “So why do you think you can question Me?”

We can recall that Job longed for an opportunity to argue his case before God and was confident that if God heard Job’s perspective, He would be convinced and relent from Job’s trial (Job 23:37). God will greatly expand on this theme in chapters 40 and 41 when He discusses “Leviathan” and “Behemoth,” both of whom are untamable creatures.

Job wanted an explanation on his terms. God’s questions flip that to make the point that it is we who must align with God, not God with us. In the New Testament, Jesus calls us to take His yoke, and follow His will, not to fit Him into our yoke (Matthew 11:28-30). His yoke gives rest because His desire is to lead us to walk in ways consistent with our design, which leads to our actual fulfillment. God next asks concerning the wild ox, “Will you trust him because his strength is great And leave your labor to him?” (v. 11).

Again, the expected answer to this rhetorical question is “No, we will not expect a wild ox to do our labor for us.” No reasonable farmer is going to rely on an incredibly strong, untamed beast to plow his field so he can plant his crop. This is not because the ox lacks strength, he is incredibly strong, as everyone can see. It is because the wild ox is not going to do what the farmer wants; it is going to follow its own ways.

Just as God’s creature, the wild ox, will not pull a human’s plow, God does not submit to our will.  He does not “pull our plow.” Our basic choice is whether to pull the plow for God or for the world. If we pull for God, we gain fulfillment of our design and immense reward. And if we pull for the world it separates us from our design and we gain death and destruction (Matthew 7:13-14, Romans 6:16).

Finally, the Lord asks concerning the wild ox, “Will you have faith in him that he will return your grain And gather it from your threshing floor?” (v. 12). The phrase return your grain paints a picture of the ox pulling a cart from the field to the threshing floor. The threshing floor is where the chaff would be separated from the grain. It is the place of the harvest. Based on the description of this wild ox we can be quite sure if the ox was near the harvest he would be eating, not gathering.

Hence, once again the expected answer to this rhetorical question is, “No, I would not have faith in the wild ox to be around my harvest, I would expect him to eat my crop rather than help me harvest.” The ox is strong, but we should not trust a force with which we are not aligned. Job was trying to get God to align with him, but this infers that Job should rather be seeking to align with God. It is God in whom Job can have faith.

God does what He promises. He provides “seed to the sower and bread for food” and multiplies the harvest of righteousness (2 Corinthians 9:10). Jesus said the Father sees what is done in secret and rewards (Matthew 6:4). The world’s strength may vanish at the crucial hour; the Lord will not.

God continues to build the case with His questioning: Job does not need to teach God how to run the universe; Job needs God to teach him how to trust that He has Job’s best interest at heart.